Maybe the thrill of perusing aisles of awful VHS cassettes in a dimly lit video rental store is lost on modern movie-watchers. But once it was a fantastic pastime, and the pictures were a mix of forbidden fruits and cover art that could never live up to the movie inside. Behind many of these treasures and stinkers and how-on-Earth-did-this-get-made movies was one company: Cannon Films.

Cannon was so notoriously shoestring that it lost its rights to a Spider-Man movie because its check to Marvel bounced. The firm's catalog consisted almost entirely of films that couldn't live up to the hype, cheapy rip-offs, bad licensing, and—every once in a while—an oddly acclaimed import or art house sleeper.

It wasn't always this way. The company started in the late 1960s and early 70s releasing films like Joe with Peter Boyle, and churned out a few grindhouse features for the exploitation crowd – shlock like Guess What I Learned at School Today, Blood on Satan's Fingers, and The Happy Hooker. At one point half of the company's films seemed to star Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson. But when the original owners sold Cannon to Israeli financiers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, that's when the company really hit its … stride?

Let's put it this way: Two Cannon features were shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and that number could have been higher. Here are some of Cannon's weirder sci-fi, fantasy, and horror movies.

I, Monster (1971) / Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980)

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Cannon twice tried to adapt Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensons' sci-fi/horror novel of bodily transformation. The first was 1971's I, Monster, a Christopher Lee-Peter Cushing vehicle to which Cannon obtained the North American rights. That film was meant to be a 3D creature feature reuniting the two Hammer film titans (and future Star Wars villains), but instead was a long-delayed, cheap box office bomb.

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The second, Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype, dives into the really important issues. We know Dr. Jekyll was a handsome doctor turned hideous monster. This film asks: what if he wasn't? You see, in this version, Dr. Heckyl is a disheveled scientist, and Mr. Hype is his Dorian Gray-ish alter ego, a handsome debonair with a crudely violent streak.

Oliver Reed was chosen to stand in for Dick Van Dyke, while Little Shop of Horrors director Charles B. Griffith was given a $50,000 salary and four weeks to shoot a film he wrote in three weeks. The result is a muddled adaptation in which Reed can figure out how to nail only about half the part, not making an especially good lothario. The film couldn't even go straight to video. Cannon pawned it off on cable television instead, damning it to obscurity. I, Monster may have been a box office bomb, but Heckyl was never even given gunpowder.

I, Monster

Rotten Tomatoes: 44% audience score

IMDB: 5.8

BadMovies.org: Not Rated

Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype

Rotten Tomatoes: 15% audience score

IMDB: 4.9

BadMovies.org: Not Rated

Mako, the Jaws of Death (1976)

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If you're going to rip off Jaws, you might as well go all the way. Director William Grefe tries to do just that by adding something the original never had: lots of sharks, many of them telepathically controlled.

In the movie, a loner named Sonny Stein discovers his telepathic ability to communicate with Mako sharks.Stein uses his powers for good—or at least, for the good of the sharks—siccing the killing machines on anybody who would harm them, like unscrupulous strip club owners and bad scientists.

The movie is decidedly PG, possibly because it's so cheaply made that the creators couldn't afford convincing shark effects. (See also: All the use of shark b-roll to portray Sonny's "friends.") Still, we'll give it a few points, because shark telepathy.

Rotten Tomatoes: 40% audience score (no critic reviews)

IMDB: 3.2

BadMovies.org: not rated

The Apple (1979)

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This is the film that brought Menahem Golan to Cannon, where he'd go on to make many bizarre movies, starting with this sci-fi disco rock opera that tells the story of a futuristic music industry. And the Devil. And God. And the Rapture.

The Apple includes a Eurovision-ish singing contest called the Worldvision whose winners are determined by the audience's biometric reaction. Two songs vie for the top: "Do the BIM" and "Love, the Unchained Melody," the latter by scrappy underdogs Alphie and Bibi. BIM is the name of a label run by Mr. Boogalow, who is sort of Satan and his company is an evil, corrupting influence on the world. But don't worry: In the end, God himself drives down in a Rolls Royce and transports them to Heaven, away from the dystopian world of 1994.

