RAW FORCE was way more fun than I expected. It's darn campy, featuring ninja zombies, piranhas, cannibalistic monks and jade-dealing Nazis. This movie is also sometimes known as KUNG FU CANNIBALS ... which should tell you everything!The plot is "simple": A group of kung fu aficionados is on a journey to a haunted island where the spirits of forsaken martial arts fighters are said to live. On their journey, the cruise is intercepted by a Hitleresque crime lord and his fellows. The nazi gang trades prostitutes for jade with the flesh-eating monks of the island, and neither monks nor Nazis wants their scheme to be tampered with by some kung-fu-loving tourists...This short plot summary should say it all. You're not watching RAW FORCE for hoity-toity drama and high quality cinematography and plot development, but for its nonstop action and camp. What I really liked about the movie is that in contrast to some other B-movies, its pace never lets you down. The action is nonstop but not in a way that gets you bored. And you care for the characters just enough to watch this movie till the end. Definitely one of the more fun B-movies, although the gore factor could be amped up. Overall quite enjoyable, especially when with friends.

An absolutely demented B-film, a US production filmed in the Philippines, which I found to be most enjoyable. It's poorly-made, don't get me wrong, and in a typical critic's mind it would rate as a bomb, with poor effects, no plot to speak of, and a lack of good acting and/or characterisation. But there's a ferocious pace and kinetic energy running through RAW FORCE that makes it hard to dislike the film. We've got the party of travellers in a foreign country, the gang of bad guys who keep naked women locked up, the crazy martial arts, and the same slow-motion zombies who come out of their graves as the ones in THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES, which seems to have been a big influence on this one. The similarities between these two films are impossible to ignore and I'm sure that they'd make a great double bill together.There's not really much more that I can say about this film other than WATCH IT! If you think it sounds like your kind of tacky, cheesy thing, then all I can say is YES! The acting is so wooden that the characters become interchangeable, the music inappropriate and far too jolly, and the gratuitous nudity comes FAR too often as a way of bolstering the plot (and to keep people watching - that's always a bad sign). The film's biggest star is Cameron Mitchell at a stage well past his prime, although to be fair Mitchell is very likable as the salty old sea dog, a captain who flirts with all the ladies. Eagle-eyed viewers may also spot I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE's Camille Keaton in a cameo as "girl in toilet", amid all the other muscular-but-dumb American actors and the pretty girls who invariably show up for no other reason than to take their clothes off.Every ten minutes the cheesy dialogue grinds to a halt in order to have another poorly-staged bout of martial arts action. I love the fighting in this film, it's absolutely hilarious and very violent. The best gory scene comes when someone decapitates a zombie with a sword and a single bit of blood squirts in the air. Actually the action is pretty good, very frenetically paced, with people flying about and rolling on the ground and hitting each other with supposedly dangerous props. There's even a guy who does a jump-kick through the passenger window of a moving van! There's just so much to like in this film, I don't know where to begin.What about the man who wants to be Bruce Lee SO much that it actually hurts? No idea who the actor was but you've gotta love his high-kicking skills. Or the hilarious sweaty 'tough guy' with permed hair in the film who cheesily winks at the camera at the end. Or the Chinese monks, who have dubbed laughter playing over them whenever they appear on screen. Or the offensive German (?) stereotype who dies in a welter of blood after getting munched by deadly piranha. Or the camp zombies themselves, who are painted blue and pose hardly any threat to the heroes because they're useless, and for some reason always have to move in slow motion to make them look more threatening than they really are. Kung fu, bad actors, copious nudity, zombies, gore, evil monks, cannibalism, women in cages, exotic locales, and Cameron Mitchell. What more could you possibly ask for in a B-movie? See this forgotten classic now!

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.

"Raw Force" is like an ultra-sleazy and perverted version of Love Boat, with additional Kung Fu fights, demented cannibalistic monks, white slaves trade, energetic zombies and a whole lot of lousy acting performances. No wonder this movie was included in the recently released "Grindhouse Experience 20 movie box-set". It's got everything exploitation fanatics are looking for, blend in a totally incoherent and seemingly improvised script! The production values are extremely poor and the technical aspects are pathetic, but the amounts of gratuitous violence & sex can hardly be described. The film opens at a tropically sunny location called Warriors Island, where a troop of sneering monks raise the dead for no apparent reason other than to turn them into Kung Fu fighters. The monks also buy sexy slaves from a sleazy Hitler look-alike businessman, supposedly because the women's flesh supplies them with the required powers to increase their zombie army. Tourists on a passing cruise ship, among them three martial arts fighters, a female LA cop and a whole bunch of ravishing but dim-witted ladies, are attacked by the Hitler guy's goons because they were planning an excursion to Warriors Island. Their lifeboat washes ashore the island anyway, and the monks challenge the survivors to a fighting test with their zombies. Okay, how does that sound for a crazy midnight horror movie mess? It's not over yet, because "Raw Force" also has piranhas, wild boat orgies, Cameron Mitchell in yet another embarrassing lead role and 70's exploitation duchess Camille Keaton ("I spit on your Grave") in an utterly insignificant cameo appearance. There's loads of badly realized gore, including axe massacres and decapitations, hammy jokes and bad taste romance. The trash-value of this movie will literally leave you speechless. The evil monks' background remains, naturally, unexplained and they don't even become punished for their questionable hobbies. Maybe that's why the movie stops with "To Be Continued", instead of with "The End". The sequel never came, unless it's so obscure IMDb doesn't even list it.