Hỏa Lò Prison started its use as a political prison used by French colonists in French Indochina before the North Vietnamese used it for jailing U.S. P.O.W.s during the Vietnam War. So while Cannon may have made at least five Vietnam P.O.W. movies that I can name off the top of my head, this is the first serious one they filmed.

Directed and written by Lionel Chetwynd, this film shows a decade in the life of LCDR Williamson (Michael Moriarty, one of my favorite actors) who watches men come, go and die inside the prison camp.

There’s Hubman (Paul Le Mat), a solder recalled to fight after serving in Korea who just wants to get home. Major Fischer (Jeffrey Jones in a rare heroic role) faces death with spiritual strength. Colonel Cathcart (Lawrence Pressman) tries to keep order in the face of chaos. But the only thing the men have is each other to lean on.

In no way is this an easy watch. It was made with the participation of real prisoners of war. While it failed at the box office, it remained popular amongst soldiers and those who have been in this situation.

You can watch this on Tubi.

This movie was a long-time passion project for star Christopher Reeve, but he couldn’t get it financed. When Cannon acquired the rights to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Reeve agreed to do that movie if Cannon paid for this one.

The story came from David Freeman, who wrote the last draft for Alfred Hitchcock’s final unproduced movie The Short Night, which the author turned into the 1984 book The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock. The script was in a big pile of ones sent to Reeve, who had read a few pages and decided that it wasn’t for him. Weeks later, he picked it up, read it again and decided he had to make it.

It’s sort of based on real life, as Washington Post writer Janet Cooke has won a Pulitzer for her story about the life of a 9-year-old heroin addict. Two days after the award was given, the newspaper’s publisher Donald E. Graham held a press conference and admitted that the story was fictional. To make things worse, Cooke had forged her educational and resume. She left the paper, but after doing an interview with former boyfriend Mike Sager, the twosome sold the film rights to their story to Tri-Star Pictures for $1.6 million. That movie was never made.

This one was.

Director Jerry Schatzberg (The Seduction of Joe Tynan) and Reeve wanted to shoot on location in New York City, but Cannon was in money-saving mode and probably kept $2 million of their money by shooting it in Quebec. In fact, Cannon meddled throughout the movie and finally dumped it in just 300 theaters.

The irony of that is that this is one of a handful of Cannon movies that achieved their dream: co-star Morgan Freeman was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Fast Black.

Fast Back is really a pimp named Leo Smalls, Jr. and everyone believes that he’s the pimp that reporter Jonathan Fisher (Reeve) has been writing about and discussing on his new TV show, Street Smart. Now, his editor Ted Avery (Andre Gregory of My Dinner With Andre) and district attorney Leonard Pike (Jay Patterson) want him to give up his sources. The problem is that he’s made everything up.

But the real world that Jonathan soon finds himself in is dangerous, with him in danger of being prosecuted, being found out as a liar or worse, losing his life and the life of his lover Alison (Mimi Rogers).

With a Miles Davis soundtrack and an intense performance by Freeman, Street Smart is one of the better movies Cannon would make, even if they didn’t know how to sell it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Maxine (Carey Lowell) is the kind of person who will do anything for her friends, including her roommate Michelle, who gets her involved in all sorts of hijinks over a stolen religious idol, The Crucible Of San Luca, which ends up getting her kidnapped and meeting a mercenary named Reno Mars (Charles Rocket).

Sure, it’s another trip through Romancing the Stone. The difference is that it’s directed by Albert Pyun, who also made Dangerously Close, Vicious Lips, Radioactive Dreams, Cyborg, Dollman and many more.  That means that it works hard to not be fully normal.

There’s also a cast that genre fans will enjoy spotting, like Thom Matthews (Tommy Jarvis!), Linda Kerridge from Fade to Black, Norbert Weisser (who is in several Pyun movies), Nicholas Guest (Todd, the put-up next door neighbor in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation), Galyn Görg (Cain’s lover in RoboCop 2) and even Courtney Cox.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie has already been on our site on January 30, 2019 and December 2, 2020, but seeing as how it’s Cannon Month and this is one of our favorites, it’s back. You can get it on blu ray from Kino Lorber.

2019 version

Ruggero Deodato brings together Richard Lynch, twin muscleheads called the Barbarian Brothers, George Eastman and Michael Berryman and the results are everything you dreamed that they would be. Within the first ten minutes of this film, I had already screamed from my couch in pure glee, so happy to be alive and watching an Italian barbarian movie — times two! — that was unashamed to be this stupid.

