EDITOR’S NOTE: We just covered this movie on January 17, 2022, but as we’re trying to cover as many Cannon movies as possible all March long, won’t you join us as we look back at not just the obsessive pop culture force that is Cannon, but the time they worked with Curtis Harrington and Sylvia Kristel?

13 year old me didn’t care about any 80s starlet that you’d care to mention. I’d already discovered the forbidden fruit that was Eurosleaze and with it, probably one of its classier stars, Sylvia Kristel. You know who agreed with me? Well, at least in the theory that he could make money off of her? Menahem Golan of Cannon, who came up with this movie just for her.

Curtis Harrington directed and he wasn’t pleased with the end product, but this was Cannon. He didn’t have final cut. “I wish I could have been involved in preserving what I felt was the integrity of the film. There were moments I felt were unreasonably cut. I’m not entirely happy with the cut. But (the people at Cannon) don’t care what I think,” he said at the time.

Even as a teen watching this with no sound on Cinemax, I knew that it wasn’t historically accurate. It’s about a fictitious love triangle between Mata Hari and two officers, one French and one German, who end up on the opposite sides of World War I. Despite Mata Hari exposing a German plot, she’s still arrested as a double agent and executed, even though everyone knows that she’s innocent, which wasn’t what I was looking for at 1:47 AM on Cinemax After Dark, you know?

This movie was chopped up to avoid an X rating, Kristel was dubbed and she was deep in her addiction by this point. As much as I love Cannon, they were not the studio to make this, but had that ever stopped them before?

According to Vintage Ninja — and who are we to doubt a ninja with photographic evidence — this film was in production as Sho Kosugi finished Ninja 3: The Domination and before he had a falling out with Cannon and went off to make 9 Deaths of the Ninja, which was called American Ninja in some markets which meant that this movie was called American Warrior in other countries.

Cannon often tried to sell movies before they were made, so the next version of this movie would star Chuck Norris — wearing the evil ninja costume from the aforementioned Ninja 3 — but then Chuck decided — allegedly — that he didn’t want to cover his face. He also probably would have said that ninjas were sneaky and too violent and to please, think of the children. But hey — that’s no insult to Chuck. He knew his brand.

So Cannon went with Michael Dudikoff, who while athletic wasn’t a martial arts star like Kosugi and Norris. Luckily, he had stuntman and Enter the Ninja creator Mike Stone to help.

Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) has a choice: join the Army or go to jail. He’s barely settled in when he saves Colonel William Hickock’s (Guich Koock) daughter Patricia (Judie Aronson, After Midnight, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) from the ninjas of the Black Star Order. He’s the only man that survives and he ends up protecting Patricia — and being targeted by the Black Star Master Ninja (Tadashi Yamashita, Seven, The Octagon) — while still getting thrown in the brig.

The rest of the soldiers dislike what they perceive as him not caring about others. But because he’s so silent — he can’t remember anything about his past and has no idea how he became such a skilled hand-to-hand fighter — he’s targeted by Corporal Curtis Jackson (Steve James, who is amazing in this) but after one fight they become friends.

Patricia — against her father’s wishes — sets up a date with Joe but during their dinner they’re noticed by Sergeant Rinaldo (John LaMotta, who was director Sam Firstenberg’s first movie One More Chance) who is selling weapons to Victor Ortega (Don Stewart, Markov from Carnival Magic), the main bad guy who has been hiring all of those ninjas.

As Rinaldo and the ninjas work to set up Joe for the weapons thievery and several murders, our hero is saved by Ortega’s butler Shinyuki (John Fujioka). He’s a soldier who never knew World War II ended, but still was able to save and rescue Joe after the death of his parents. Fujioka specialized in Japanese soldiers still fighting the war, playing similar parts in The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark and the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movie Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure.

