“Are you the boys from the Burbank karate club?”

Drake’s rating: Because sometimes you don’t want your force well-done.

Drake’s review: All right, let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Raw Force is not a very good movie.

It is, however, an exceptionally entertaining exploitation flick.

Seriously, we have cannibal monks, undead ninjas, and martial arts mayhem. Things get stabbed, shot, punched, kicked, beheaded, and blown up with abandon. There’s a boat captained by Cameron Mitchell! And a weird party on the boat! And then pirates attack the boat!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The beginning of the film finds a team of kidnappers trading women to a group of monks led by Filipino film star Vic Diaz. In return they get baskets of jade, which they take back to the Philippines and carve into statues. The statues are then sold at discount prices to tourists and… Y’know, I’m really not sure how they make a profit from this. It seems like the overhead of keeping a group of thugs on the payroll to kidnap the women, flying them all out to a remote island and then flying back again would really kill any profit margin. Plus you have to pay someone to carve the jade into those little statues that the tourists love, right? Granted, I’m the last person you should turn to for business advice, but this all seems a bit screwy to me.

Nonetheless, that’s the backbone of the paper-thin plot. The big wrinkle in that plot comes in the way of a tourist ship sailing to the Philippines from Los Angeles, bearing the much-ballyhooed Burbank karate club. That’s right, the Valley has Cobra Kai, and Burbank has… a karate club. And it consists of three guys, none of whom are particularly convincing karatekas. Still, they’re intent on going to Warrior’s Island, which is of course the same island that the monks inhabit. They even have a Warrior’s Island brochure, which means the monks advertise the very island where they indulge in slave-trading and cannibalism. Sure, why not?

After a five-minute cruise the ship arrives in the Philippines, and our Burbank Brawlers encounter the evil kidnappers. Learning of their plans to go to Warrior’s Island, the hoods, who are led by a guy that looks like he should be fronting a Loverboy tribute band, go on the offensive. Fortunately Go Chin, the ship’s cook, is on hand to clean house since the karate club’s cred really doesn’t stretch past the Burbank city limits.

On the way to Warrior’s Island the ship has a party, and a few dozen people we’ve never seen before show up to eat cake and have some truly bizarre conversations. A male stripper tries to pick up the woman who works for SWAT, a religious zealot shames a centerfold hopeful, a furry bartender breaks an ice block with his head, and a gangster’s moll seduces a third-grade teacher. Stop looking at me like that. I am not making any of this up.

But the kidnappers are a bunch of party-poopers who raid the wardrobe of the Village People, turn into pirates, and board the ship, still intent on keeping anyone from going to Warrior’s Island. Which, I remind you, is openly advertised by the monks. With brochures and everything.

The good news is, the Burbank karate club is there to save the day! The bad news is… well, it’s the Burbank karate club. The ship catches fire, the main cast escape in a life raft and presumably everyone else drowns. Look, it’s the Burbank karate club, we’re not talking Jeff Speakman or Jean-Claude Van Damme here.

The raft of course floats to Warrior’s Island, and from there things go from just plain weird to flat-out bizarre as the Boys from Burbank face off with the zombie ninjas who are under the control of the giggling cannibal monks. Yes, I really just typed that sentence. And I haven’t even mentioned the Hitler wannabe who’s employing the kidnappers.

Originally titled Kung-Fu Zombies, Raw Force is at least three different movies jammed into one 86-minute love letter to all things exploitation. None of it makes sense and the movie should just be a ridiculous mess, but somehow it isn’t. I would honestly credit a lot of that to B-movie legend Jim Wynorski, who was brought in to cut the movie down to a manageable length from the 105-minute rough cut. At that length Raw Force would have overstayed its welcome, but as it is, it’s a quick, fun excursion into a half-dozen exploitation genres, all mashed together into one insane flick.

And I’m still waiting for that sequel that was teased at the end.

Intermission!

• “Don’t call me madam!”
• Do all boats have that ‘70s basement wood paneling?
• He’s trying to look out a window that isn’t even there.
• Lobster chop suey and french-fried squid. Yummy?
• Sure, accept a drink from the obviously psychotic bartender,. What could go wrong?
• Shouldn’t the karate champion guy be able to take on a lone pirate?
• Holding hands with the pirate until the woman with the black belt can save him. Burbank karate!
• Lloyd’s got a gun!
• Never mind. Lloyd lost the gun.
• Giggling monks are kind of messed up. Especially in slow motion.
• No one got the memo that piranhas are freshwater fish.
• Go Chin is the hero of this movie. Don’t let anyone tell you different.