Main cast: Cameron Mitchell (Captain Harry Dodds), Geoffrey Binney (Mike O’Malley), Jillian Kesner (Cookie Winchell), John Dresden (John Taylor), Jennifer Holmes (Ann Davis), Hope Holiday (Hazel Buck), Rey King (Go Chin), Carla Reynolds (Eilleen Fox), Carl Anthony (Lloyd Davis), and John Locke (Gary Schwartz)
Director: Edward D Murphy
There are bad movies, and then there is Raw Force. Directed by Edward D Murphy and cobbled together on a shoestring budget in the Philippines, where labor laws are as relaxed as the film’s grip on coherence, this 1982 action-horror-exploitation chef-d’œuvre is equal parts baffling, appalling, and, dare I say, charmingly unhinged.
The story revolves around members of the Burbank Karate Club, whose knowledge of karate seems to stem exclusively from watching The Karate Kid in reverse, embarking on a scenic cruise to Warrior’s Island. It is a place so shrouded in secrecy that it has both tourism brochures and regularly scheduled boat trips. If the contradiction burns a hole in your logic circuits, abandon hope, dear reader, for the rest of the plot has all the narrative consistency of a drunken haiku.
Warrior’s Island, it turns out, is home to zombie monks, lecherous Nazis (yes, Nazis!), and jade-smuggling schemes that would make a third-grader’s economics project look like The Wealth of Nations. The monks, inexplicably obsessed with jade, purchase women from the Nazis to perform ceremonies that reanimate undead warriors. Why? To what end? What exactly do these zombies do besides shamble around looking vaguely annoyed? These questions are never answered, and the movie’s response is a resounding “Who cares? Look, someone’s getting topless again!”
Ah yes, the nudity. It is worth noting that many of the film’s early scenes appear to be an extended audition for the world’s most gratuitous strip club. This montage of randy, often-unattractive revelry reaches its zenith when Camille Keaton—yes, the lead from I Spit on Your Grave—shows up as “Girl in Toilet”. Her career trajectory remains a greater mystery than the monks’ zombie rituals.
The action sequences are choreographed, or perhaps improvised, by what can only be described as a high school drama club after a three-hour lunch break at Taco Bell. Fists are thrown with all the menace of a lazy slap fight, and swords clang like tin cans being dropped on the floor. The zombies, meanwhile, are costumed in makeup so lazy that one forgetful extra apparently wandered on set without any, and no one noticed. Or cared.
And yet. And yet.
Despite its many sins (and there are many), Raw Force is inexplicably entertaining. The dialogue is a carnival of unintentionally hilarious one-liners. The pacing, while chaotic, ensures that you’re never bored—perplexed, perhaps, but not bored. And Geoffrey Binney, strutting around in one scene in tiny swim trunks like a 1980s Abercrombie model on holiday, somehow makes you root for him despite his, let’s say, limited thespian range.
Even the venerable Cameron Mitchell, who clearly signed on to pay for a new pool or perhaps alimony, phones in his performance with such apathy that it loops back around to being mesmerizing. The man delivers lines as though he’s counting the minutes until happy hour, and somehow it works.
By the end, you find yourself strangely charmed. Yes, this is a bad movie. A very bad movie. But it’s also an enthusiastic love letter to its own absurdity. You laugh at it, sure, but somewhere along the way, you’re laughing with it too.
Would I recommend Raw Force? That depends. Are you a fan of cinematic trainwrecks, 80s kitsch, and jade-fueled zombie rituals? Then dive in with reckless abandon. If not, well, at least now you know to avoid it.
As for me, I’ll admit it: I kind of loved it. And yes, it was mostly because of Geoffrey Binney’s swim trunks.
