Where to watch Raven Hawk
2 1/2 Stars
A Native-American woman, who was framed for the murders of her parents years before, returns to her reservation to seek revenge.
During the 1990s, Thursday nights were reserved for HBO’s two-hour time block showcasing world-premiere movies. These usually star the likes of Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, Olivier Gruner, Lorenzo Lamas, and so on. You should know by those names if this is the sort of line-up for you. I reveled in the gloriousness of these movies, not realizing at that time that it was the golden era of the B-movie, and I devoured this weekly feed of testosterone-soaked action films, thinking there was no end in sight.
Raven Hawk is one of the movies I consumed during the multiple-year run of HBO’s Thursday Night Prime slot. I was already Albert Pyun, the film’s director; I had been following him since Cyborg, but I was also a fan of former Ms. Olympia Rachel McLish. However, when I saw it, I was unimpressed and underwhelmed by Raven Hawk and the equally silly and similarly themed Desert Kickboxer.
Today, I realized that I had judged Raven Hawk too harshly the first time around. This is among Pyun’s less obscure works; the narrative and visuals are straight-forward. The experimental and frankly annoying traits of his later films are blessedly absent here. It seems that Pyun struggled on every project between delivering a crafted genre picture or an art-house flick. That turmoil led to many producers recutting Pyun’s footage without his input and releasing the films as typical action or sci-fi movies. When watching something from Pyun’s film Cannon, you can always tell that somewhere there exists a version of the movie that is way further out than the one you’re currently seeing.
In the case of Raven Hawk, the lack of the Pyun-esque makes the movie a handsomely shot and very conventional Rambo knock-off, albeit this time with a female bodybuilder. This material is basically a slightly above-average episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. The muscular and athletic McLish, who still remains feminine, is such a capable screen hero that she carries the movie on her sculpted shoulders. I wish Pyun had continued to collaborate with her instead of employing the hulking Sue Adams for his Nemesis franchise. Raven Hawk is very one-dimensional in its execution, but sometimes that’s just the order of the day.
Directed by: Albert Pyun
Written by: Kevin Alyn Elders
Starring: Rachel McLish, John Enos III, Ed Lauter