As far as disco / rock operas go, it doesn't get much weirder than this one.

Rotten Tomatoes: 17%

IMDB: 4.2

BadMovies.org: 3 out of 4 slimes

Alien Contamination (1980)

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This sleazy Italian horror movie began the working relationship between Luigi Cozzi and Cannon in earnest. In the film, a spaceship crashes into the New York Harbor and releases a living toxic goop that that attacks bizarre Earth organisms and causes them to explode with the creature's bizarre eggs. A drunken astronaut and a military woman investigate the weirdness and discover an alien "queen" behind it all. (The movie followed right on the heels of Alien, and it shows.)

Like many Italian horror movies, the film is quite gory, schlocky, grizzly, and bizarre. It's also got a soundtrack by Goblin, something not-unknown to Italian B-films of the era. (They're credited as "The Goblin," continuing on a tradition of butchering the band name in movie credits.)

Rotten Tomatoes: 33% audience score

IMDB: 5.3

BadMovies.org: not rated

Hercules (1983)

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Let's name the 12 labors of Hercules: the Nemian Lion, the Hydra, the Augean Stables, batting killer robots...

Oh, you don't remember the trial where Hercules fought stop motion robots and dodged laser blasts? Where a fresh-off-the-Hulk Lou Ferrigno had to stop an evil science wizard King Minos from destroying the Earth? Evidently you've been watching the wrong kind of loosely interpreted mythology.

Ridiculous in plot, execution, and acting, this film by z-movie director Luigi Cozzi made about $10 million at the box office. That was enough to warrant an equally absurd sequel, The Adventures of Hercules, with Ferrigno and Cozzi both returning. The film has a so-bad-it's-good reputation now, and Ferrigno really does give it his all, even if his voice is dubbed over.

Rotten Tomatoes: 14%

IMDB: 3.6

BadMovies.org: 3 out of 4 slimes

Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983)

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Here was a film ahead of its time. It was released in 3D, a technology out of vogue at that time but back in force today. And it showcased Cannon's propensity for blatantly ripping off other franchises, not unlike the work Asylum Studios does today with such fodder as Transmorphers and The DaVinci Treasure.

Treasure of the Four Crowns was the first Cannon movie in a line of Indiana Jones rip-offs. In this one, a team of thieves trying to heist a set of four invaluable artifacts encounter booby traps along the way. One such booby trap is a giant ball rolling toward them. Now, you might say "Indiana Jones did that," but you'd only be half right: Indiana Jones' death ball wasn't on fire.

Roger Ebert, who liked a trashy b-movie now and then, was surprisingly kind to the film. He remarked that the film's pitfall was being too dependent on the cheesy special effects, used to throw things such as spears—and a moray eel—at the audience. "Unfortunately, Treasure of the Four Crowns is so much in love with its dandy new process that it spends too much time using it and too little time getting on with its story," Ebert said in his review.

Rotten Tomatoes: 30%

IMDB: 4.0

BadMovies.org: not rated

Sword of the Valiant (1984)

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Cannon dipped its toes in fantasy a few times. In Sword of the Valiant, it took on the legend of King Arthur, Sir Gawain, and the Green Knight, with Sean Connery portraying the latter. Mark Hamill was originally eyed to play Gawain before Golan and Globus insisted on Miles O'Keeffe, whose "star turn" was the Golden Razzie nomination sweeping Tarzan.

As this was a Cannon film, we hardly need to point out that the connection to the source material is tentative at best. The special effects were lackluster. While TV Guide praised Connery's performance as the villainous Green Knight, it found little else to recommend the film. You certainly wouldn't watch it for the special effects, as seen in the above clip.

Rotten Tomatoes: 32% user rating

IMDB: 4.3

BadMovies.org: Not rated

Lifeforce (1985)

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A movie hyped as the "cinematic sci-fi event of the '80s" is more remembered for something else it contained: tons and tons of full-frontal nudity. Mathilda May may be more unclothed than clothed in this adaptation of Space Vampires by Colin Wilson. It's also a bizarro cult favorite, though disliked by many fans of the original novel.

