Brainwaves: Electric Boogaloo

It is time for another edition of Brainwaves! Thanks for checking in again and reading my random thoughts on the world of action entertainment…

• Electric Boogaloo: I am happy to report that one of my New Year’s Resolutions has been successfully accomplished and its not even mid-February. My patience was wearing thin on a U.S. release of the Mark Hartley documentary, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. After procuring an international copy of the DVD release, I have watched it twice. It was well worth the wait and an absolute MUST SEE for any fans of Cannon Films. I’m still hopeful that it will be released on Blu-Ray here in the States and that the Blu-Ray will be jam packed with extras as I can’t get enough Cannon! They show the fence death of Paul Kersey’s daughter from Death Wish II! That is proof that the people who made this film knew what they were doing. Two people I’d like to call out from the documentary… one of the actresses from America 3000, who decided to burn her VHS copy of the film on camera… real classy move from a woman who was obviously burned by her plastic surgeon. You paid someone to make you look like that? Also, to the former MGM CEO who complained about Cannon not living up to their end of the bargain in regards to providing MGM with quality films to release in theaters. I’m not going to come out here and state that Cannon Films were among the greatest movies of all time (well Death Wish 3 is) but let’s get real MGM, you had a lot of non-Cannon Films that were less than spectacular and really had no business ever being made. I’m talking about movies that I would tell others not to watch like Ninja Vengeance, L.A. Streetfighters and Hammer Down!

• Reading Rainbow: Recently I was contacted via Twitter by author Danny Marianino. He told me about a book he had written, The Mega Book of Revenge Films Volume 1: The Big Payback. After hearing a portion of the book was devoted to my hero, Charles Bronson, it was immediately in my Amazon shopping cart. Danny’s love for movies jumps off of every page of this book. He covers hundreds of movies in the book and it is all presented in an entertaining way. We could quite literally have a Danny Marianino Week on the site with movies covered in the book that I had never heard of like One Armed Executioner or Low Blow. Danny even has some interviews in the book with Martin Kove from The Karate Kid, Heather Langenkamp from A Nightmare on Elm Street and Lance Henriksen from The Terminator.  If you want to pick up the book, just click the picture above and it will take you right to Amazon. There’s already a Volume 2 being planned for 2016!

• Happy Birthday: On this day in 1965, Jason Gedrick was born in Chicago, Illinois. Gedrick is the star of one of my all-time favorite movies, and a movie that has probably had more links to its review than any other in the history of this site, Iron Eagle! Gedrick also starred in Backdraft, the based on a true story Rapid Fire and a movie I caught on Netflix some time ago and I’m sure will eventually be covered here on the site, Depth Charge. It is my belief that Gedrick could have been a bigger player in the action movie genre, but his career seemed to go more towards television as the 1990’s wore on than it did direct to video action. However, if you are going to be an action “one hit wonder”, Iron Eagle is a pretty awesome hit to be! Happy Birthday Mr. Gedrick… I still wish you were on Twitter so I could personally tell you how awesome your Chino “Fats” Williams impersonation is.