Year: 1982
Runtime: 86min
Director: Edward D. Murphy
Starring: Cameron Mitchell, Hope Holiday, Geoffrey Binney, John Dresden, Jillian Kesner, Rey Malonzo, Vic Diaz, Ralph Lombardi.
I was confused with the early shenanigans happening in Raw Force. Can you blame me? I watched the trailer. I hyped myself up for a no-budget martial arts flick with freaking zombie kung-fu masters. That sounds like a great time, right? Right?
So how the heck did I get conned into watching a no-budget Porky’s at sea with Cameron Mitchell instead?
I kid you not, the majority of this supposed horror/action movie is a smutty sex comedy that frankly would have worked as a softcore parody of The Love Boat if they’d managed to work in a little more skin here and there. And the worst part of this trickery? The absolute madness of Raw Force? I enjoyed the movie so much more as a doofy sex romp than as the martial arts adventure I tuned in to watch.
How’s that for a plot twist?
So about that plot…which to its credit barely has anything to do with Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon, which is more than most martial arts films of the 1980s can say. It also has nothing to do with sanity, good taste, or logic.
We have a merry group of martial artists from Burbank taking a vacation “cruise” (gonna use quotes around that because, uh, the ship is in fact a leaky barge) to a mysterious island called, cleverly enough, “Warrior’s Island”, where disgraced martial artists go to die. Like an elephant graveyard but for low-rent Chuck Norrises.
I suppose it would help to detail the different characters on this voyage but, uh, frankly I don’t know any of their names. Seriously, if you can figure out who anyone is aside from the one or two cliches they are given as characterization, than you have paid way too much attention to this movie. Our two robust men of action who drive the plot might as well be called Male #1 and Male #2. We also have a Female #1. And a bunch more assorted females and their naked bosoms, but only Female #1 gets to do anything interesting aside from baring her boobies. Female #1 is played by Jillian Kesner, who landed starring roles in a couple B-movies in the ’80s.
So our unmemorable cast sets out for their vacation totally unaware that Warrior’s Island is inhabited by a group of cannibal monks who practice necromancy. And can only perform their grisly magic by eating attractive young women.
You would think this sick and twisted fact would be a shocking cornerstone to the plot, but no, like most of Raw Force this revelation which I have helpfully spoiled for you is delivered near the last third of the movie without much fanfare or even impact. In fact, after it is mentioned by one of the characters, it is only ever referenced once more and ignored forever.
That would be like making your main villain Adolf Hitler and never, ever referencing this fact.
…which is another thing Raw Force does.
Yeah, I don’t have an easy way to break this to you, but the bad guy is freaking Hitler.
He’s got some other name but I mean, c’mon, look at him! Just look at him! It’s ADOLF HITLER! In a movie about zombie martial artists.
I’m sorry, I’ve been distracted from my recap of the basic plot. Where was I before cannibals and Hitler?
Right, this is a sex comedy. Yes it is.
So our creaky little Love Boat is captained by none other than B-movie great Cameron Mitchell who has delightfully decided not to act and just be himself, which is to say bounce around like a demented alcoholic Jackie Gleason who can only communicate by shouting directly at people who are less than three feet away. It is magical.
A good portion of the flick is taken up by the love/hate relationship between Mitchell and Hope Holliday, the cantankerous owner of the ship. These two spar constantly and though it often provokes more eye rolls than chuckles, it definitely cements both of them as more memorable than, well, everyone else in the cast.
Except Hitler because, man, the BAD GUY IS ADOLF HITLER!
Writer/director Edward D. Murphy seemed to be trying to make the wrong film. He only directed two movies, this one and a movie called Heated Vengeance, which despite the title was not a softcore porn comedy but seemed to be a Vietnam type flick also shot in the Philippines like Raw Force. I wonder if with his apparent talent for filming naked young people and adding in a dash of goofy comedy if he might have proven to be successful in the 1980s at made-for-cable naughty flicks.
Guess we’ll never know because this tale-of-two-genres is sloppy and disjointed at best.
Even the sex gags, some of which are amusing (the mob girlfriend and the prudish teacher made me chuckle), are just a bit forced. Not as forced as the “martial arts” by the end of the movie, but hey, I was the one who expected to sit down and watch a bunch of amateur karate buffs pretend to spin kick each other, so what right do I have to complain when their awkward, slow-motion punching and kicking turn out to the low point in this weird movie? I mean, I did ask for crappy, poorly staged fight scenes, and that is precisely what we get for the last fifteen minutes of the movie.
The only highlight in the kicking-dudes-in-the-face department is Rey Malonzo who plays the ship’s cook. He’s okay and actually seems to know how to do his martial arts at normal speed instead of having to pause and wait for directions. He, along with Vic Diaz in a small role as the leader of the evil monks, prove to be quite watchable as Filipino genre veterans.
Everyone else could not act or fight their way out of a wet paper sack.
Well, okay, I’m being too harsh. Cameron Mitchell is fun and seems to be enjoying himself, and so is “Ralph Lombardi” who will go down in cinematic history as having only played one role and that role is ADOLF HITLER in a movie called Raw Force.
I guess in the end I wish the movie had been even more crazy and over-the-top. If it had leaned into the cannibal angle or even made more of a show with the zombies, it might have been gory good fun, but honestly anyone that claims this is a horror/action movie needs to have their noggin checked. There’s nothing scary here and not even enough gruesome violence to earn a campy seal of approval. The most fun you’ll likely have is with the out-of-place naughty shenanigans on the cruise.
We get plenty of skin and a lot of weird and memorable side characters like the bartender who breaks a block of ice with his skull to produce ice for drinks, the religious zealot who disapproves of the swinging going on, the virgin who cannot figure out his girl’s bra, the sex-addict husband of one of the main ladies who comes complete with porn star ‘70’s mustache, the list goes on. But all of these characters are forgotten and wiped out by the late middle of the movie, leaving us with a dull, tedious bit of island adventure to wrap up.
Raw Force is one of those movies that definitely sounds better on paper. Half-decent ideas squandered by ineptitude leave us with a cult film that might be worth a chuckle or two if you decide to go in less-than-sober with a couple of friends.
Also, did I mention the villain is freaking ADOLF HITLER?!?!?
