Monday, August 11, 2014

R.I.P. Menahem Golan 1929-2014

You may not recognize the name but if you were a boy that grew up in the 80s this guy put out some great action movies back in the day.  Menahem and Yoram Globus were producers that purchased the Cannon Group, Inc. in 1979 and put out around 120 movies by the time they sold Cannon in 1989.   Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris were the face of the studio during this time as they helped build Cannon on Death Wish and Missing in Action sequels. The two Chucks also did some very good non sequel movies during this time too like 10 to Midnight and Invasion USA.

Menahem mainly produced but got behind the camera on occasion and directed one of Norris’s best movies, The Delta Force.  In the mid to late 80s Cannon stayed with action as their bread and butter but got into some other fares as well like the drama Barfly with Mickey Rourke, Runaway Train with Jon Voight and then got into the break dancing craze with Breakin' and Breakin' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. 

In the late 80s Menahem and Cannon got a little more aggressive or the saying maybe “too big for his britches” and took a big gamble to get even bigger movie stars and make more expensive movies to make Cannon a large studio.  Menahem went out and got Sly Stallone for the big money action arm wrestling flick Over the Top and lost money.  He then tried to get the popular toy franchise He-man and the Masters of the Universe franchise launched and it failed and then tried to resurrect Superman with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and it crashed too and so did Cannon.

After Cannon folded Menahem went to make other movies but none that were noteworthy compared to his earlier works and owned the rights to Spiderman for awhile and almost got the movie made with director James Cameron behind it.   The guy put out some great movies in the 80s and I proudly have most of them in the library at home and watch them all the time.  Thank you sir.




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