Michael_Elliott Raw Force (1982) ** (out of 4)A group of martial arts students are on a boat where the owner is allowing them to stop by a legendary island that is supposed to be haunted by the ghosts. Once on the island they run into a man who looks like Hitler, some strange monks and some cannibal zombies.Edward D. Murphy's RAW FORCE isn't your typical horror film. It's actually a pretty wild movie that seems to have had the director just throwing anything into it hoping something would stick. It's certainly not what you'd consider a "good" movie but at the same time if you like low-budget non-sense then there's plenty of that here. What little gore the film might have is made up by the non-stop gratuitous nudity.The film is really a madcap of non-sense as there are wild parties on the boat, plenty of martial arts action and then we even get some pretty wild stripper scenes. The Philippines locations are put to good use as several young ladies get nude on the screen as the American actors run around either screaming or kicking. Cameron Mitchell gets the top-billing as he plays the Captain of the boat and you can't help but feel that he's having a good time being on location, making a few bucks and not having a care in the world. Fans of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE will spot an unbilled Camille Keaton during a scene where she's in the bathroom with a guy trying to get her pants off. And yes, she's nude.RAW FORCE needed a bit more gore to keep it more entertaining but at the same time it's nutty enough to make it worth viewing if you like these types of movies.

Scott LeBrun A group of martial arts students decides that they will visit the Asian island home of martial artists who have lost their honour. Well, not only will they have a nefarious jade dealer & white slave trader to deal with, but the resident mad monks as well."Raw Force" is short on sense and long on nonsense. If one is not partial to the charms of the silly side of B cinema, then stay away! Otherwise, this is great fun that writer / director Edward Murphy is wise to play tongue in cheek. You have to hand it to him for including so many exploitable elements in this wild and crazy flick: cannibalism, zombies, karate, etc. The dialogue and performances are often quite ridiculous, and while the actors stop short of winking at the camera, Murphy does keep that tone alive.The special effects are lousy, the zombies are a rather sad lot sporting less than stellar grey makeup, the T & A quotient is high (at one point, a hero and villain have a fight in a room where a naked woman is tied up), and the gore is plentiful.Ubiquitous Cameron Mitchell has the leading role of intrepid pleasure ship captain Harry Dodds. Co-starring are his real-life girlfriend Hope Holiday as Hazel, Geoffrey Binney ("Hot Potato") as Mike, Jillian Kesner ("Firecracker") as Cookie, John Dresden ("Not of This Earth" '88) as John, and Filipino icon Vic Diaz, rarely to be seen without a smile on his face, as one of the monks. Exploitation fanatics will dig the appearances by Camille Keaton ("I Spit on Your Grave" '78) and Jewel Shepard ("The Return of the Living Dead"). Ralph Lombardi hams it up, egregious accent and all, as the Hitler lookalike villain.We even get a couple stock shots from the New World production "Piranha" '78 before this is over. "Raw Force" is unmistakably gutter trash, but is done with enough humour and spirit to make it engaging entertainment.Eight out of 10.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Hilariously awful kung fu/ cannibal/ grindhouse/ exploitation flick, about a tour group on a cruise ship going to a place called Warrior Island. On the way to Warrior Island, they stop by a strip club, as an excuse to show Asian girls dancing nude on a tabletop during a huge bar fight. A Hitler lookalike with a horrific comb-over and his gang later board the ship and try to kill all those on board.A massive fight between two guys in a bedroom, a Nazi biker in white boxers with hearts and lips all over them uses Kung Fu to try to incapacitate a guy, while a girl is nude and tied to the bed the entire time; scene culminates with the bad guy's head being held underwater in a toilet bowl until he drowns! The same chick beating a guy over the head with a gas can, after untying herself, and bouncing up and down on the bed was surreal. By the way, she's on the cruise to get herself out of the country, because "there's a stupid little murder warrant" out for her arrest.The cruise ship sequence, the entire first act, is hilarious. A Hitler lookalike in a white suit. A guy cracks a block of ice with his head, just for ice cubes. Cannibal monks. A tropical island. Plenty of full female nudity. A zombie with a samurai sword hacking the cannibal monks. Hilarious fight scenes and people being drown in toilet bowls. A surprising beheading. Intro scenes which look like a horror movie version of Magnum. I couldn't stop laughing.Somehow or other, they get to Warrior Island. The Hitler lookalike uses the island for its resources of jade, and slave trading, and will do anything to keep its location and jade reserves a secret. He uses machine guns, uzis, and cannibal monks in blue face paint to kill anyone who gets to close.Lots of pointless nudity and comic violence, in this, probably one of the funniest Grindhouse movies ever produced. Don't miss the final seconds, as the hero smiles and winks at the camera, his teeth glistening, before the words "To Be Continued....." appear.Its first act is hilarious, but its second and third acts, while still funny, pale in comparison. So it ends up being uneven, but mostly hilariously awful, and a must for fans of bad cinema.