Directed by Tobe Hooper of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist, and written by Dan O'Bannon of Alien and Return of the Living Dead, the film had the kind of pedigree befitting a movie with lots of sex, violence, and sci-fi / horror weirdness. The plot: a shapeshifting vampire is found on a spaceship in the tail of Halley's Comet and reawakened. It then goes on a desperate quest for flesh while showing plenty of it. She is seeking to repopulate her space vampire race; the humans are trying to stop her. Given Hooper and O'Bannon's mutually bleak views, you can guess about how well that goes.

Rotten Tomatoes: 67%

IMDB: 6.1

BadMovies.org: not rated

America 3000 (1986)

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In a far future, 900 years after nuclear war decimated the Earth, there are three factions of humanity: man, woman, and mutant. The newly elected leader of the male faction must help broker a peace with the women, or die trying. The factions live in a virtual Stone Age, though some technological remnants are found in a long-forgotten bunker, giving the men the weapons they might need to fight the women, who are dead set on enslaving them.

The effects and costume are a Troma rip-off without the gleeful fun or gratuity. Despite a promising silly premise, this sole directoral work by David C. Engelbach, writer of Over the Top and Death Wish II, fails to deliver much from this script aside from a $2 million turkey.

Rotten Tomatoes: 23% user rating

IMDB: 4.3

BadMovies.org: Not rated

Invaders from Mars (1986)

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A year after Lifeforce, Tobe Hooper and Dan O'Bannon got together again for this movie, a remake of the 1953 original about the invasion of Earth by insidious Martians who begin to replicate humans.

Hooper and O'Bannon's visual style could have been perfect for this movie, but it was not to be. The PG rating truncated any gruesome effects, a la Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre or O'Bannon's amazing and gory Return of the Living Dead. What was left was a relatively pedestrian remake that did little more than retread the original. The film grossed only $5 million, not making back its $7 million budget.

Hooper directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 for Cannon later that year, which has gained the cult following Invaders struggled to find. Simply, this was one of those times when a Cannon film could have ended up quite good (for once or maybe twice), but fell short anyway.

Rotten Tomatoes: 27%

IMDB: 5.4

BadMovies.org: Not rated

Robotech: The Movie (1986)

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Sometime in the 1980s, American companies began to realize that Japan was a treasure trove of animated films and TV series that could be cheaply imported stateside. Thirsty to replicate the success of Transformers, Harmony Gold wove three Japanese series—Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA—into one, Robotech. The series may have been a rough fit together, but they had what everyone wanted: giant transforming robots.

Then, in 1986, Transformers went to the big screen. Never one to miss a cash-in possibility, Cannon adapted Robotech to the big screen, mostly using footage from Southern Cross and a fourth adapted series, Megazone 23.

As any anime fan will tell you, even kiddie fair like Dragonball and Sailor Moon has to be edited for American sensibilities because the content can be too casual in its nudity and violence. Somebody failed to tell Cannon that. Parents expecting an enjoyable robotic adventure with a little machine violence when they went to Robotech: The Movie were treated to some decidedly adult scenes of gore, violence, attempted sexual assault, and more. Nothing else really worked, either. For example, the two series combined to make a film were produced on different film stock, creating a noticeable visual difference between the two.

Beyond a few test screenings in Texas, few moviegoers saw this train wreck in the cinema. It didn't even get dumped to video, as the rights to Megazone were not renewed by Harmony Gold. The film exists in limbo, with a few overseas VHS tapes circulating. The original negatives were destroyed in a flood, or rather, washed away by the hands of God.

Rotten Tomatoes: 33% audience score

IMDB: 6.1

BadMovies.org: not rated

The Barbarians (1987)

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Director Ruggero Deodato was perhaps most famous for having to prove in Italian court that he hadn't killed any of his actors in the disgusting gore fest Cannibal Holocaust. That found footage forerunner is grisly even by today's standards, and Deodato kept the schlock coming throughout the 80s.

Cannon' Globus and Golem, hungry for as many cheap productions as they could find, found a soul mate in Deodato,and the trio crafted this Razzie-nominated Conan the Barbarian rip-off. The company's rip-offs always included one twist meant to make it a different film from the original, and in this case, there isn't one barbarian, but two: twin brothers sold into slavery and long separated, and reunited in a fight to the death.

