What do we make of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus? For the generation that first clocked on to movies in the 1980s, the Israeli cousins provided endless hours of unashamedly idiotic entertainment.

There had been schlockmeisters before. But, after descending upon the Cannon Group in 1979, Golan and Globus set about developing a class of lucrative trash that helped define the decade. Cannon released all the Death Wish sequels. It was the house studio for the mighty Chuck Norris. They brought the Ninja to Anglophone cinema. There were odd prestige projects such as John Cassavetes's Love Streams and Franco Zeffirelli's Otello, but Yoram and Menahem rarely deviated from the fast lane to mindless, cheap, profitable oblivion.

In the upcoming documentary, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, one of the kinder contributors suggests that the Weinstein brothers eventually did what Golan and Gobus always wanted to do. There may be something in that. After all, Golan did direct a serviceable version of Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Magician of Lublin in 1979. Zeffirelli reckons they were the best producers he ever worked for.

Massive billboards

The comparison does not, however, entirely stand up. For all the alleged strong-arm tactics in the wings, the Weinsteins were always eager for middle-brow respectability. Miramax was, after all, the company that made its name distributing adaptations of Henry James novels. When the company did skirt the Cannon universe – in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof – it did so with sufficient irony to secure a spot in the main competition at Cannes.

The story of Cannon is a story of business practices as much as it is a story about cinema. Electric Boogaloo explains how it was always important to the producers that every cent of the budget ended up on the screen. Expense accounts were of no interest. Meetings were had huddled over Chinese food on polystyrene plates.

More than anything else, Cannon reminds one of Ryanair. It takes a practical sort of genius to look at something believed to be ruinously expensive – air travel or movies – and instinctively spot the extraneous expenses. Like Michael O’Leary, Golan, the more visible of the two men, was not reticent in putting himself forward and knew the power of a vulgar gesture. One expense Cannon did allow itself was massive billboards at Cannes.

The great Roger Corman was (still is, one imagines) similarly tight with the finances. John Sayles remembers fearfully hiding expensive props whenever Corman wandered on set. But, though much of his output bears comparison with the worst of Cannon, Corman remained a fervent talentspotter who, when the stars aligned correctly, was capable of producing and directing dime-store masterpieces.

Golan and Globus seemed interested only in producing product and generating capital. Like a cheaply animated shark in one of their own pictures, they kept moving at all times. If one film did badly, then the next one would surely kick them back into the black. Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, their break-dancing cash-ins, both managed to emerge in 1994. Two equally appalling Bo Derek sex romps, Mata Hari and Bolero, also emerged within 12 months of one another.

Their artistic successes differed from those of Corman in the sense that they tended to be stylistic aberrations. Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train, a terrific adventure starring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts, barely exists on the same planet as a Chuck Norris film. By way of contrast, a film like, say, Corman's Death Race 2000 is just a better movie from the same corner as that occupied by his less brilliant Attack of the Crab Monsters. The better films in the Cannon, erm, canon seemed to happen in spite of Golan and Globus's contribution. Their response when confronted with Jean Luc Godard's King Lear – among the least likely of Cannon films – blended fury with bafflement.

We could hardly have a more perfect example of 1980s bandit capitalism in action. The key Cannon films have their defenders. There are many people in their early 40s who come over all weepy when reacquainted with a VHS of Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype or Ninja III: The Domination. (Incidentally, the heroine of the last film was made a victim of demonic possession as it was felt that otherwise nobody could believe in a female action hero.) Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce is well worth revisiting.

For the most part, however, the films were the cinematic equivalent of junk bonds. Presold on premises that were often dreamt up as the handshake was taking place, the typical Cannon film was little more than a contractual obligation in celluloid form.

Forces of nature

Like so many such products of the new capitalism, Cannon eventually crashed into financial ruin. MGM came on board, but soon tired of trying to reinvent low-grade trash as studio material. Assets were stripped. A move into bigger budget production, such as the famously woeful Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, only served to hasten the demise. Appropriately enough, Menahem left the company in the last year of the decade to which he had added so much juice.

The two men returned to Israel where Golan died in 2014. He was properly mourned. Such forces of nature rise only rarely.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films is out on limited release from June 5th