The Salkinds had made three Superman movies and planned a fourth if Superman III made at least $40 million. It made $80 million even if people absolutely hated it. As for star Christopher Reeve, he was pretty unenthused about coming back to the role one more time and skipped being in Supergirl, which bombed, as did the Salkind’s Santa Claus: The Movie.

You know how much Golan and Globus loved Cannes, right?

Well, that’s where they made a deal with the Salkinds to buy the rights to Superman movies for $5 million.

They then got Reeve for $6 million, approval over story and director, a focus on ending nuclear weapons and financing his movie Street Smart.

Cannon was already $11 million down and the movie hadn’t even started filming.

Reeve wanted to direct, but other than some second unit, he wasn’t ready for a full film. Wes Craven was supposed to be the director, but he and Reeve didn’t work well together. Reeve asked for Ron Howard and got Sydney J. Furie, the maker of The Entity, Iron Eagle, The Taking of Beverly Hills and two Rodney Dangerfield movies, Ladybugs and My 5 Wives.

Consider that at one point, Cannon was almost the studio that made a Superman and a Spider-Man movie at the same time.

In his book Still Me, Reeve noted that Cannon was cutting budget anywhere they could, even shooting scenes set on 42nd Street in England. He said, “We were also hampered by budget constraints and cutbacks in all departments. Cannon Films had nearly thirty projects in the works at the time, and Superman IV received no special consideration.”

In fact, Cannon reduced the budget from $36 million to $17 million, but would still lose money, as their strategy of selling TV and video rights before the movie was made worked with smaller movies, but not with this budget, even as cut down as it was, even with the crew replaced by cheaper crews, even with shooting Smallville in England.

There was also a really bad test screening that caused 45 minutes of the film was cut, including another nuclear man that Superman destroys. Also by cutting the movie from two hours to ninety minutes, theater owners could get two more showing a day and make more money.

That said, while the movie made $36.7 million worldwide — and still made money on its cut budget — people hated it. It was the last Superman movie for 19 years and Reeves said, “Superman IV was a catastrophe from start to finish.”

At one point, the more monstrous Nuclear Man footage was considered for use as a sequel in which Superman would die at the hands of that creature and would be resurrected in the bottled city Kandor. This was years before the death of Superman story and somewhat close to what happened in the comics.

Anyways…

Somehow, Cannon was able to get Reeve (Superman/Clark Kent), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Jackie Cooper (Perry White) and Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen) to return. It starts with a big downer, as both of Superman’s Earth parents are now dead and there’s no way Marlon Brando is going to be in this movie.

Meanwhile, the Daily Planet has been taken over by David Warfield, a tabloid tycoon who fires Perry White and replaces him with his daughter Lacy (Mariel Hemingway). Also, the world is on the brink of nuclear war — which seemed quaint for a few years right? — and Superman grabs all the nukes, puts them in a giant net and throws it into the sun, which seems kind of dangerous.

Lenny Luthor (Jon Cryer) breaks his uncle out of jail and they meet with the military industrial complex who wants to kill Superman like they did Kennedy, so they all make a Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) who can infect the Man of Steel with radiation and kill him. Also, there was a reason why Superman looked at that Kryptonian energy module in the beginning because it heals him.

What follows is the best kind of dumb: Superman pushes the moon and causes an eclipse, which shuts off Nuclear Man but does not cause giant waves that destroy Earth. Lacy is left in space, floating around with no oxygen but she’s fine while Superman activates a nuclear power plant by dropping Nuclear Man into it and powering the entire world and that should be no danger either, before bringing Lacy back and saving the Daily Planet.

Comic book movies wouldn’t recover until Tim Burton’s Batman.

Cannon wouldn’t live much longer.

Reeve would be paralyzed eight years later.

Superman IV was finally redeemed by just how bad Batman and Robin was.

Those Cannon Movie Tales keep coming and this time, Menahem and Yoram were able to lure David Irving back for one more chance to direct, as well as a cast that includes Morgan Fairchild as the queen, David Holliday (the voice of Virgil Tracy on Thunderbirds) as her king and Tahnee Welch as their daughter, Princess Rosebud, who is born through the aid of Kenny Baker, the man who played R2D2, before she’s cursed by a Red Fairy played by Sylvia Miles from Midnight Cowboy to remind you this is a Cannon Movie. Yes, because she wasn’t invited to the party, she’s destined to die from a finger prick while sewing, so the king gets rid of all sewing machines and the people of his kingdom suffer the curse of bad fashion. Perhaps the White Fairy, played by Go-Go Jane Wiedlin, can save them all.

