Special Force

Yup, it played on the big screen with on a double bill with "Cannibal Ferox". There were some special guests who worked on this obscure film and they did not have much good to say about it. I guess the director was a big time sleaze and was also inexperienced. There is lots of nudity in this one. All the elements of exploitation are covered, including female slavery. It's actually a really hilarious movie which is probably partly intentional. The crowd loved it.

This movie has everything a good exploitation movie should have: Zombies, cannibals, Nazis, naked chicks, blood, action, comedy, piranhas ...unfortunately this movie doesn't quite work as well as it should.

This is the story of a cruise ship that promises some people a trip to exotic locales one of which is Warrior Island where disgraced martial artists go to die. Also on the Island are a band of cannibalistic monks. Through a chain of events too complicated to explain the Nazi pilot who is trading kidnapped women to the monks for jade sinks the cruise ship so it can't go to the island and ruin his deal. The survivors end up on the island anyway and the monks let loose the zombified remains of all of the dead martial artists on the survivors.

At this point you're either intrigued or repelled by the nonsense you just read. If you're repelled move on to the next movie, if you're intrigued keep reading.

Lets be honest this isn't a good movie by any conventional standards. Its got bad acting, bad special effects and a dumb plot. But then again its got the spirit to go for it anyway and it almost manages to be one of the all time classics.

Unfortunately the film falls down in two key areas. First it doesn't know whether its serious or tongue in cheek. There are times when the cast seems to be playing it straight and times when they seem not. The unevenness of tone makes it hard to know how to take the movie so it ends up rubbing you the wrong way. The other problem is that the action sequences are filmed basically in a point and shoot style. There is no excitement generated from what we are seeing on screen because the camera man seems bored by it all. Its awful because this is often a really fun movie at times.

If you are an exploitation movie fan, or a fan of movies that are just out on another planet I'd give this movie a shot, because even with all of the bad in it there is just an incredible collection of wild and way out things going on that you're very likely to find something to love.

On the exploitation scale of 1 to 10- 6.5 rounded up to 7.

Zombies, cannibalistic monks, kung fu, gore and tons of hilariously exploitative and entirely gratuitous nudity?! - Hell yes! - this has all the intrinsic ingredients to make it surely every blokes dream movie! And you know what? This heady mix of sleaze and action very almost lives up to the accolade to!

Marvel at such scenes as one of our hero's performing a daring flying kick through a moving trucks window (and breaking his foot in the process!), a seeming army of zombie samurai and a couple of still very agile zombie ninja(!!!), some decidedly creepy monks who spend most of their time laughing like imbeciles(!!!), an hilarious bar fight, an evil white suit wearing Nazi (complete with Hitler style comb over and moustache!) and enough leering, lingering close up shots of female breasts to fill an average porno! Yes indeed, this is great fun from beginning to end although it does have to be said that the main action featuring our heroes vs zombies sadly doesn't kick in until the final third of the flick which is a bit of a shame.

Nonetheless, if it's purely raw action and sleaze you're after then Raw Force certainly delivers!

"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.

I was going to give this one 9 out of 10 but had to knock it down because it quite simply wasted Jillian Kesner (RIP; you kicked my ass).

A nutty German who is apparently Hitler's younger brother, Chip, trades Philippine hookers for Jade to some weird monks ("Zey eat zem," Chip tells us) and uses a group of head-band-wearing Kung-fu thugs to protect the operation. If that sentence right there doesn't make you want to watch this film...

Zee chade mine must be kept a zeecret...sorry. Chip doesn't want anyone to know about the jade mine and when he finds out a low rent cruise ship is planning on making a tour of "Warrior Island" (dun dun duuun) he tells his thugs to take care of it. They fail of course, due to the First Commandment of Kung-fu: The good guy will always kick butt no matter how many bad guys attack him at once.

The thugs do manage to set the ship on fire and kill everyone on board except the plucky group of heroes. Their life raft beaches on the island and more Kung-fu ensues. The monks capture the group and tell them they may not leave until they have fought the monk's Kung-fu masters which is the queue for the Kung-fu ZOMBIES (!) to enter (I freaking love this film!).

The fight scenes were great, the over-acting was wonderful and the concept was so far out that it clicked like Fred Astaire in tap shoes. I can't end the review without a special shout out to Mitchell who was the ONLY man who could play the part of the captain. I laughed out loud every time he fired his pistol, especially when he tried to get the attention of a potential rescue plane by firing his pistol AT it! This film had it all and I can't do it justice here. Just see this film!

Things you didn't know: The South China Sea is loaded with piranha Asian chefs are ALWAYS Kung-fu masters Buddhist monks aren't always the peaceful guys they are rumored to be