i want you to hit me as hard as you can
the 1980s were the heyday of cannon films run by menehem golan and yoram globus these israeli
cousins took hollywood for a ride that was so epic it was chronicled not one but two documentaries
electric boogaloo the wild untold story of canon films unauthorized and good and the go-go boys
authorized and bad while they would eventually lose a ton of money and go belly up thanks to
their choice to compete with the hollywood majors with big budget flops like life force
over the top and masters of the universe in the early 80s golden and globus had the formula for
a money maker down cold simply put action movies were their specialty they had a huge hit in 1981
with the shlocky enter the ninja which featured an oddly cast and dubbed franco nero as a heroic
white ninja the film was a blockbuster but truth be told no one walked out of the movie talking
about the white guy you know franco nero who has doubled for most of the action the guy who played
the adversary sho kosugi the evil ninja was the one everyone remembered thus the decision was made
to give the film a sequel but instead of playing the baddie kosugi would play the heroic lead
in it he plays a modern ninja master whose family is slaughtered in japan by evil ninjas
he kills the [ __ ] out of all of them but then hangs up his sword moving to the u.s to open an
art gallery with his mom and his surviving son kane in tow little does he know his gallery is
being used as a front to smuggle drugs by an evil ninja and as his character says
only a ninja can defeat a ninja leading to a spectacular battle royale atop of a skyscraper
in salt lake city for many revenge of the ninja ranks is one of the best action movies canon
ever made they made a couple of smart choices with this one and one was promoting kosugi to the lead
he was able to do things on camera western audiences had simply never seen before
and he was the first true crossover martial arts star since bruce lee predating the late
90s american breakthroughs of jet li and jackie chan so of course in asia there were amazing
martial arts movies being made and truth be told martial arts movies that are a lot better than
they think canon put out but for western audiences this was some pretty heavy stuff kazugi also
choreographed the fights and doubles some of his own adversaries using a little movie magic
another big martial artist of the time keith vitale who would later become a b-movie star
in his own right plays his police officer pal who tries to take on the ninjas single-handedly
but loses pretty badly this is all kosugi's show with his actual son kane playing his kid in the
movie this would become a recurring thing in sho kosugi movies as kane and his brother shane
would often show up in their dad's movies as his wisecracking americanized sons kane would become a
stuntman and star in his own right as an adult and he's pretty cute as show's kid here getting a lot
of fun action scenes and being caught on camera a couple of times staring at co-star ashley farrar's
impressive cleavage i mean who can blame him the fights were all pretty creative which brings me to
the second smart thing golan and globus did hire sam firstenberg to direct golan himself did enter
the ninja but firstenberg was a lot more creative proving to be an excellent creative partner with
kazugi he keeps the movie running at a wicked pace helped along by the dope synth score and
indeed he would prove to be one of canon's most valuable directors in the 80s he would helm the
legendary sequel ninja three the domination which was already well covered here in awfully good by
jesse shade as well as the movie that launched michael dudikoff as a big deal action star in
the mid-80s american ninja he would even direct breaking to electric boogaloo the guy had range
if canon had a failing though it's that they never invested the money where they belonged they would
spend something like 30 million dollars on life force a film no one watched while firstenberg
movies like avenging force and american ninja 2 would be made on a shoestring if they had doubled
down and given him a significant amount of money to play with along with stars like dudikoff and
kosugi who always seemed on the cusp of bigger and better things he might have made an epic
but alas they didn't and the company went belly up and sadly firstenberg and dudikoff and kosugi
sometimes are not really mentioned when people talk about great 80s action icons
now revenge of the ninja was a big hit at the box office grossing 13 million dollars now this
may not sound like a lot of money but given that it was an indie film and cheap in 1983 this was
considered big bucks it was an even bigger hit on vhs becoming a staple of 80s birthday parties
everywhere despite the hardcore r rating kazugi would eventually leave cannon films due to a
dispute with what else but money to make his own b ninja movies like nine deaths of the ninja and
pray for death a genre that unfortunately would peter out pretty quickly although his black eagle
would prove to be one of jean-claude van damme's first movies he made a comeback in the wachowski's