Man, Jane Wiedlin! She’s also in Clue as the singing telegram girl, a communications officer in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Joan of Arc in the first Bill & Ted movie, alongside Mike Patton and Karen Black in Firecracker and as the voice of returning Scooby-Doo character and Hex Girls drummer Dusk in several cartoons. She also directed her own film, The Pyrex Glitch.

Anyways, the White Fairy figures out how to transmute the curse of death into a centuries long sleep for the entire kingdom, which seems like putting the needs of the few or the one ahead of the many in a reverse Spock theorem but there you go. Of course a prince (Nicholas Clay, Lancelot from Excalibur and Oliver from Lady Chatterley’s Lover) comes and saves everyone with a kiss.

Oh yeah — the master elf is played by Shaike Ophir, who was Kassam in King Solomon’s Mines, Father Nicholas in The Delta Force and Lelz in America 3000. This was his last role and he was the first mime ever in Israel.

Want some more facts? This was written by Michael Berz, who played Kenny in Cannon’s Hot Resort. He also was behind the Cannon Snow White. To save money — Cannon style — this was shot simultaneously with Hansel and Gretel, which sounds like a good idea, but both crews were fighting over the equipment, costumes and sets throughout.

Meanwhile, Daryl Hannah’s sister Page — she’s one of the girls killed by The Raft in Creepshow 2 — was fired after a week of shooting and replaced by Welch. Then all of the fairy costumes got stolen. And then David Irving had just a week to prep for this movie after filming went long on another Cannon Movie Tale, Rumpelstiltskin. That may be why he referred to this film as a nightmare.

Of all the Cannon Movie Tales, this might be my favorite. Admittedly, the bar is not high.

Leslie Stevens created The Outer Limits, directed Esperanto language Incubus and wrote est: The Steersman Handbook, a book of New Age philosophy. He also said, “There is nothing wrong with being a hack writer. I would point with pride to the inspired hacking of Shakespeare, Michelangelo—you can go through a big list.”

This one stars Robert Ginty as U.S. Secret Agent Elliott Cromwell, who has been tasked with finding the mysterious terrorist known as Founder. He’s joined by NYC airport cop Terry O’Shea (Victoria Barrett, who is in Cannon’s Hot Resort, Hot Chili and America 3000) and Hong Kong cop Major Chan (Shakti, who married Stevens the year after this was made).

You also get a cast with Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Dr. Who, as well as Mary Tamm (who was Romana, a companion to the Tom Baker Dr. Who), Trevor Martin (who played Dr. Who on stage and man, this whole thing is seeming like a movie made inside the Tardis), Barry Foster (Hitchcock’s Frenzy), Edwin Craig (who says “What’s with that stupid grin?” before the Jack Nicholson Joker kills him in Tim Burton’s Batman) and probably the best reason to watch this movie, Samantha Fox, who if you were a teenager alive in 1987 you completely knew. Perhaps onanismically, which is not a word.

This movie is violently not good, despite hopes that Ginty would bring it upward in quality. Instead, you have three different uniformed cops running about and a movie that just crawls to its conclusion, which at least has some stuff blow up real good.

How did Cannon decide to take on so many movies? And which ones? Because Too Much came out in 1987, a year during which I estimate they released thirty-three movies. Can you imagine a studio releasing a new movie almost every week?

Susie (Bridgette Anderson, who was Savannah in Savannah Smiles and was also in the 1983 version of Nightmares and played young Mae West in the TV movie of her life; sadly, she died at the age of 21 from mixing alcohol and heroin, way to bring this article down early, huh?) and her parents are in Japan to visit her father’s business partner Tetsuro (Akio Ishimuro from Ultraman Gaia).

Tetsuro creates a robot friend for her that she names Too Much because, well, he’s Too Much. You remember Max Steel’s Robo Force? Those big suction cup robots that came out right before Transformers and looked hopelessly antiquated as they warmed the pegs? Well, Too Much makes them look like sleek Hajime Sorayama illustrations by comparison.

Yet for some reason. Dr. Finkel wants the robot. Obviously, there have to be better ones, like Johnny 5. But no, that won’t do. So when Susie runs away with TM and a Japanese kid named Mata, he hunts for her. And man, Japanese cops are wild, because they open fire on the robot at one point, even surrounded by gas pumps.