Only Jackson, Patricia and an MP named Charlie (Phil Brock) are on Joe’s side and things get worse when we discover that Patricia’s dad is the one really selling the weapons to Ortega, who is about to host an entire convention of criminals and terrorists in the Philippines to sell off all of the weapons. They didn’t figure on an American Ninja ruining all of their plans.

While I prefer Kosugi in the Cannon ninja movies, this is a fine film and Firstenberg really knows how to keep the story and action moving. Steve James is another favorite and he’s great in literally every second he gets on screen. It’s a shame that he died so young.

This movie is a million times better than it should be. They may have made four sequels and a few associated movies like American Samurai and Lethal Ninja, which was also sold as American Ninja 5: The Nostradamus Syndrome.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about American Ninja here. There’s also a watchalong here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We have had this movie on our site twice, first on October 16, 2019 and a second take on August 29, 2021. Here’s the second, but make sure to check the first link to learn more about Roger Wilson.

Roger Wilson, the star of this movie, lost his parents at a young age and inherited several million. He graduated Woodberry Forest School in 1975 with Marvin Bush, the brother of the former President, and had a pretty astounding life, marrying Estée Lauder model Shaun Casey before dating Christy Turlington and Elizabeth Berkley, which was the reason why a member of Leonardo DiCaprio’s circle of friends punched Wilson in the throat and damaged his larynx so badly that he never sang again.

Anyways, Roger is Richie in this movie, the working class kid who becomes the guitarist and singer of the band Magic and also the boyfriend of Beth (Jill Schoelen). You know, if you’re a touring musician and dating Jill Schoelen, you should just settle down and not do too much more. You’re already so far ahead of the rest of all humanity.

Richie has taken the lead role from Skip (Leif Garrett, who knows a thing or two about rock and roll and drugs). Donnie, the keyboard player, is the one who gets into the drugs so badly that he just doesn’t make it. But it’s not all rough. I mean, the band has Clancy Brown — the Kurgan — as their road manager!

Director J. S. Cardone also made The Slayer, a movie that makes no sense so much that I love it, and the direct to video sequel to 8mm. He also directed Shadowzone; A Climate for Killing; Black Day, Blue Night; Outside Ozona; True Blue and Wicked Little Things.

Shot in Tucson, Arizona — using some of the same locations as The Wraith and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man — with local band Surgical Steel* showing up to play, Thunder Alley isn’t the best rock and roll movie there is. But you know, you could microwave up some food and have your own rib fest while you watch it.

*Their singer, Jeff Martin, sang in Racer X and played drums for Badlands after Eric Singer left. He’s also worked with Paul Gilbert and Michael Schenker quite often.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about Thunder Alley here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this way back on September 11, 2017, but as the three Tobe Hooper films he made for Cannon are so important, we’ve brought it back with some additions.

We’re here to praise Tobe Hooper, not bury him. But to get there, we have to go through some rough periods.

By 1985, Hooper’s career was in limbo. Sure, he’d tasted box office success with 1982’s Poltergeist, but he’d also be dogged with rumors — or truths — that he’d not really directed the film. Toss in a bad experience on 1981’s Venom, a film that he was replaced on ten days into shooting (Klaus Kinski claimed that the cast and crew ganged up on Hooper in an effort to have him replaced), as well as being replaced as the director of The Dark and a rumored nervous breakdown.

A three-picture deal with Cannon Films and the promise of no interference would be the panacea that would soothe Hooper’s pain. Or so he thought.

The first film in the three picture deal was Lifeforce. Based on Colin Wilson’s 1976 novel The Space Vampires and scripted by Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Return of the Living Dead) and Don Jakoby,  the film was originally going to use the original title. After spending $25 million to make it, Cannon decided that they wanted a blockbuster instead of their normal exploitation films, hence the change to Lifeforce.

Once Hooper had his money and freedom, he was beyond excited, seeing the film as his chance to remake Quatermass and the Pit. In fact, he said, “I thought I’d go back to my roots and make a 70mm Hammer film.”

