Menahem Golan, the colorful Israeli filmmaker who began his prolific B-movie career with Roger Corman, introduced audiences to Jean-Claude Van Damme and during his 1980s heyday directed action stars like Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris, died on Friday in Jaffa, Israel. He was 85.<\/p>\n
His family announced his death. No cause was given.<\/p>\n
Mr. Golan\u2019s best-known films as producer, director or both included \u201cThe Delta Force\u201d (1986), in which terrorists go up against elite commandos including Mr. Norris and Lee Marvin; \u201cOver the Top\u201d (1987), starring Mr. Stallone as an arm wrestler; and the four \u201cDeath Wish\u201d sequels, with Charles Bronson.<\/p>\n
Mr. Golan produced more than 200 films, directed more than 40 and wrote almost as many (often under the name Joseph Goldman), including works as serious as a 2002 production of \u201cCrime and Punishment,\u201d with John Hurt and Vanessa Redgrave, and as exploitative as \u201cThe Versace Murder\u201d (1998), filmed less than four months after the fashion designer Gianni Versace\u2019s death. An article in The New York Times described one of Mr. Golan\u2019s contributions to that movie as standing behind the camera throwing fake blood on the actor playing the killer.
\nPhoto
\nCharles Bronson in \u201cDeath Wish 3\u201d (1985), one of the hundreds of Golan productions. Credit Cannon Films, via Getty Images<\/p>\n
To say that Mr. Golan discovered Mr. Van Damme, when he was a Belgian kickboxer who had appeared only in tiny parts in a handful of films, is to give Mr. Van Damme too little credit. As he has told the story, he spotted Mr. Golan outside a restaurant in Beverly Hills, Calif., and leapt into action, executing a karate kick above the filmmaker\u2019s head. Mr. Golan promptly gave him his first starring role, in \u201cBloodsport\u201d (1988), about a potentially deadly martial arts tournament. Mr. Van Damme was paid $25,000, and the film earned almost $12 million in the United States alone.<\/p>\n
At the annual Cannes Film Festival in France, Mr. Golan became a celebrity. Working with Yoram Globus, his cousin and business partner in Cannon Films, he promoted his high-minded films and his less lofty action titles with equal fervor. Perhaps the oddest deal he made at the festival was an agreement with Jean-Luc Godard, said to have been signed on a napkin at a hotel bar, to direct a version of \u201cKing Lear.\u201d The cast of that film, which when released in 1987 ended up being a science-fiction comedy about post-Chernobyl culture, included Norman Mailer, Woody Allen and the director Peter Sellars. In 1990, when the mayor of Cannes proposed giving Mr. Golan key to the city, Mr. Golan said, \u201cWhy not just give me the piece of the Croisette that I already own with all the money I\u2019ve spent here?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Golan was born Menahem Globus on May 31, 1929, in Tiberias, a city on the Sea of Galilee, in what was then Palestine and is now Israel.<\/p>\n
He served as a pilot and bombardier in the Israeli war of independence; in 1948, when the state of Israel was established, he changed his surname to Golan. He studied drama in London and in the United States and worked in theater before landing his first film job, as a production assistant on Mr. Corman\u2019s \u201cThe Young Racers\u201d (1963), a racecar drama starring Mark Damon.<\/p>\n
That same year Mr. Golan directed his first movie, \u201cEl Dorado,\u201d a crime story set in Israel. The next year he produced his first, \u201cSallah Shabati,\u201d a satire about Israeli immigration and non-European Jews. Both films starred Topol.<\/p>\n
Mr. Golan directed and helped write \u201cMivtsa Yonatan\u201d (\u201cOperation Thunderbolt\u201d), about the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe, Uganda, which was nominated for a 1978 Oscar as best foreign-language film.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Golan had not forgotten his lessons from Mr. Corman. Besides prestige projects like \u201cA Cry in the Dark\u201d (1988), with Meryl Streep, and \u201cI\u2019m Almost Not Crazy,\u201d a 1984 documentary about the actor and director John Cassavetes, Mr. Golan and his company churned out movies about ninjas, cyborgs, chain saws and the likes of \u201cTeenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde\u201d (1993).<\/p>\n
His final production was \u201cRak Klavim Ratzim Hofshi\u201d (\u201cOnly Dogs Run Free,\u201d 2007), a low-budget drama filmed in Israel, and his final directing and writing credit was \u201cMarriage Agreement\u201d (2008), a comedy. A documentary, \u201cThe Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films,\u201d is scheduled for the fall.<\/p>\n
Mr. Golan, who lived in Jaffa and whose survivors include his wife and three children, sometimes defended his artistic choices. When he was filming \u201cMack the Knife,\u201d an earthy 1989 version of \u201cThe Threepenny Opera\u201d in which 19th-century characters carry semiautomatic weapons, he told The New York Times: \u201cBelieve it or not, in Berlin they\u2019ve done a punk version. People are doing it with green in their hair.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same article, David Toguri, the film\u2019s choreographer, said: \u201cThe purists won\u2019t like it, but it works. It\u2019s made for cinema, and Menahem Golan is a real cinema man.\u201d<\/p>\n