On the Norwegian Wikipedia page for the 1982 exploitation epic RAW FORCE — probably the only time I’ll ever get to begin a sentence that way — we are informed that the movie was banned in Norway in 1984. That’s the most attention any kind of majority, political or moral or otherwise, has paid this movie. RAW FORCE is made for almost no one, because it is apparently made for almost everyone. (Except children. This is not, please, a movie for small children.) Nearly every convention or trope of genre movies from the first seventy or so years of the existence of film is expended in this one rickety heap of madness.

When we discussed RAW FORCE on the Daily Grindhouse podcast, I noted that describing this movie is like fighting a giant squid: Just when you’ve bested one wavy storytelling strand, another one snaps up and grabs you by the throat. It’s a mess. It’s a glorious food-fight orgy of a mess.

Here’s the vintage trailer from the 1980s, which is quite likely the most joyfully dishonest trailer I’ve ever seen:

That trailer literally sells a different movie. The clips are the same, but some of the character names and all of their backstories are totally different. The editors somehow cobbled together a cohesive story from several scenes that have no connection. This is the SHOGUN ASSASSIN of movie trailers. RAW FORCE is plenty of kinds of fun, but one adjective that does not apply is “cohesive.” This is the summary I gave on the podcast:

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

— Anton Chekhov.

Okay. So early on in RAW FORCE, when a plane lands on a remote island and a character mentions that the waters surrounding the island are infested with vicious piranha, you can bet you will see those fish by the end of the movie. And if that character is a white-suited human trafficker who looks and talks pretty much exactly like Adolf Hitler, you may fairly assume he’ll be the one to meet them.

Otherwise, RAW FORCE, also known as KUNG FU CANNIBALS, completely ignores the principle of Chekhov’s gun. This movie operates under its own rules, and also it doesn’t have any rules. If you somehow managed to drink up all the movies and television shows of the 1970s and then you barfed them back up, the mess on the bathroom floor might look like this.

Saloon fights, graveyard fights, bazooka fights, hippies in warpaint, gratuitously naked ladies, karate-chopping hobbit bartenders, giggling monks who dine on human women, ninja zombies, a BOOGIE NIGHTS style group of protagonists calling themselves the Burbank Karate Club, an ornery sea captain, a kung fu chef, an extended riff on ‘Gilligan’s Island’,and the aforementioned worst person in human history, Adolf fuck-his-mother Hitler: All this and more in RAW FORCE.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PODCAST!

If you listen to that podcast, you’ll also hear me put forth the theory that if Adam McKay and Will Ferrell were to remake RAW FORCE, that remake would make eleventeen million dollars. I stand by that theory, and here’s who I think should play who:

MARK WAHLBERG as MIKE (2nd from rt.)

JOHN C. REILLY as JOHN (in the middle)

JAMES FRANCO as GARY SCHWARTZ (2nd from left)

TYLER PERRY as THOMAS SPEER (left)

&

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE as COOPER (right)

FRED WILLARD as LLOYD

SCARLETT JOHANSSON as COOKIE

TONY JAA as GO CHIN (left)

&

REGIS PHILBIN as CAPTAIN HARRY (right)

MERYL STREEP as HAZEL

&

JAMES FRANCO as BARTENDER *

*SHOCKING DUAL ROLE!!!

MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY as ZOMBIE OF MUSHASHI

MICKEY ROURKE as ZOMBIE OF MUSHASHI #2

NICOLAS CAGE as ZOMBIE OF MUSHASHI #3

and DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON as VIC DIAZ

— JON ZILLA.

Visit Vinegar Syndrome’s RAW FORCE Facebook page here.

Click here to order the splendid RAW FORCE Blu-Ray/DVD package from Vinegar Syndrome. Please, please, please! 

And I’m over here on Twitter:

@JON ZILLA___

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Jon Abrams

Editor-In-Chief at Daily Grindhouse

Jon Abrams is a New York-based writer, cartoonist, and committed cinemaniac whose complete work and credits can be found at his site, Demon’s Resume. You can contact him on Twitter as @JonZilla___.

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Tags: Blu-ray, Boobs, Butts, Cameron Mitchell, Edward Murphy, Explosions, Jim Wynorski, Monks, Mullets, Naked Ladies, Piranha, Vic Diaz, Vinegar Syndrome, World Cinema, Zombies