The Ragnicks are a tribe of peaceful traveling entertainers. Think sideshow — as they journey on horseback, one of them is even throwing knives to practice. They’ve recently adopted twins — Kutchek and Gore — and are protecting the magic ruby of their tribe. But soon, Kadar (Lynch) takes Queen Canary hostage. The young twins attack, biting off his fingers. However, he promises that if he takes Canary as one of his concubines, he and his men will never kill the twins.

Kadar is a dude with a plan. A fifteen-year plan, really. He raises each of them separately, telling them their brother is dead, and has them routinely beaten by a masked man — either silver or gold depending on the brother. Then, when they have gone through all the whippings and strength trials ala Conan, they will fight and kill one another. That way, he can keep his promise and keep getting some of that sweet freakshow loving from the queen of the sideshow.

The brothers knock off their helmets — forgot that part of the plan — and escape into the woods where they find their old people who now live in misery. They also find Ismena, a thief who is imprisoned by their old tribe. The Ragnicks believe that this is magic and try to hang the twins, but their necks are just too big to lynch and they win over their old friends.

Hijinks ensue — like arm wrestling George Eastman and battling a dragon in the Forbidden Land. It gets a little long at the end, but the ride there is pretty decent, with the Forbidden Land itself looking like where most of the budget went.

If you’re a fan of the Barbarian Brothers — David and Peter Paul — they also show up in D.C. Cab. It’s kind of amazing to me that they were born in Harford, Connecticut and never ended up in the WWE.

2020 version

Ruggero Deodato has been celebrated on this site, not just for Cannibal Holocaust, but for movies like Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man; Concorde Affaire ’79; House On the End of the Park; Raiders of Atlantis; Cut and Run; Body Count; The Washing Machine and Dial Help. From those movies, you can tell that Deodato has hit nearly every genre. Now, with this one, he returns to his peplum roots — Hercules, Prisoner of Evil was the first movie he directed — and enters the post-Arnold Italian barbarian boom with not one but two American swordsmen who look like living and breathing He-Man toys, David and Peter Paul, better known as The Barbarian Brothers.

I honestly can’t be impartial about this movie, as it’s packed with so much that I love. I mean, just from the voiced over credits, when the names Golan, Globus and Deodato come up, I can’t help but cheer. This is the kind of feel good junk food movie that I love, a film that completely rips off Conan the Barbarian in all the best of ways — times two.

It’s got an amazing cast. And the Barbarian Brothers. Perhaps realizing that the Brothers may look like a 1983 first wave Masters of the Universe figure but have the acting skills of, well, a 1983 first wave Masters of the Universe figure, Deodato wisely fills the film with all manner of amazing people. There’s Michael Berryman as the Dirtmaster, the henchman tasked with running The Pit, or the place where slaves do manual labor. George Eastman shows up for a few seconds to arm wrestle in a cantina scene. Eva LaRue — who somehow is both of the third installments of RoboCop and Ghoulies — as the long-lost adopted sister of the brothers. And perhaps, most importantly, Richard Lynch, who as always turns in a game performance despite the absolute silliness of the proceedings. I mean, the dude has hair extensions and fake fingers after the young brothers bite his fingers off.

It’s got the Barbarian Brothers. For two guys who look like they should be serious warriors — or barbarians if the title has anything to say about it — they spend much of the movie making fun of one another. They seem to screw up everything they touch and mostly only escape from situations by being bulls in a proverbial China shop. You have to love that despite the movie being set in what seems to be the distant past — unless Deodato is pulling a Yor Hunter from the Future fakeout on us — they speak as if it were 1987, calling one another bonehead repeatedly.

It’s got a great score. Pino Donaggio has written music for everything from Don’t Look Now and Tourist Trap to Dressed to Kill, The Howling and Body Double (and yes, Giallo In Venice and Gor II), so you know that when you hear his music, it’s going to elevate anything it plays behind.

It’s got fun effects and sets. One of the craziest things about the new blu ray of this is that it’s so crystal clear that you can see the strings moving a dragon’s mouth up and down, which is rather disconcerting. That said, the swamp set — where most of the film takes place — looks awesome otherwise. This is also a movie with magical belly button jewelry, which is a sentence I’ve never written before.

