Menahem Golan, sometime in the 80's

Right off the bat I must admit that I am biased. I admire this man. Menahem Golan is approaching his 80th year and showing no sign of stopping. His latest film came out in Israel’s theaters in July, he is trying to get a large international production off the ground, has just directed a stage show, and has various other projects floating around. The man is a purist; his dedication and love for film is undeniable and scarce in today’s generation of filmmakers. Jerry Lewis coined the term, “The Total Filmmaker”; Golan fits the bill.

Golan is a pillar of the Israeli film industry; take him out of the equation and its history will collapse. From the 1960’s to the 1980’s, he and his cousin, Yoram Globus, were involved in the creation of every genre and trend in the industry as well as responsible for most of the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations garnered by Israeli films.

In 1979, Golan and Globus bought The Cannon Group and for the next 10 years they produced a slew of action films, dance musicals, teen comedies, etc. By1986 they were producing more films per year then all the Hollywood studios put together. Golan often said he would feel like a criminal making one $30 million dollar film rather than 30 films for $1 million each. The quality of their product was far from consistent but often extremely popular. But they overextended themselves by taking over theater chain after theater chain in Europe, and eventually Thorn EMI in England. At the end of 1986 their financial problems were piling up and by the end of the decade they were going bankrupt.

Cannon’s importance and relevance to the American film industry has been downplayed. Their ultimate demise allowed for them to be forgotten. Their Hollywood misadventures are legendary, and it is easy to be critical since many people claim to have been hurt by Cannon. Producing films is no reason to mistreat anyone, but in reality that is the case with an endless line of film producers in a town that was built on backstabbing. While criticism is legitimate, their achievements should be looked upon as well. Shelly Winters, who worked with Golan many times, once compared the cousins to the old Hollywood moguls: “They’re like the old-style bastards. We hated them, but they loved films. They created great stars and great films.”

Cannon reached groundbreaking agreements with the Hollywood unions that made it possible for the independents to grow. They were amongst the first to utilize the home-video market and they created stars and genres that have an impact on Hollywood to this day (clearly the successful STEP-UP series is the evolution of BREAKIN’).

In the decade that preceded Miramax, before independent cinema was “hip”, before it became a genre rather then a reality, Golan pushed Cannon to take chances on many directors who had a hard time getting the major studios to produce their movies. A partial list includes John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, Andrei Konchalovski, Franco Zeffirelli, Jean Luc Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Norman Mailer and Fons Rademakers – whose Cannon-produced THE ASSAULT (1986) won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Roger Ebert said in 1987: “No other production organization in the world today has taken more chances with serious, marginal films than Cannon.”

In his diary from the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, “Two Weeks in the Midday Sun”, Ebert writes that for him, Golan was the hero of the festival. On May 7th, 1986, Variety printed this joke from Cannes:

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(Elite Entertainment) 1981
93 mins / Rated ‘R’ / Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, enhanced for 16X9 screens

This one has a nightmares-come-true aspect that predates A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET but doesn’t explore the idea as cleverly, nor is it satisfying when all is said and done. On the way, however, it has its share of creepy suspense.

The heavy-handed direction of John (WATCHER IN THE WOODS) Hough doesn’t thrill me, but I applaud his casting, particularly of eerie women in the lead roles. Erin Flannery as Jennifer Cordel has eyebrows so overgrown toward the center as to suggest something satanic, or at least diabolically sexual. Kerrie Keane as newspaper editor Laura Kincaid is a mannequin-faced creep show all her own. We just don’t know how she’ll fit into the puzzle. John Ireland as the local, frazzled sheriff, towers above John Cassevetes physically. I never remembered him being so tall (or was Cassevetes short?). And Cassavetes, the master indie filmmaker, acquits himself curiously, with a periodic silly smile that looks ludicrous whenever he pulls it out of his bag of facial choices. He’s also unnecessarily grim and confused as the local doctor faced with a growing horror in his little rural town, dominating long takes that are long simply because he’s taking his time within them. Maybe he’s going after subtext, but if so, I never understood it. However, as physical props go, his eyebrows, like his daughter’s, are suggestive of devilishness. I’m going to assume that these father-daughter eyebrows were conscious choices on Hough’s part, the better to red-herring us with.

The film is compelling, right to the last frames. But afterwards, the questions begin to arise, and slowly but surely, starting with the last images, the narrative logic unravels, until finally, after you’ve thought about it for a while, nothing makes any sense. It’s the reason I didn’t think a plot summary was needed for this review: the whole film will decomposed before your eyes anyway. What need have you for plot in light of this?

Cast:
John Cassavetes
Kerrie Keane
Erin Flanery
John Ireland.

Credits:
Directed by John Hough.
Screenplay by George Franklin
From a novel by Ray Russell.
Director of Photography Albert J. Dunk.
Music by Stanley Meyers