Rather than kill each other, they escape the arena. They hatch a plan for revenge, and there are arm wrestling matches, dragons, magic gems, and all other matters of RPG-ish fantasy along the way before the climactic fight at the end. Real-life brothers Peter and David Paul play Gore and Kutchek; they got the Razzie nod for Worst New Stars, but lost out to David Mendenhall's turn in Over the Top, another Cannon Film in which Sylvester Stallone must arm wrestle his way to his son's love.

Rotten Tomatoes: 49% audience score

IMDB: 4.8

BadMovies.org: not rated

Masters of the Universe (1987)

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Cannon wanted to ruin your childhood, whether by releasing the worst Superman movie (coming next) or the worst Marvel adaptation (coming later, and it's not Howard the Duck). It's no different with Masters of the Universe, a loose adaptation of the toy line and cartoon series.

The film takes place between Eternia and Earth, featuring Dolph Lundgren as Prince Adam / He-Man, a young Courtney Cox as one of his human sidekicks, and Robert Duncan MacNeil from "Star Trek: Voyager" as the other. Frank Langella plays Skeletor, with Meg Foster stepping in as a loosely adapted Evyl-Lyn. A dimunitive character, Gwildor, stands in for Orko, assumedly because special effects cost money and Cannon didn't have that. There's a chase across Earth to regain the key to Eternia, which Skeletor could use to conquer Earth.

Like Robotech before it, the adaptation is darker and more violent than its swashbuckling television counterpart. The film tanked amid poor reviews, but has a moderate cult following today. The film teased a sequel that would never come to pass because of Cannon's poor finances.

Rotten Tomatoes: 17%

IMDB: 5.3

BadMovies.org: 2 out of 4 slimes

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

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This superhero film found new ways to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Gene Hackman somehow returned as Lex Luthor, bringing along an annoying nephew played by Jon Cryer. Luthor uses a piece of Superman's hair to clone a Cold War supervillain called Nuclear Man, who gives our hero some nasty radiation poison, nearly killing him. Superman recovers and takes their fight to the moon, where he's beaten a second time. Finally, he manages to get Nuclear Man in the core of a nuclear power plant, where he is expended as nuclear energy and sends clean power out into the world.

How bad was it? This movie killed the film franchise and pushed Superman off the big screen for the next 20 years. So there's that.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 12%

IMDB rating: 3.6

BadMovies.org: 1 out of 4 slimes

Alien from LA (1988) / Journey to the Center of the Earth (1989)

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Meet the first film on our list that was lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Alien From LA sees supermodel Kathy Ireland, in her feature film debut, play Wanda, the embodiment of "put a gorgeous woman in glasses and have her play a nerd" movie logic. Wanda, following a treasure map, is finding her way to Atlantis, and in the process sheds her nerdom by, you guessed it, taking off her glasses.

The Atlanteans consider Wanda to be alien, hence the title. But there isn't much physical difference between the two species, aside from some incredibly inept skin make-up. The set pieces appear recycled from Masters of the Universe, which wouldn't be shocking if true. The film was directed by Albert Pyun, Cannon's main hired gun when it comes to the atrocious.

Despite all this awful, Alien From LA somehow spawned an sequel called Journey to the Center of the Earth—entirely unrelated to the classic Jules Verne book—that saw Ireland reprise her role for roughly four seconds of screen time as the Atlanteans and surface "aliens" make peace.

Rotten Tomatoes: 0%

IMDB: 3.0

BadMovies.org: 1 out of 4

Doin' Time on Planet Earth (1988)

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A teenager believes himself to be a space alien, and Adam West is a member of his species preparing him for off-world adventures … if he can get through his brother's wedding first. If any movie is calling out for a cult audience, maybe it's this low-budget sci-fi/comedy that has disappeared into obscurity. It's got to recoup the money it lost at the box office somehow—Doin' Time on Planet Earth took in just $29,576.

Director Charles Mathau got a Saturn Award nod for this thing, though that's … not always the mark of quality. George Lucas got nominated for The Phantom Menace, after all.

