Story of Ricky

This film could be seen as the Chinese version of "Braindead" aka "Dead Alive": a Bruce Lee-like guy named Ricky, who´s talented with supernatural powers, fights his way through a corrupt prison and leaves a trail of blood and guts behind him. For sure, "Story of Ricky" is a very violent and gory flick, but everything in it is so exaggerated that no one should take it too serious: there is gut-strangulation, people in a meat grinder and for the showdown the leader of the prison mutates to a giant Kung Fu-fighting monster..! However, this film is so funny that you will laugh your heads off! Larded with typical Asian humor "Story of Ricky" is one of the definite cult movies that were shot in the last decade! If you had fun with it, try also to find director Ngai Kai Lam´s Indiana Jones-fantasy-action-gore-adventure "The Seventh Curse" (Check out the review which I wrote under my former pseudonym "Daywalker"..!) starring Chow Yun Fat, which contains nearly the same plenty of gore and curious ideas as this one has! Two great films that would make a great double-feature!! Check´em out!!!

"Riki Oh" is a frightening piece of work. Some of the bizarrest stuff ever put on celluloid to my knowledge. Every single frame is bursting with insanity and confusion. Don't even try to understand it, you might as well try to divide large numbers in your head for an hour and a half.

Riki is a very hunky prisoner in a future where corporations control everything. I know this information because the producers felt it necessary to put this in TWO different captions at the start of the film. Just so we know.

Young Riki gets into a lot of trouble both with the guards and his fellow inmates. This allows him to rip his shirt off a lot and expose his flexed chest (Seriously, the guy takes his shirt about once every thirty seconds. He puts it back on just so he can take it off again.).

Somehow Riki was given supernatural powers that really help in a prison riot. You see Riki can punch through just about anything, be it animal, mineral or vegetable. He punches through walls, desks, pipes, bars, and lots of human bodies. Yes that's correct, he punches through people. Their arms, legs, stomachs, and sometimes heads.

This excessive violence lends the film to excessive gore. We're talking spilled jugs of Kool-Aid excessive. And you get to see it all; although the worst gore is rarely on screen for more than a split second. Still you get to see a guy eat razors, a person explode like a balloon and one guy get put in a huge meat grinder. Yummy!

The copy I saw was dubbed, and that only added to the fun. I recommend this movie, solely for goofing on it. Otherwise, it is a very bad film. Only for those with a good sense of humor. You have been warned.

STORY OF RICKY (Li Wang)

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Mono

After killing the drug-addicted lowlife who murdered his fiancée, an unlucky strongman (Terry Fan Siu-wong) is remanded to a corrupt prison where he's forced to defend himself against inmates and tyrannical officials, spilling gallons of blood and gore along the way...

Notorious for its splattery violence and hyper-stylized melodrama, STORY OF RICKY - derived from the Japanese manga 'Riki-Oh' created by Tetsuya Saruwatari - is directed by former cinematographer Laam Naai-choi, whose earlier efforts (THE SEVENTH CURSE, EROTIC GHOST STORY, etc.) rarely scaled the same dizzy heights of outrage and audacity. Shot on a shoestring budget in Macao, the film combines high octane bloodshed with "Carry On"-style humor (watch out for the incredible moment when a character uses his intestines as a weapon!), mixed with visual references to earlier exploitation fare such as THE STREET FIGHTER (1974) and THE FURY (1978), though the makeup effects are rudimentary at best, in keeping with the film's comic-book tone.

Japanese actress Yukari Oshima takes second billing as one of the *male* villains (she's dubbed with a masculine voice), and fan favorite Gloria Yip (SAVIOUR OF THE SOUL) plays the hero's ill-fated girlfriend in a series of corny 'feel-good' flashbacks. But the film belongs to handsome, hunky Terry Fan, ripping his shirt off at the drop of an intestine and posing impressively for the various combat sequences. Clothed or unclothed, he's never less than magnificent to behold, and director Laam uses the actor's exaggerated studliness to lampoon the homoerotic spectacle which once fuelled 'golden age' kung fu pictures. It ain't Shakespeare, but trash/splatter fans will embrace the movie with gusto. Also known as STORY OF RICKY AKA RIKI-OH.

(Cantonese dialogue)

Ngai Kai Lam, the director of the first and best "Erotic Ghost Story", captained this magnificent gore- and fight-fest set in an unconventional Hong Kong prison. It is so gleefully over-the-top that it exists in its own ludicrous stratosphere and is one of the most memorable Hong Kong exploitation films ever made. Siu-Wong Fan is terrific as Riki-oh, a meditative lad who is imprisoned for defending his girlfriend's honor. Possessing almost supernatural strength and fighting prowess, he is forced to fight The Gang of Four, a bunch of crazy, imprisoned superhero types who appear to control the prison's inmates with the approval of the corrupt, one-eyed assistant aarden (Mui Sang Fan), keeper of a massive porno mag collection and owner of a screw-on hook he uses to cart human trash away. The blood-soaked scenes of violence are hilarious and grotesque. Guts are ripped from a man's stomach and used to strangle him. Birds peck out an eyeball. Heads are squashed until they explode. Ricki even knocks down a prison wall with one nasty punch. Originally a Japanese manga (and there's an animated version, too), "The Story of Ricky" has a great, bombastic score, ultra-bloody effects, operatic performances, and a fat Japanese boy, too. It all adds up to top notch entertainment for the whole family.

Close second to "Dead Alive" as goriest film ever made. Rivers of ridiculously over-exaggerated red will fill your screen and turn your stomach.

Riki was just an innocent (though super-powered, think Mr. Incredible) youth until the day his girlfriend was killed in a botched rape attempt by gangsters. After dealing out his bloody revenge he is carted off to prison where he wishes to serve his sentence as peacefully and undisturbed as he can. However, this pseudo sci-fi Asian prison is any thing but peaceful. Prison film clichés ensue (ie. corrupt guards, an evil warden, an escape attempt).

Technically speaking, the movie isn't very good. The sets lack believability, the dialogue is pretty horrible, and the acting is way over board. The bad guys seem to be bad because they can be...either that or they are just bored, one or the other. Outside of Riki, there is no background attached to any of the characters and none of them are ever developed properly. Additionally, the plentiful fight scenes aren't choreographed very well. Top it all off with some of the cheesiest kung-fu dubs ever recorded and you have a film suffering from lack of talent.

So why the positive score? This is a damn fun movie, that's why. Each and every fight scene ends with a gory display of gruesome blood letting. Heads crushed, stomachs torn open, eyes popped out, faces cut off, one villain even tries to strangle Riki with his own intestines. Amidst the crimson flow, the dumb-as-a-brick story is awash in unintentional humor; the more serious it takes itself the funnier it is. Even the gore itself makes for a joke, it's so over the top it ceases to offend and becomes a sight gag.

Main stream viewers will not get this movie and will simply not like it. Genre fans, however, will find the holy grail of gore flicks.

8/10