Hopper turned in an initial film that was 128 minutes long, starting with 12 minutes of near silence in space aboard a space shuttle.  This is 12 minutes longer than the final version which had several scenes cut, most of them taking place on the space shuttle Churchill. Three actors —  John Woodnutt, John Forbes-Robertson and Russell Sommers — ended up completely cut from the final film, as was some of Henry Mancini’s score.

Even worse — the film went way over schedule and cost so much that the film was shut down when the studio ran out of money, leaving some of the most important scenes unshot.

Look — it could have been worse. Michael Winner was the original choice to direct.

So what’s it all about? Good question.

The crew of the Churchill discovers a massive spaceship — nearly 150 miles long and shaped like an artichoke (no, really) — inside Halley’s Comey. Hundreds of dead bat creatures surround the ship and inside, two perfect males and one perfect female sleep in suspended animation. They take the aliens and come back to Earth, because there are no protocols or rules about that kind of thing. I mean, I can’t even fly back from Japan with fruit and these dudes take aliens directly to London.

Tragedy strikes — a fire consumes the ship, destroying everything and everyone except for the aliens. The aliens turn out to be vampires that can shapeshift and suck out the life force of everyone they meet.

In Texas, a survivor is found — Colonel Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback, Manson from Helter Skelter!). He explains how the crew’s life force was taken and why he set the shuttle on fire. He also has a psychic link to the female alien (the constantly naked Mathilda May). Patrick Stewart also shows up as Dr. Armstrong here — who has the female vampire inside him. They take her/him back to London, but the plan backfires when she/he escapes.

London is now filled with zombies, as the two male vampires have turned the entire population and everyone feeds on one another. All of these life forces are sent by the males to the female and then to their spaceship. The lighting looks like Poltergeist by way of Mario Bava. Still with me?

Turns out that leaded iron can kill the vampires. And oh yeah, Carlsen is in love with the female vampire. She keeps calling to him. “CARLSEN. CARLSEN. CARLSEN.”

She’s naked on the altar of St. Paul’s, sending energy to the ship, as she reveals that they are bonded through their psychic link. Carlsen responds by killing the other male (one of the two is Mick Jagger’s brother Chris) and then impaling himself and the female at the same time.

The damage to Carlsen is mortal, but the female is unfazed. She creates a column of energy to her ship and rides it back, taking Carlsen with her. This looks completely sexual, which has to be no accident, as the connected bodies look coital.

The end? The end.

Does this mean that Earth is now a planet of vampires? Did she save him to make a new group of vampires? When did this become a zombie movie?

I don’t have the answers. And now that Tobe is gone, I can’t ask him.

Plain and simple, Lifeforce is a mess. It seems inconceivable that this film and Chainsaw came from the same director. It seems more of a British film. There’s some inventive gore, such as when the female vampire (her name is only listed as Space Girl) comes out of Patrick Stewart’s body as blood.

It has moments of gorgeous shots, like the scene where we flashback to when Space Girl reaches out to Carlsen. And the battle of London is a huge effects piece. But the story is — I don’t even know where to begin. It feels more like Meteor than what you expect from Hooper. Which is, I guess, the point of so much of his Cannon films. They are all unique, all strange and all end up being completely different from the movie you expect them to be.

William Sachs may have made There Is No 13, The Incredible Melting Man, Van Nuys Blvd., Galaxina and Exterminator 2, but he may be better known for his ability to script doctor and save movies. Hot Chili is another film he directed and co-wrote with Joseph Golden, who is actually producer and Cannon boss Menahem Golan.

This may remind you of Hot Resort, which has an incredibly similar plot, but then again, teen sex comedies were big money makers and dear to the heart of Cannon, who had ridden a wave from Israel to Los Angeles on the profits of Lemon Popsicle.

Then again, you’d also be forgiven if you think this may be another film, seeing as it rips off a Lemon Popsicle sequel Private Popsicle, as well as the songs from Breakin’ and Rappin‘, because I guess if Cannon pays for something once, they just own it, a trick ad agencies and their clients have been trying to do for years.

