By Tristan Bishop
Welcome to the first of a new series in which yours truly will be sifting through the dregs of cinematic endeavour in the vague hope of finding gold (or at the very least something mildly amusing). I’ll be covering mostly horror, but also action, exploitation, sci-fi and some of the stranger genre hybrids I come across.
Speaking of hybrids, I’m starting off with Raw Force, an American/Filipino co-production from 1982. Your interest may be piqued by the alternative title, Kung Fu Cannibals, an alternate title it shares with Tsui Hark’s nearly as mental 1980 We Are Going To Eat You. In fact, whilst it may not have been directly inspired by Hark’s aforementioned film, it does appear to be a spin on the horror kung fu comedies that were coming out of Hong Kong in its wake, notably Sammo Hung’s excellent Encounters Of The Spooky kind, although, as you may expect, it is somewhat lacking in the technical finesse and tightly choreographed action of those golden age HK films.
I’m not entirely certain where the film is set – ‘The Orient’ seems to be the closest I can get. However we are introduced to a small army of characters, members of, believe it or not, The Burbank Karate Club – a bunch of moustachioed idiots on a cruise around, well, somewhere, along with some foxy ladies (at least one of whom, going by the name of Cookie, is a secret member of the LAPD SWAT team). They are joined by a kung-fu master cook who dreams of opening a Chinese restaurant, and the grizzled ship captain, played by Cameron Mitchell (bad movie buffs know they are in for a treat when old Cam’s name appears in the credits for any film made after 1964). The film then spends a living age with these characters getting drunk at nightclubs, fighting amongst themselves, and bedding each other (there is a LOT of nudity in this), until they plot course for Warrior Island, a place that the guidebook describes as the home of disgraced fighters. Unfortunately Warrior Island is a very odd place, populated by crazed monks who exchange vast quantities of jade for trafficked girls who they use to feed the zombie martial artists who roam the beaches. In addition to this, the gangsters who control the jade/girl trade, who appear to have Hitler as their leader, aren’t too keen on having a shipload of visitors to Warrior Island, and so the scene is set for a stand-off between the holiday-makers, the gangsters, the monks and the zombie warriors.
Sounds great doesn’t it? Well…It is. Sort of. Nothing about Raw Force could actually be called ‘good’, but it is at least consistently entertaining. The acting is awful, the script frequently ludicrous, the action occasionally impressive but nowhere near the level of the Hong Kong flicks it is trying to ape, there’s hardly any gore at all, and the zombie make-up mostly consists of white paint. However Raw Force has that irresistible forward thrust that the best bad films have – you genuinely have no idea what level of weirdness to expect next, and it keeps you glued to the screen. I constantly found myself asking whether director Edward Murphy (no, not THAT one) intended the film to be quite as ludicrous as it is (at one point, when the villains board the ship, an announcement over the tannoy exclaims “please remain in your cabins, the ship has been boarded by maniacs”) – there’s an obvious intended comedic element, but the execution is so bizarre it’s impossible to tell how much of this was down to intention and how much to incompetence.
Some things to note – Director Murphy (who sadly only directed one more film) played 12 different characters (!) over the course of ten years on the TV show Law & Order, and yes, that is Filipino trash movie veteran Vic Diaz, given sod all to do as a hilarious grinning, clapping monk, straight out of a Monty Python sketch.
Raw Force is currently missing in action on DVD – Code Red were planning to release it a couple of years back (they even had commentaries recorded) but the rumour is that the producer was in jail and they could not secure a negative! There are numerous grey market DVDR releases available in the States however (mastered from VHS I believe), and at the time of writing, some kindly soul has uploaded it onto YouTube, complete with dodgy video tracking for that complete 1982 experience. Whichever way you can get to see it, Raw Force should be required viewing for all fans of z-grade cinema.