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.

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.