Four guys — Ricky (Charlie Stratton, Munchies), Jason (Allan Kayser, Bubba from Mama’s Family), Arney (Joe Rubbo, The Last American Virgin) and Stanley (Chuck Hemingway, Neon Maniacs) — get summer jobs at a Mexican resort but are forbidden from having sex with the guests and therefore must have sex with the guests.

It’s a typical 80s teen sex movie, but what are the factors that may cause you to watch this?

Perhaps it’s the charms of Taaffe O’Connell, who you may recall was assaulted by a worm in one of the most repellant scenes in film history in Galaxy of Terror, a scene during which the one-ton prop nearly crushed her. Or could it be Victoria Barrett, who is in Cannon’s Hot Resort, Over the Brooklyn Bridge, Three Kinds of Heat and American 3000?

Or, if you’re like me, do you love when Ferdy Mayne and Robert Z’Dar are in movies you don’t expect them to be in?

I’m trying to figure out why so many Golam and Globus-related sex comedies have female music teachers that like to have sex. It’s a common theme in so many of them. What is not is everyone’s sexual hijinks being recorded and later shown during breakfast, including Jason’s parents, a senior swinging couple and a BDSM duo from Germany.

One of Katharine Hepburn’s last leading roles in a motion picture was in a Cannon movie. Yes, that’s true. It’s in a black comedy in which she has tried suicide twice before hiring Nick Nolte to be the hitman who brings about her demise. Before that, however, they help her friends get past their old age by, well, death.

Directed by Anthony Harvey (They Might Be Giants, The Lion In Winter), the subject matter of this movie worried Cannon, who asked that the end of the film be reshot — Nolte’s Seymour drowns when he tries to save Hepburn’s Grace when she walks into the ocean — so that it ended on a happier note. They also shortened the name from The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley, because when you realize that name may come off as a bit, oh, Aryan.

The story of how this was made is more interesting than the finished product: A. Martin Zweiback tossed a 25-page treatment over George Cukor’s garden gate in 1972. Strangely, that’s where Hepburn was recuperating from surgery. She found the script, loved it and tried to get it made with Steve McQueen. It took seven years to get it to Columbia and Nick Nolte stepped in, but left, and then came back by 1983, but Columbia now backed out. And that’s where Cannon comes in, with Zweiback slated to direct.

However, Anthony Harvey, who had worked with Hepburn on The Lion in Winter and The Glass Menagerie — and on the TV movie This Can’t Be Love after this film — had been injured in a car accident and his career had suffered. Hepburn promised he could direct her next film and Zweibeck stepped aside as long as he and his wife would be credited as executive producers and allowed to come to the set.

Harvey didn’t want them near his movie and threatened to quit, but the Zweibacks didn’t have any involvement in the movie until they saw the premiere at Cannes where everybody hated the final film.

I love this movie.

If Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo exists in its own dimension, this one is the Earth-3 to its Earth-2, a place where rap can save the world. And to make it even better, it’s filmed right where I call home, Pittsburgh, PA.

Directed by Joel Silberg — the man who brought us Breakin’ and Lambada  — and written by Adam Friedman and Robert J. Litz, this is the story of Rappin’ John Hood (Mario Van Peebles), who has just been released from prison only to come home to a neighborhood dealing with gangs and developers kicking out everyone to prepare for high paying real estate.

He reunites with his old crew, like Moon (Kadeem Hardison from A Different World) and Ice (Eric La Salle), Fats (Melvin Plowden) and his little brother Allan (Leo O’Brien, the real-life younger brother of The Sugarland Gang’s Master Gee) while dealing with a rival gang led by Duane (Charles Flohe, The Delta Force, P.O.W. the Escape), who loses his girlfriend Dixie, who used to be John’s girlfriend, back to John (Tasia Valenza, who is the voice of Sniper Wolf in the Metal Gear Solid games).

