VHS Dreams & Ninja Dust: The Secret South African Footprint of Cannon Films

In American Ninja II: The Confrontation, Michael Dudikoff roundhouse kicks a ninja on the rocky beaches in Camps Bay.

That sentence alone should qualify South Africa for a lifetime achievement Oscar in Geopolitical Location Substitution.

Canon Went to Africa, and All We Got Was This Bootleg Apocalypse

Before Cape Town was a Hollywood VFX pit-stop, before Johannesburg became District 9, Cannon Films was already here—running roughshod through apartheid-era South Africa with shoulder pads, AK-47s, and VHS-ready chaos.

Their logic was simple:

“Why build a jungle when you can just shoot in one? Why cast extras when there are plenty of soldiers who work cheap?”

From the mid-80s to early 90s, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the cult-messiah cousins behind Cannon, used Africa like a set that never needed striking. No oversight, no safety concerns - just pure, balls-to-the-wall movie making.

These were not prestige films.

These were mass-market adrenaline bombs, destined for rental shelves and late-night bootleg marathons.

• Gor (1987) and Outlaw of Gor (1988): Sword & sandals meets Brakpan limestone.
• Platoon Leader (1988): A Vietnam stand-in shot just outside Pretoria.
• Red Scorpion (1988): Dolph Lundgren decolonizes Namibia with his biceps.
• American Ninja II, III, and IV (1987, 1989, 1990): Possibly the most geopolitically confused trilogy ever made, with Yankee Ninjas inexplicably showing up in the beaches of South Africa and the mountains of Lesotho.

In American Ninja IV: The Annihilation, Lesotho becomes a war-torn dictatorship crawling with ninjas.

And honestly? It works.

Apartheid Propaganda Built for American Audiences

Among Cannon’s most brazen geo-political fever dreams was Red Scorpion (1988), in which Dolph Lundgren plays a Soviet super-soldier sent to Africa to crush a rebel uprising—only to defect and join the freedom fighters himself.

Shot largely in Namibia during a time of intense political volatility, the film is a Cold War allegory wrapped in machine gun casings and drenched in Reagan-era ideology. What makes it even more surreal is that it was covertly funded by far-right U.S. interests with ties to anti-Communist propaganda—meaning that while Lundgren was shirtless in the desert, actual politics were unfolding behind the scenes like a bad script rewrite.

Red Scorpion isn’t just a film—it’s an artifact of weaponized cinema, blending exploitation aesthetics with real-world soft power ambitions. The African landscape isn’t backdrop here; it’s narrative camouflage for imperial fantasy.

Local Crew, Lost Legends

While Dudikoff posed shirtless in desert sweat, South African crews made the madness happen.

Uncredited stunt teams. Afrikaans pyrotechnics specialists. Black grips who built sets they couldn’t step into when cameras weren’t rolling. This was a labor economy that mirrored apartheid’s contradictions, all while making movies about global freedom.

And somewhere in those margins: A young man who died before his prime, during a scene that was never meant to be shot. American Ninja IV was filmed in the mountains of Lesotho, and it would take one of its brightest suns.

They remember the night. It was a motorcycle jump, improvised. A ramp built in haste. A motorcycle kicked into overdrive. The kind of shoot where insurance is a punchline. A camera that kept rolling. A fireball that wasn’t scripted.

The rider was a black stuntman and action star in the making. A cult figure in the now-forgotten alternative music scene in the waining days of Apartheid - Montle Moorosi I, the frontman of DOM PAS, South Africa's first black punk band, and founder of Bantu Force MCees. His star burned too bright to last. 

Ghosts on Videotape

Now, Cannon Films is also dead.

The company imploded in the early 90s, collapsing under its own cocaine-fueled ambition. But its fingerprints remain—especially here, in the Global South. Not just in cult DVD collections or ironic Livejournal reviews.

In the roads still scorched from night shoots. In the local legends that never got listed on IMDb. In the sonic residue of modern South African art.

South Africa wasn’t just a budget location. It was a co-conspirator in Cannon’s global dream of cheap spectacle. And maybe, just maybe, the chaos of those films planted something here.

A visual vocabulary.

A mythos.

A ghost.

Maybe we’re all just living inside a Cannon sequel that never got made. One with no credits, no heroes, just VHS grain, ninja dust, and a synth score that never quite ends.