Cameron Mitchell had to be, without question, the Hardest Working Man NOT in Show Business.
His countless contributions to this site and associated book (Mine’s Bigger Than Yours! The 100 Wackiest Action Movies) cannot be discounted, and he came with a work ethic that made uber-prolific Vincent Price look like a dilettante.
In Raw Force, our man Cam, who has a whopping 244 acting credits to his name (7 of which have “kill” in the title), adds another cheapo action flick to the mix here. He plays a gnarly charter boat captain, Dodds, in this, a tale of a cursed island inhabited by the ghosts of dishonored warriors that’s visited by martial arts students, from of all places, the suburb known for cheesy live TV tapings, Burbank, California.
Call it a pilgrimage of sorts? Adventure tourism? Who knows?
Turns out the geography, Warrior’s Island, is not just a final resting place /Great Dojo in the Sky for disgraced combatants, but is also a haven for trafficking of all kinds, both animate and inanimate and is inhabited by cannibal monks. And for whatever reason, it has an ad in a glossy tourist brochure!
And the students, along with an assortment of rando tourists, have to battle their way back home, and best chimerical killers, piranhas, sleazy mercenaries, you name it.
And this film has more nudity than you can shake a phallic-shaped stick at.
Raw Force is an attempt at stuffing every possible kind of genre into a narrative – Kung-Fu/T&A/Zombie/Women in Prison/Cannibal – and it’s made on the cheap in the Philippines, so, of course, had to feature perennial portly local, Vic Diaz.
**3/4 (out of 5)
Really Awful Movies 