There’s also Cedric (Rory Clanton), a former resident of the neighborhood who is selling it out to the white man when he isn’t making deals with Duane’s gang. And there’s a plot about the music industry wanting to hire John, probably just for the song “Snack Attack.”

It also has the Force MDs and Ice-T himself shows up and either he or Master Gee supposedly ghost rapped Van Peeble’s rhymes–  which the credits claim he wrote himself — but man, Ice-T provides a nice multiverse crossover with the Breakin’ films. When he raps “Killers,” a song all about bad cops, rich murders and politicians treating normal people as “just puppets in the games they play” alongside David Storrs, you’ll be excited that a happy-go-lucky film doesn’t forget to include harsh reality inside the bubblegum.

There’s also a scene where Fats and the local lady of the evening, Rosalita, pull a scam not unlike a scene in every Lemon Popsicle movie where a heavyset man gets surprised by a woman’s boyfriend coming home. And the movie even has room for Mommie Dearest and Amityville II: The Possession star Rutanya Alda to be in this!

Someone on a Pittsburgh film site picked this as one of the worst movies ever made here. What a joke. Come on — we should all be so lucky as to live in the same neighborhood as John Hood.

During World War II, Alexander Ramati worked as a war journalist, entering Assisi with the Allied forces where he met Father Rufino Niccacci, whose Franciscan Monastery of San Damiano in Assisi worked to give Jewis people during World War II new identities and hid them from the Germans, which is much different than how so much of the Catholic Church dealt with that side of World War II.

After interviewing Niccacci, he would write the book that this is based on, as well as direct the movie. Not many authors have directed their own books, but thanks to this Letterboxd list, you can count Ramati in the same league as Fernando Arrabal (Long Live Death, Car Cemetery), Clive Barker (Hellraiser, Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions), Enki Bilal (Immortal), William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist III, The Ninth Configuration), Bertrand Blier (Going Places), Catherine Breillat (A Real Young Girl, Night After Night, Anatomy of Hell, 36 Fillette, Abuse of Weakness), Emmanuel Carrère (The Mustache), Medgi Charef (Tea In the Harem), Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Jean Cocteau (The Eagle with Two Heads, The Storm Within), Michael Crichton (Pursuit, First Great Train Robbery), Ramón de España (Haz conmigo lo que quieras), Margeuerite Duras (Agatha and the Limitless Reading; Baxter, Ver Baxter; The Children; Destroy, She Said; Endless Days In the Trees; India Song; Jaune, Le Soleil; La Musica), Brad Fraser (Leaving Metropolis), Buddy Giovinazzo (Life Is Hot In Cracktown), Sacha Guitry (The Story of a Cheat), Peter Handke (The Absence, The Left-Handed Woman), Václav Havel (Odcházení), Ethan Hawke (The Hottest State), Michel Houellebecq (Possibility of an Island), Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Dance of Reality, Endless Poetry), Junji Ito (Tomio), Elia Kazan (America America, The Arrangement), Stephen King (Maximum Overdrive), Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things), Robert Lepage (Nô), André Malraux (Days of Hope), David Mamet (Oileanna), Thomas McGuane (92 In the Shade), Gian Carlo Menotti (The Medium), Oscar Micheaux (The Homesteader), Frank Miller (Sin City, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For), Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee), Yukio Mishima (Patriotism), John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Hayao Miyazaki (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, The Wind Rises), Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), Laura Mulvey (Riddles of the Sphinx), Ryū Murakami (Almost Transparent Blue; It’s Aigt, My Friend, Raffles Hotel, Tokyo Decadence, Dance With Me), Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), Marcel Pagnol (Topaze), Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Accattone), Lucía Puenzo (The Fish Child, The German Doctor), Atiq Rahimi (Earth and Ashes, The Patience Stone), Jean Rollin (Two Orphan Vampires), Ousmane Sembène (Mandabi, Xala), John Patrick Shanley (Doubt, Wild Mountain Thyme), Vasily Shukshin (There Is Such a Lad), Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead), Preston Sturges (Christmas In July), Abdellah Taïa (Salvation Army), Adriana Trigiani (Big Stone Gap), Dalton Trumbo (Johnny Got His Gun), Petr Zelenka (Wrong Side Up), Florian Zeller (The Father) and for Cannon lovers, Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance.