It’s got Mad Max wrapped up in its sword and sorcery. Despite — again — being set in the past, most of Kadar’s warriors look like they should be in the employ of Immortan Joe. Also, Kutchek and Gore — our heroes — live with a band of traveling circus performers who use their skills to throw knives and blow fire at their attackers. It’s like the hard-driving armada of — again! — Immortan Joe, but only 28 years earlier.

If you ever want to sit down and have me talk over a movie and extol its virtues — of which many would say there are none — then let it be this movie.

To learn even more about this movie there is so much in Austin Trunick’s The Cannon Film Guide Volume II.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about The Barbarians here.

Ah, that most popular of all mismatched buddy cops, Robert Carradine and Billy Dee Williams.

Written by Rob Riley, Andrew Kurtzman (both writers from Saturday Night Live), Gail Morgan Hickman (Murphy’s Law and Death Wish 4: The Crackdown) and James Belushi — yes, the James Belushi — and directed by Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady, The Illustrated Man, Damnation Alley), this is the story of two cops, the borderline psychotic Nick “Berserk” Barzack (Carradine) and smooth jazz playing ladies’ man Frank Hazeltine (Williams).

Not many buddy cop movies have the cops dealing with one of their relationships with their mother and ex-wife, who are played by Doris Roberts and Valerie Bertinelli. And in case you’re wondering why Belushi wasn’t in this, it turns out that his schedule was too busy, so they called in Carradine.

Hey! Peters Graves is in this! And John Gries! Man, John Gries, you’re in so much stuff that no one gives you credit for, making movies like Real Genius better as Lazlo, Joysticks as King Vidiot, O.D. in TerrorVision, you steal the show as Louie in Fright Night 2, you’re great as the wolfman in Monster Squad and yeah, everyone knows you were in Napoleon Dynamite but those roles, man — you’ve done so much with them.

And yes, if you have mud wrestling or any wrestling in your movie made in the 70s or 80s, Gene LeBell must legally be in it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared during a week of Stallone movies on August 15, 2019. A major film in Cannon’s journey to respectability, I was inspired to go back and update and add to this.

Stirling Silliphant wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, as well as The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Village of the Damned,  Telefon, The Enforcer, Shaft In Africa and more than 700 hours of prime-time television drama to his credit. He was also a close friend and student of Bruce Lee, who he featured in the movie Marlowe and four episodes of the series Longstreet. They also worked together on a script called The Silent Flute, which was eventually filmed as Circle of Iron.

Those are some fantastic credits. Somehow, someway, he eventually found himself working with Sylvester Stallone to write the screenplay for the movie that would take arm wrestling from the bar to the mainstream. And who was ready to direct?

None other than Cannon Group co-owner Menahem Golan, the director of Delta Force, Enter the Ninja and The Apple. Yes, that Menahem Golan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ8d_czhqeA

Lincoln Hawk (Stallone) is a man trying to rebuild his life. While he does that, he’s driving a truck and arm wrestling. His ex-wife Christina (Susan Blakely, My Mom’s a Werewolf, The Concorde … Airport ’79) wants him to bond with their son Michael (David Mendenhall, Space Raiders, Streets and the 12-year-old drug dealer in the Diff’rent Strokes episode where Nancy Reagan shows up) because she knows that she’s dying.

Michael has been in military school and calls everyone “sir.” His grandfather, Jason Cutler (this movie is yet another in my quest to see every film with Robert Loggia in it), hates Hawk and never wants him in their family.

On the journey from Colorado to California, Michael develops a deep bond with his father, who teaches him the art of arm wrestling and the essence of manhood. However, their reunion at the hospital is marred by the news of Christina’s demise. Blaming his father for not being there in her final moments, Michael returns to his grandfather’s home. Hawk, in a desperate attempt to free his son, ends up getting arrested. The mansion where Cutler resides may look familiar, as it was also featured in The Beverly Hillbillies.

Michael visits Hawk in jail, informing him of his decision to stay with his grandfather. Determined to win back his son’s trust, Hawk sets off to compete in the World Armwrestling Championship in Las Vegas, with a grand prize of $100,000 and a new, larger semi-truck. In a bold move, he sells his truck and places a $7,000 bet on himself at twenty-to-one odds. The discovery of the letters Hawk had written to him over the years, trying to establish a connection, further fuels Michael’s belief in his father.

Hawk advances to the final eight but suffers his first loss in the double-elimination tournament and hurts his arm. Cutler summons our hero and tells him that he’s always been a loser, but if he leaves forever, he’ll give him $500,000 and a better truck than the prize.