Rotten Tomatoes: 67% user rating

IMDB: 4.5

BadMovies.org: Not rated

The Borrower (1989)

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Director John McNaughton won acclaim for his grisly horror film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, an exploration of real-life killer Henry Lee Lucas that captured the attention of fans typically more associated with art houses than grindhouses.

He followed it up with another serial killer tale, but this one was a confusing sci-fi/horror hybrid involving an alien serial killer whose cloned body fails to provide a non-exploding head. What follows is a string of decapitations, and some cops hot on the case. There's a lot of pitch-black comedy, and a lot of gross-out scenes (the New York Times remarked that "even a meal dished out to the homeless at a skid-row mission will turn the stomach.")

As far as Invasion of the Body Snatcher-style body-stealing aliens go, the film offers a unique (and disgusting) transformation from alien into man. The Borrower originally made the film festival rounds, meeting with average-to-below-average reviews before being dropped to video.

Rotten Tomatoes: 30%

IMDB: 5.3

BadMovies.org: Not Rated

Cyborg (1989)

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This movie could have been just another Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle if not for its twisted and typically Cannon history. True story: The studio lost the rights to Spider-Man and a Masters of the Universe sequel because a licensing check bounced. The problem was that they had already begun production on the movies, intending to film them back to back in a few weeks' time. (And Spider-Man would have been a giant spider.) So they had a lot of set pieces, props and costumes at the ready.

Cannon wasn't about to just dump those as a loss. Instead, the pieces were recycled into Cyborg, featuring Jean Claude Van Damme as a bodyguard to Pearl Prophet, who's ferrying information that could cure the plague that's destroyed humanity. They encounter Mad Max-like gangs on the way, as you do.

Cyborg may have used props from kid movies, but the film almost received an X rating for its violent content. By the way, the titular cyborg is little more than someone augmented with a computer to ferry the information, like an even cheaper Johnny Mnemonic.

Rotten Tomatoes: 14%

IMDB: 5.0

BadMovies.org: not rated, but Cyborg 2 gets three slimes

Captain America (1992)

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It was a long, long road to 1998's Blade, the first passable Marvel Comics movie adaptation. Along the way, comic fans endured this notorious flop.

Given the Spider-Man ordeal, it's surprising that Marvel would allow Cannon to adapt another of its properties. But it happened, and what Cannon ultimately released was far from the Star-Spangled Avenger movie you hoped for (and finally got with Chris Evans.) The 1992 film stars J.D. Salinger's son, Matt, fighting a Red Skull played by Scott Paulin, mostly known for being Deke Slayton in The Right Stuff.

The fundamentals of Captain America are here, sort of, but little else. The costumes are cheap rubber. For whatever reason, Red Skull is changed from a Nazi into an Italian fascist. The plot is flimsy and contrived.

Captain America was originally scheduled for the summer of 1990. After long delays, it finally found a theatrical release oversees and was damned to a direct-to-video release stateside. With the collective abysmal failures of this, Howard the Duck, and Roger Corman's Fantastic Four (somehow not a Cannon film), it would be a while before studios would put any faith in a Marvel Comics movie.

Rotten Tomatoes: 9%

IMDB: 3.2

BadMovies.org: Not rated

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993)

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This is one of Cannon's last features, a culmination of its bad sci-fi, bad action, and bad dystopian movies all in one terrible picture. American Cyborg: Steel Warrior previews a Matrix-y world run by artificial intelligence combined with a weird cyberpunk-Terminator mish-mash. The costuming is so bad that Entertainment Weekly said the villain played by John Ryan looked "done up like an extra from Cruising." It also called the film "duller-than-dirt."

As last gasps go, this second-to-last Cannon movie is a fitting send-off. As terrible as it is, American Cyborg: Steel Warrior is also prophetic in the small ways it preview much better science fiction movies to come by imagining a world overrun by robots (like The Matrix) and the last fertile woman being a beacon of hope for humanity (like Children of Men.)

The film made $444,000 at the box office. Three years later, Cannon was officially gone.

Rotten Tomatoes: 27% user reviews

IMDB: 3.4

BadMovies.org: not rated

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