Cannon being Cannon, this was directed by Eric Rochat, who is probably best known for making multiple adaptions of The Story of O. Yes, they put this man in charge of a kid movie. A kid movie that by all accounts never played in the U.S. and had a very limited VHS release.

So that means I can totally spoil this movie: Susie, Mata and TM end up hiding in a department store that just so happens to have a robot fair. Everything turns into a robot uprising where cute remote control toys battle the police, which I am all for, and the cops use cattle prods to kill the cute toys until a couple of hundred kids in shirts that say “I love TM” — how did they have time to get these clothes made so quickly — and swarm the assembled mad scientist henchmen and the police, raising a flag over the store and the evil doctor ends up electrocuting himself as our female protagonist just walks away, smiling and loving white privilege.

Directed and written by David Irving, this is the third Cannon Movie Tale I’ve seen with Clive Revill in it. It also has Sid Caesar as the Emperor, Robert Morse as the tailor who attempts to make his clothes and Lysette Anthony (Lyssa from Krull) as Princess Gilda.

With these Cannon takes on fairy tales, you get long takes on what should be five minutes before bed tales, but hey, the costumes look great and there’s always lots of singing. They’re meant for young viewers, but so was Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre and that appealed to young and old alike. Then again, the reason for this series seems to be bringing work to Israel.

Obviously, everyone knows this story, but there’s an additional romance between Gilda and the tailor’s son (Jason Carter). You should also keep an eye out for Cannon’s reliable supporting actor Yehuda Efroni, who started working with Golan and Globus all the way back when he was in Operation Thunderbolt and The Uranium Conspiracy. No matter where in the world a Cannon movie was made, Yehuda showed up.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Oliver Reed is Captain Shanks, a drunken and rambling slave ship captain who is playing the exact role that he’s meant for!

Herbert Lom is Le Farge, who has murdered the governor and taken over the Caribbean island of St. Joseph’s!

Claudia Udy from Savage Dawn, Joy is Arabella, the sexually obsessive daughter who lusts after the slaves and any man around!

Eartha Kitt is Naomi. her business partner that runs the brothel on the island and who is starting a revolt.

Annabel Schofield from Bloodtide is Honore Juno, Le Farge’s wife who is looking to get into bed with anyone else!

And Patrick Warburton — yes, Puddy — is the Scottish nobleman who sexes everyone up and gets lashed in the public square with the brutal Dragonard whip!

So here’s where my confusion comes in. There’s 1988’s Dragonard with the same cast and this movie, but some people write online that they’re the same movie and others write that this is the first film and the 1988 one is the sequel. Still others claim that this is the sequel and the 1988 movie comes first, which makes no sense and then you say, “Well, Cannon did the same thing with Missing In Action and Mission In Action 2: The Beginning.”

Based on the series of books by Rupert Gilchrist, this was written by Rick Marx, who wrote the adult series Taboo, as well as Doom Asylum, Warrior Queen, Gor, Outlaw of Gor and Platoon Leader. That’s starting to make this a lot more clear, right? It was co-written by the film’s producer, Harry Alan Towers and oh yes, it all makes sense now. I was wondering why this all felt like something Jess Franco should have made.

It was directed by Gérard Kikoïne, who made adult films like Never Enough and The Tale of Tiffany Lust with Radley Metzger, as well as softcore movies like Lady Libertine and Love Circles, which definitely played Cinemax After Dark. He also made the Jekyll and Hyde riff Edge of Sanity which starred Anthony Perkins and the Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasence-starring Buried Alive. 

So yeah — I think that this is the first film in the series, that there are two and that they’re so similar that anyone could make that mistake. I kind of love that Towers became part of the Cannon family at this point, making Lightning the White Stallion, Gor, Platoon Leader, Outlaw of Gor and American Ninja 3 with the mainline Cannon continuity, then producing River of Death, Ten Little Indians, Delta Force 3: The Killing Game and The Hitman for the Ovidio G. Assonitis-led Cannon Productions. He also produced Phantom of the Opera and Dance Macabre with Menahem, so he played no favorites in the breakup of Cannon.

Seriously, he should have hired Franco for this one. It would have been so much sleazier. Hell, he should have hired Franco for the Gor movies while he was at it.