Hawk refuses and makes it to the finals, taking on his rival, the undefeated Bull Hurley. His son finds him and gives him the emotional energy he needs to survive, just as Hawk doesn’t only beat Bull but gains his respect. Somehow, Cutler gets over ten years of being a complete asshole and is happy about Michael and Hawk being reunited because that’s how eighties movies work. The guys get so sweaty in the final battle that they have to get the strap, and people go wild for it. It’s pretty impressive, and you’ll yell, “Get the strap!” too.

The film’s climactic finals were shot during a tournament organized by Cannon, the production company. This year-long competition, starting in Beverly Hills, featured events across North America, Europe, Israel, and Japan. The actual crowd and the B-roll footage of matches at the Las Vegas Hilton are what you see in the movie. The scene where Michael Bociu breaks his elbow? That’s as real as it gets.

If you’re into pro wrestling, Terry Funk, Reggie Bennett and Scott Norton show up here (Ox Baker, who was in Escape from New York, and Manny Fernandez and The Barbarian almost made it into the movie). Plenty of professional arm wrestlers like professional arm wrestling personalities such as Allen Fisher, John Vreeland, Andrew “Cobra” Rhodes, John Brzenk (who inspired the story) and Cleve Dean are also on hand.

The music in this movie is astounding. Kenny Loggins sings “Meet Me Halfway” numerous times, and there is also some Giorgio Moroder, some Asia, some Robin Zander, some Eddie Money and Sammy Hagar singing “Winner Takes It All,” which was also made into a music video to promote the film.

The film received three nominations at the 8th Golden Raspberry Awards in 1988. David Mendenhall won two for both Worst Supporting Actor and Worst New Star, which seems kind of crappy for them to abuse a kid. Sylvester Stallone was nominated for Worst Actor, an award he’s won four times, but he lost to Bill Cosby in Leonard Part 6 this time.

Stallone has claimed that if he had directed this, he would’ve changed the setting to an urban environment, used scored music instead of rock songs, and made the Las Vegas finale more ominous. These changes would have significantly altered the film’s tone and atmosphere. So why was he in it? He answered, “Menahem Golan kept offering me more and more money until I finally thought, “What the hell – no one will see it!””

Speaking of Stirling Silliphant, he only did the screenplay. Actor/writer Gary Conway (American Ninja 2: The Confrontation) and director/writer David Engelbach (America 3000, Death Wish II) created the original story. Engelbach cried when he saw the finished movie, remarking that his original draft “wasn’t nearly as dumb as the final film and was more about truck driving and arm-wrestling than it should’ve been.”

When this movie came out, my brother and I were in our early teens and couldn’t wait for it. There was an entire line of toys that had knobs in their backs that allowed them to arm wrestle and, even better, an actual competition table. We begged our parents for it nearly every day for six months, but our mother continually told us to use an actual table. She had no vision. At this point, I could have a father-in-law who hates me, a bedridden ex-wife and a son who doesn’t know me, but I could flash anyone and put their arm down in no time. Get the strap!

Even more magical, fifty miles from the filming of this movie, Sergio Martino had assembled an Italian/American crew to create Hands of Steel, the only Road Warrior by way of The Terminator truck driving movie that also has arm wrestling in it. Coincidence? Do you know anything about Italian cinema?

You can listen to The Cannon Canon podcast about this movie here.

A movie with many working titles — My Affair With the President’s Wife, then The President’s Wife and The Assassin — star Charles Bronson set the record straight: “Someone thought the original title might be insulting to the presidency of the United States, so they changed it. There’s an assassination involved so they stuck with that. They didn’t want to scare off people who come to see my films with a title like President’s Wife. It’s not what people expect from one of my pictures.”

It was also Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland’s first in three years following an operation for breast cancer. She told The Ottawa Citizen, “I’d thought the cancer might have ended my acting career. They (Menahem and Yoram) asked me to do the film at my birthday party last year and it was the best present I could have received.”

Jay Killian (Charles Bronson) is a senior member of the Secret Service and he’s upset that instead of guarding President Calvin Craig, he’s been put on the detail of the First Lady, Lara Royce Craig (Jill Ireland). Neither of them likes the other at all, but they have to work together when she’s targeted by someone potentially in the White House itself. Meanwhile, Killian has to keep his relationship with co-worker Charlotte Chang (Jan Gan Boyd) alive.

