Cyborg is Cannon Films at its Cannon Filmsiest. The Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle debuted in theaters on April 7, 1989, arriving at the tail end of Menachem Golan and Yorum Globus’ wild ride through the world of cinema, sandwiched between Bloodsport and Kickboxer (along with roughly 25 other films).
One of the enduring mysteries of Cannon Films’ brief, spectacularly absurd success in the 1980s – aside from whether Sly Stallone’s character in Over The Top is named “Lincoln Hawk” or “Lincoln Hawks”, and which name would be dumber in the first place – is how the Golan-Globus group managed to crank out so much drivel while still laying the groundwork for genuine masterpieces.
Over The Top is not a good movie. In fact, it would be fair to call it an extremely bad movie. At no point, over the course of its surprisingly merciful hour-and-a-half running time, does it feature recognizable human beings, engaged in the activities human beings are generally known for.
At one point in Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, the late Menahem Golan, the inexhaustibly enthusiastic producer of movies that probably did not merit anything close to his hilariously exaggerated boosterism, lays out his own view of his company’s legacy: “Sometimes we made good films, sometimes we made not so good films, but we made films.