Based on the novel by Junichiro Tamizaki, which was filmed once before by Keigo Kimura in 1962, Diary of a Mad Old Man tells the story of Marcel (Ralph Michael, Dead of Night), the mad old man of the title, who suffers from chronic muscle disease and begins to fixate on his daughter-in-law Simone (Beatie Edney, Highlander) after the death of his wife Denise.

He puts his health on the line by trying to win her, even building her a pool to watch her swim. And after she allows him to touch her, he only has one wish: to become her slave.

Director Lili Rademakers was the wife of the Netherlands’ most prominent filmmaker Fons Rademakers. She was the assistant director of several of his movies — as well as shooting second unit on La Dolce Vita — and only directed this movie and Menuet.

Cannon made what seems like a few hundred movies in 1987, but they were giving movies that took chances an opportunity to be seen around the world.

Director Sam Firstenberg and stars Michael Dudikoff and Steve James — that’s as Sergeant Joe Armstrong and Sergeant Curtis Jackson to all of us — are back in the second of five (well, six if you count American Samurai) movies in this series.

Now US Army Rangers, our heroes are helping the Marines, led by Captain Bill “Wild Bill” Woodward (Jeff Weston, who is your trivia answer to what actor could be in an Altman movie — The Player — and a Full Moon film, of which you can choose from Puppet Master II or Demonic Toys). Their ranks have been disappearing thanks to ninjas, so they called in the right soldiers.

They’re part of a plan by Leo “The Lion” Burke (Gary Conway from Land of the Giants; he also wrote this movie along with James Booth, who was in Avenging Force) who is creating super ninjas from the research of Alicia Sanborn’s father. He has a cool base on Blackbeard Island, his own ninja named Tojo Ken (Mike Stone, forever providing the stunt power behind Cannon’s ninja films, as he was the fight coordinator) and could have really made something of himself were it not for our heroes.

I love everything Firstenberg directed. And seeing Steve James elevated from sidekick to equal hero in this made me beyond glad. It’s basically a comic book movie made with no budget and all the heart in the world.

87 people die in this movie. Ninja war is hell too.

While not the first one made, Rumpelstiltskin was the first of the Cannon Films’ Movie Tales series to make it to the U.S.

It’s notable because it’s the only movie in which Billy Barty had the lead. It also has Amy Irving as the miller’s daughter, with her brother David directing and writing the movie and their mother, Priscilla Pointer, playing the Queen. Robert Symonds, their stepfather, plays the miller.

Richar Harrington’s Washington Post review said, “Rumpelstiltskin is as bad a children’s movie as has been made in the last 20 years, but in the canon of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’ Cannon films, it’s about average — badly written, badly directed, badly acted and badly made.”

The miller’s daughter can spin gold out of straw, so the king (Clive Reville) locks her in his castle and demands that she use that spinning wheel and bae of hay he got her to start making some gold for him.

Her tears bring Rumpelstiltskin, who promises to use his magic to transform the straw into gold if she gives him her first-born child.

If only Cannon had made these movies with the same actors that they used for their regular films, so Chuck Norris could be the woodsman shooting the Big Bad Wolf with a rocket launcher or Charles Bronson shoving a bowl of porridge in Goldilocks’ face and screaming, “You know what this is for?”

You can watch this on Tubi.

I’ve seen all of the Cannon Movie Tales and let me tell you, when I was young and they thought I had promise, well, they were wrong.

Directed by Eugene Marner, who also made Cannon’s Puss In Boots, this was written by his wife Carole Lucia Satrina, who also wrote that film, Cannon’s Red Riding Hood and three episodes of Tales from the Darkside, “Parlour Floor Font,” “In the Cards” and “The Odds.”

This may have the most well-recognized leads in the Cannon Movie Tales, as Beauty is played by Rebecca De Mornay and John Savage is Beast. And playing Beauty’s father is Yossi Graber, who was in Golan and Globus’ Operation Thunderbolt, but I don’t expect anyone other than Cannon Bros to know this.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I wish Cannon made these into fan service films and had the Beauty played by Lucinda Dickey and Bronson as the Beast. When the two of them realize that ninjas, led by Sho Kosugi, are taking over her father’s kingdom, he eats ten cabbages and grabs his specially made crossbow. Directed by Michael Winner, of course. But then as I wrote that, I really don’t want to see Ms. De Mornay get assaulted. So let’s go with Sam Firstenberg.