ninja assassin years later so revenge in the ninja is not a perfect movie but man is it a fun film
and if you like this you gotta dig into the canon catalog i realize that a lot of younger viewers
may not know who canon films are but i have to say they made some really cool flicks there's
a lot of good ninja movies there's some really cool chuck norris movies there's even a couple of
charles bronze movies that well not great aren't that bad and are very reminiscent of the kind of
movies that liam neeson makes nowadays in fact one might say that charles bronson was the liam neeson
of the 80s in fact if you're looking for a couple of solid canon film recommendations
here's a little canon films lightning round so in terms of show kazugi movies and to the ninja
not bad although unfortunately he's sidelined by franco nero there is a really cool fight scene at
the end and a game that i like to play with this movie is look at the ninja's eyes franco nero has
these really expressive blue eyes and you can tell whenever he's doubled because his double
mike stone has brown eyes and it's very obvious in the film when franco nero isn't actually fighting
which is pretty much any time he has the ninja outfit on revenge of the ninja is great ninja 3
is also amazing it's a little disappointing that shokuzugi is relegated to kind of the sidekick
role but i had a lot of fun with it when i watched it a few months ago and it really is
a blast versanberg gets this thing going american ninja with michael dudikoff i can see why it made
him a star he was kind of a karate kicking version of james dean and very different from guys like
chuck norris again i think michael dudikoff had he had bigger budgets probably would have gone on
to become a major action star similar to someone like jean-claude van damme or steven seagal but it
just didn't work out for him even still american ninja is a lot of fun as is american ninja 2 but
probably his best overall action movie is avenging force which is actually a quasi-sequel to a chuck
norris canon movie invasion usa which brings us to another cannon movie stalwart chuck norris
now if you want to watch good chuck norris movies actually you kind of have to go outside of canon
because all the best movies he made were for other studios because they had more money code
of silence is arguably his best film although a lot of people also like lone wolf mcquaid for
canon films he did do the missing in action series which real action host travis hopson is a huge fan
of for my money the first missing in action is the only good movie in the series the sequels are
pretty unwatchable although i do really like chuck norris's invasion usa which is completely insane
it's like a serial killer movie with him as the serial killer but he's a good guy he's like jason
in it the heroes are just terrified of him one of the villains actually has nightmares that chuck
norris is coming to kill him and guess what at the end chuck norris comes to kill him i also like the
first delta force but man it takes forever for this thing to go it's something like two and a
half hours long and the delta force doesn't even start kicking ass until about an hour and a half
into the movie i mean come on guys it seems like they were trying to make a disaster movie like
an airport or something like that but it just just doesn't really work delta force 2 is ok but
cheap now the other big action icon of canon films was charles bronson and he's also a very mixed bag
the movies that he made outside of canon films are all pretty good but when he went to canon
the movie just became kinda schlocky in fact the only movie of his that i say that really holds up
is probably death wish 3 by michael winner which is completely insane i mean if you watch it it's
like a fever dream he kills something like over 100 bad guys in this film and it's just complete
insanity and it's not as mean-spirited as the rest of the movies in the death wish series death wish
2 in particular was a pretty repugnant film death wish 4 by that point charles bronson had gotten
sick of michael winner so it has j. lee thompson who directed a lot of these movies helming it but
besides the showdown at the end there's not a lot of action for charles bronson i guess the only one
that people seem to remember fondly is a movie he did called 10 to midnight which is like a slasher
film but also kind of skeezy and kind of sketch murphy's law has its moments but i don't know the
charles bronze movies just don't really hold up as well and some of them are pretty unwatchable
like assassination of course the biggest star to emerge from canon films was jean-claude van damme
but he actually only ever really made two movies for canon bloodsport and cyborg by the time cyborg
came out he had flown the coop as the studio had gone under and really the only jean-claude van
damme movie that he made for them that's really good is bloodsport but man bloodsport is a classic
so that's a little primer on canon films i hope you check out some of them they're a lot of fun
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