![]() ![]() Hopefully 80s schlockmasters Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and their legendary 1980s running of Cannon Films needs no introduction, but for the sake of expediency, just know that in addition to producing nearly every Chuck Norris film made in the decade that they were probably the most infamous production company in the world. I only watched it for the first time last week. How I remember first seeing American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt: I had NEVER seen beyond the second film, and I was kind of stunned to realize there were actually five of them. If I had known I wasn’t going to see a single anniversary piece for Footloose or Office Space I would have just done those instead. As I sat there watching Seagal and Michael Caine embarrass themselves over and over again, I remember just getting so angry about how much time and energy I had put into The ‘burbs already and just cancelled the whole bloody thing. This left one back-up option: On Deadly Ground, Steven Seagal’s eco-action movie against big oil AND his directorial debut. Plus, I already did one 2004 movie for this column and I wasn’t in a rush to head back there. I guess I could have done Eurotrip (which a lot of people asked for when I said I was starting the column), but outside of the genius of the song “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” I realized there wasn’t much to talk about. I had no desire to relive the tedium of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen or Welcome to Mooseport. I also couldn’t find any copies of the Meg Ryan 2004 boxing drama Against the Ropes, Denzel Washington’s debut as a leading man in The Mighty Quinn, or William Friedkin’s extremely underrated 1994 basketball drama Blue Chips. I astoundingly couldn’t source a copy of the 1999 cult classic Jawbreaker in time (even though I also covered the director’s most recent effort G.B.F. Well, October Sky was, but it would also require a lot of research and reading that I couldn’t do in a single day. I tracked down copies of Lassiter, True Believer, and October Sky, but none of them were really interesting enough to write about. ![]() (Although quite a bit of ink was spilled on Bill and Ted at the end of last year.) Ditto the original 1984 Footloose and 1989’s Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, or Mike Judge’s late-onset juggernaut Office Space from 1999, which should have been the most obvious choices for anyone to cover that no one ended up covering. ![]() Also, the highest profile anniversary from last week – 1994’s Reality Bites, Ben Stiller’s directorial debut – was something that was just too big, heralded, and quite frankly really boring to elicit much enthusiasm. Last week I cancelled Unsung Anniversaries simply because the film we chose to cover ended up being covered by everyone and their mother – Joe Dante’s 1989 unsung suburban horror comedy classic The ‘burbs – so with nothing new to add to the discussion and at least half a dozen pieces written on it already, I just threw in the towel. Welcome back to Unsung Anniversaries, where every week we look back on films celebrating birthdays that might not be getting widely recognized.
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