Ben Cross is Rufino Niccacci, James Mason is Giuseppe Placido Nicolini and Maximilian Schell plays Colonel Valentin Müller, while Edmund Purdom probably is in the classiest movie of his late career as Cardinal Della Costa. Yet somehow, even with an hour cut from the movie, it still moves quite slow.

Yet as I must watch every Cannon movie, I watched it. There’s an idea for a good movie here. This isn’t it, sadly. And it was released a year after Mason died, which just makes me sad.

Based on the novel Always by Trevor Meldal-Johnsen, this is all about Gregory (Nigel Terry), a writer who believes that he was reincarnated and that his fiancee Maggie (Jaclyn Smith) was once his doomed ballerina love in a past life. What takes this movie from somewhat boring to Cannon magic is Shelley Winters, who plays a Russian psychic named Olga Nabokova, and no one told Ms. Winters not to start at a 3 or 4 and then turn it up, because you can’t crank down a ten, but she never tries to modulate for the entire film and I’m beyond overjoyed at this fact.

Meanwhile, Gregory was once Michael and Brooke was once Ashley and they all died in an inferno and Gregory is writing a novel about his past life instead of actually writing something that his agent thinks can make money, but you know, when you get obsessed, you get obsessed.

This is the only movie that Anthony Richmond, Nicholas Roeg’s cinematographer for Don’t Look Now, ever directed. There’s a good Pino Donaggio score, too. But the story doesn’t really add up and meanders pretty well with only Winters — and Claire Bloom as Maggie’s mother — realizing that this is a Cannon movie and acting for all of us in the cheap seats.

Only with Cannon can you have the sequel be the prequel when it was supposed to be the first movie. The Joseph Zito-made Missing In Action was considered to be the better of the two movies, so this one was turned into the second movie, but everything worked out pretty OK.

This was directed by Lance Hool, who sold the script to Chuck Norris, who was looking for a movie to pay tribute to his brother Wieland, who had died in Vietnam. They took the script to Cannon, who had a Vietnam POW movie in development, so that’s how we got two movies so quickly. Also, I’m amazed that Vietnam movies were impossible to make in Hollywood before Stallone and Norris changed everything.

Years before he freed US POWs in the first film, Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris was tortured in a North Vietnamese POW by Colonel Yin (Soon-Teck Oh, who was also in Good Guys Wear Black). He and his fellow soldiers have been forced to grow opium and if they want to be released, Braddock has to confess to war crimes. I mean, it’s Chuck Norris. Do you think he’s going to do that?

Yet that’s exactly what Captain David Nester (Steven Williams, X from The X-Files) believes should happen and he’s joined the side of the enemy as they subject the Americans to torture like guns being shoved in their faces and fired with no bullets. Then, after a fight that Braddock beats Nestor in, he gets a live rat dropped in a bag covering his face while they tell him that his wife thinks he’s dead and has remarried.

That’s also not a fake rat.

Then, to add even more pain, Braddock exchanges an admission of guilt to Yin’s charges of war crimes in order to get medicine for Franklin, a soldier with malaria. Yin overdoses the soldier with opium and burns him in front of Braddock, who escapes from the camp and — as you can imagine — murders every single other soldier, which includes pro wrestler Professor Toru Tanaka.

This came out three months after the first movie but still made $11 million at the box office.

For more info on all three Missing In Action movies, get Austin Trunick’s The Cannon Film Guide Volume 1: 1980-1984.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about Missing In Action 2: The Beginning here.