The Cannon Group, Inc.

be a good name for the movie.

I mean, this is one of the Canon Films guys who wrote this.

Well,

the point you bring up, though, is it's really obvious that Rodman was shoehorned into this later.

I have no idea what their combat record is like in recent years, but there's an old movie with Michael Dudikoff.

Remember him? His canon films were kind of trying to make him into, yeah, he kind of looked like James Dean.

You know, but he was sort of an interesting guy.

Like, you know, he's been American Ninja and stuff.

But Chuck Norris's brother, Aaron Norris, was some kind of karate man, stunt man.

He, Canon Films gave him a couple of directing jobs, one of which was platoon leader with Michael Dudikoff.

And that's about the 173rd at Doctoe, if memory serves.

You know, but, I mean, that's just, like, off the top of my head and what I know about.

Yeah.

So when it was originally released, it was a Canon production, wasn't it? So was David Putnam still in charge of Canon back then? Or had he moved on? I don't know.

He

wasn't at Canon, so he was at Gold...

Well, I think he was at Goldcrest.

Was he at Goldcrest then?

And then Fox ended up releasing it in a thousand cinemas only in the whole of America.

So it kind of flopped in America.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's got a lot going into it.

Tobey Hooper would go on to do a multi-film contract with Canon Films and make some movies that didn't do very well and kind of torpedoed his reputation.

But even though they've since been mostly reclaimed, Life Force was one of them.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was another.

Yeah, of course.

So he's busy in the 80s making a lot of stuff with Canon Films.

Right.

The company we've talked about in other podcasts.

I think the only one of those I've seen is death wish three.

So I'm going to have a hard time speaking to Bronson, but I understand who he is.

It's one, it's like one sleazy Canon films thriller after another, some of which are pretty great.

Surely.

It gave those studios and smaller indies an audience of 8 to 16-year-old kids who were nuts for anything with special effects.

And as a result, we were gifted an interesting, highly creative period with companies like Orion, New Line, New World, and Canon Films doing their part to capture the market.

In fact, the video store was in part responsible for fueling what was once reviled but is now seen as a golden age of genre movies, from schlock slashers to shoddy sci-fi actioners.

apocalyptic sci-fi in particular, and hordes of Indiana Jones-inspired ripoffs like Treasure of the Four Crowns, Sky Pirates, and King Solomon's Mines, starring Richard Chamberlain, my mom's favorite actor after Harrison Ford, and a pre-fame, Sharon Stone.