The final theatrical film of director Peter Hunt (he would make the TV movie Eyes of a Witness in 1991; he’s best known for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and writer Richard Sale, as wel as the last of sixteen movies that Ireland and Bronson would make together, Assassination feels like the end of an era. It was near the end of the glory years of Cannon, so don’t be surprised when music from Invasion U.S.A. gets re-used and whole pages of the script were torn out to cut the budget.

The best part of this? When Chang asks Killian why he doesn’t want to move in with her and he answers, “I don’t want to die from a terminal orgasm.”

While I didn’t enjoy the other movie David Landsberg and Lorin Dreyfuss did for Cannon — Detective School Dropouts — I have to say that I totally adored this movie, probably because the Dolly Dots make such infectious music. Made up of Angela Groothuizen, Angéla Kramers, Anita Heilker, Esther Oosterbeek, Patty Zomer and Ria Brieffies, they’re a real band from the Netherlands that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s. They even had their own TV show, Barbie Girls.

Jerry Morgan (Landsberg) has just got out of jail for 250 parking tickets that were actually the fault of his friend Norm (Dreyfuss), who told him to plead guilty as nothing bad could happen. A few months later, Norm picks Jerry up outside jail and tells him that he’s rented out his apartment and that his girlfriend has left him.

For some reason, Norm’s big plan to make money is to go to Holland and perform as a knife throwing team. This just ends up with both in jail and with them meeting the Dolly Dots, which is a great reason to see them play in concert. Norm tells them that Jerry is Capitol Records boss Lou Winters and to look them up whenever they get to Los Angeles. Then they’re kicked out of the country.

When they get back home, Jerry works in a hotel kitchen and Norm drives a cab. The Dolly Dots really do come to LA and want Lou Winters to manage them. They stay at the same hotel where Jerry works and our protagonists have to keep up the illusion that they’re both employees of the hotel and also very important music execs until the band Dead Meat ruins their scam. The Dolly Dots end up defeating the metal band in concert, the real Lou Winters signs them and it all ends rather happily.

Imagine if no one knew who the Spice Girls were when they made Spice World and you’ll have an idea what this movie is. Directed by Boaz Davidson, this movie moves fast and has the same goofy humor as Detective School Dropouts, but the synth fun of the Dolly Dots makes it feel so much better.

In an alternate universe, this movie is much bigger than it is in ours.

I mean, at this point I feel like I may have written one of these movies I’ve seen so many of them. Even the description — Hughie, Bobbi and Benny are looking forward to a summer of hot girls when Johnny’s parents leave him alone in the house — could be any of the other Lemon Popsicle movies.

At this point, none of the original creative team worked on this, with Anton Moho writing the script and Walter Bannert — yes, the same man who directed the rough as hell youth fascism movie The Inheritors — directing.

I may have gone on record numerous times of my intense displeasure with most Troma productions, but this was actually produced by The institute, a production company formed by George, Craig A. Colton and Robert Tinnell, and distributed by Troma.

After the earthquake that’s always been prophecized that will destroy the coastline of California finally arrives, Adolf (Barry Brenner) declares himself the Führer of the new beach and has his Surf Nazis attack all of the other rival surf gangs*. But when he murders Mama Washingon’s (Gail Neely) son, he’s finally made the mistake that will undo his foamy Fourth Reich.

The original box of Surf Nazis Must Die used to practically shouts “Rent me!” from the shelves of every video store I ever went to, yet somehow I’ve never seen it until now. Probably the biggest selling point to me was the appearance of Bobbie Bresee, who won my heart in Mausoleum, showing up as Smeg’s mom, who is very concerned about the path her son is going down.

Somewhere in here is an idea for a really fun movie, more of The Warriors on a post-apocalyptic beach, and I love that. But it doesn’t really have a focus, but then again, Mama Washington is such a great character and I love every moment that she’s on screen. So…secret success?

The new Troma blu ray of Surf Nazis Must Die has a new introduction by Lloyd Kaufman, an exclusive interview with director Peter George, an on-set interview with producer Robin Tinnell, deleted scenes, an episode of The Projection Booth with Peter George, scenes from the Tromaville Café!, a feature on the Soul of Troma, promos for Radiation March, Indie Artists vs. Cartels and Gizzard Face II: Return of Gizzard Face, a Blood Stab sort and more #FanTOXIC featurettes. You can get this blu ray from MVD.

*The Samurais, The Pipeliners, the Skate Rats, Biker Bar and Designer Waves, made up of Curl Blow and Dry. Thanks Edith on Letterboxd!