lemon_magic Actually, I mean that in a good way. This film is cheap, toxic and putrid in a way that Troma Productions ("Toxic Avenger", etc) can only aspire to. The film is an absolute classic of its type - it throws in almost every exploitation movie gimmick you could hope for, and serves it up in a wonderful mess that will leave you scratching your head (and checking your pubic hair for lice that may have spontaneously generated while you were watching the movie). After a pretty repulsive start, "Raw Sewage", er, "Raw Force" quickly turns into a typical Filipino trash fest, featuring some karate-kicking meat heads who proceed to punch and kick pretty much everything and everyone else - but mostly pirates, slavers, and zombies. No movie in which pirates, slavers and zombies get kicked in the face is ever a complete waste of time. The fights (which break out seemingly ever two or three minutes) are actually fairly well done, even if the camera work and editing are lacking. The Asian guy is especially decent - he's trying too hard to channel Bruce Lee, but his moves are more "Shaw Brothers" than the rest, which makes for a welcome contrast. Cameron Mitchell is in here, which should tell you a lot. Cameron is usually the best actor in a bad movie, but he just plain sucks in this one, which is unusual. On the other hand, the lead "hero", this Binney guy, is actually kind of cool. He can't really act either, but he's fairly relaxed and understated (in a way that reminds me of Edward Norton, of all people) and the character he plays is likable and admirable.What else? Well, at one point the karate guys are putting on an "exhibition" for an audience on their cruise ship and one of the guys has a power lifting belt as part of his uniform. At another point, the 2nd assistant pirate/slaver points a prop carbine at the heroes and pulls the trigger and waves it around, and the Foley artist supplies the sounds of automatic weapon fire,but the prop doesn't have any blanks in it, so you get the same effect as if he were waving a toy - "B-dow! B-Dow! I got you!!" In fact, this happens TWICE. You want more? This movie GIVES you more. The "zombies" are all painted blue, and instead of having them actually shamble or stumble or drag their feet or anything, the camera just switches to jerky slow motion whenever they are on the move. (Ooooh, spooky!!) At one point a party breaks out on the cruise ship, and it's like watching a John Waters film only with less sentimental and heartfelt emotion. (That's a joke.) After about 5 minutes of that party, I was actually eager for the pirates to come on board and kill everyone. And when the one of the pirates throws the match to ignite the gasoline they've splashed all over the cruise ship, the director superimposes a matte shot of a flaming explosion on the screen because apparently they couldn't afford the special effects for an actual explosion. Did I mention that the main bad guy has a white suit, a Hitler mustache, a comb-over, Coke bottle-bottom glasses and speaks with a thick "Cherman" accent? That the only speaking part for the corrupt cannibalistic monks who eat the flesh of young women to raise disgraced martial artists from the dead belongs to Victor Diaz? That at one point the monks brush a half naked young woman with a giant BBQ brush covered in sauce? And that the movie ends with a piranha attack? Trust me...if you only see one exploitation film in your lifetime, this is the one to see. It's got everything, and its cheap and sloppy and half-baked and the makers don't care who knows it.