Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

Based on a Japanese manga by Tetsuya Saruwatari, which developed into an animated series and finally this live action film, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1992) aka Lik Wong is probably one of the most comically gonzo, graphically gory features I've seen since viewing Peter Jackson's comical horror splatter fest Dead Alive (1992) aka Braindead. Written and directed by Ngai Kai Lam (Erotic Ghost Story), the film stars Siu-Wong Fan (Supercop 2) as a young man with superhuman abilities who ends up taking on the sadistic leaders of a corrupt prison system. Also appearing is Mei Sheng Fan (Year of the Dragon), Frankie Chin (Operation Scorpio), Yukari Oshima (Death Triangle), and Ka-Kui Ho (Once Upon a Time in China II).As the movie, set in the not to distant future of 2001 A.D., begins, we learn prisons have been privatized, and are run as franchised businesses, at least in Hong Kong, and we witness the arrival of a group of new inmates including a young, muscular man named Ricky. Shortly after settling in to his new surroundings, Ricky runs afoul of a mid-level flunky/bully, who subsequently recruits a homicidal blimp named Silly Lung to dispatch Ricky in the shower. Thing is Ricky isn't any ordinary schmuck, as he possesses superhuman strength along with powerful kung fu, enough to punch a hole through his obese attacker's guts causing them to spill out all over the floor. This causes the sadistic assistant warden, a fat slob with a hook for a hand and a prosthetic eyeball, to take notice, enough so to order the Gang of Four, a group of powerful prisoners with awesoma skills who rule the inmate population, to take Ricky to task. As Ricky stands up to the powerful and brutal leaders of the prison, the rest of the inmates start developing a rebellious attitude, seeing Ricky not only as their hero but their savior. Things eventually come to a head as Ricky uncovers, and subsequently destroys, an illicit business being run from the prison, resulting in the Warden, who was on vacation, making the scene, with his fat, goofy, annoying son in tow. More fights ensue along with some flashbacks, eventually leading to a full-scale riot as Ricky finds himself battling the warden himself, whose unorthodox kung fu is mighty to say the least.This film extremely violent, disgustingly gory, and actually, pretty funny, if you share a decidedly bent sense of humor. A lot of the comedy comes from the ridiculous English translations of the dialogue, along with the outlandish, and often grotesque, situations that ensue during the fight scenes. There's one scene where Ricky literally guts an opponent and the man, in his death throes, uses his own intestines to try and strangulate Ricky. Perhaps one of my more favored lines of dialogue, taken from the English subtitles, comes as Ricky threatens the warden with the following exclamatory statement..."You'll die mutilated today!"Classic stuff...I can't wait to use that line at work...anyway, I learned a number of things from this movie, including the following...1. If you're a wee, runty little fellow in prison it's probably best not to attack someone larger than you with a hand plane as they'll probably swipe it from you and use it to peel your face off, which, I'm guessing, is as painful as it sounds.2. In prison deceased inmates are transported wearing handcuffs, as I guess there's a concern that they may come back as the undead and try to escape.3. Severed tendons can be tied together in order to restore ones ability to utilize the affected limb.4. Crows seem to really love eyeballs, especially ones knocked out of someone's skull during a fight.5. Prison cell doors are rarely locked allowing the prisoners to come and go as they please.6. Apparently a flute and a trumpet sound so much alike they can be mistaken for one another.7. Keeping your prosthetic eye in the same glass of water that you drink from is kinda disgusting.8. The hollow part of a glass eyeball is a great place to store your breath mints.9. A leaf can be played in such a way that it sounds exactly like a flute...that is if you've still got your tongue.10. Prison finks generally don't fare well behind bars as they usually end up getting their skin removed or having their head literally punched off.As far as the story, well, it's fairly dodgy as there's plot holes galore (some of them ginormous enough to drive a bus through), but the visceral action sequences (the head popper bit is worth the price of admission alone) are copious and spread evenly throughout enough so to have kept me distracted from such shortcomings. Just to give you an idea of the brutality consistent with the film in one scene our hero is immobilized in a strange, rebar construct, and he's being uncooperative during the subsequent interrogation, which results in one of his tormentors shoving a fistful of razor blades in Ricky's mouth, taping it shut, and then smacking him viciously in the face. I won't tell you what happens next, but it's truly classic. All in all this is a spectacularly horrific film, certainly not for all audiences, but if you like your action extremely violent and cartoonish, your gore abundant, and your subtitled dialogue atrocious, then this one should be right up your alley.The back of the DVD case for this Tokyo Shock DVD release states the picture is presented in widescreen, with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, but I'd say it looks closer to 1.78:1...regardless, the picture is fairly clean and comes across well, and the Dolby Digital audio, available in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, is decent. There are subtitles in Chinese and English, along with the original theatrical trailer, cast and crew biographies and filmographies, along with a text synopsis of the plot. Also included are previews for the films Heroes Shed No Tears (1986), Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1978), Duel to the Death (1982), and Magnificent Butcher (1979).Cookieman108

DVD Review: Pertaining to the Tokyo Shock version. It's a great version even though the picture is a bit rough but it's overall very watchable. It has Chinese and English audio with English subs in 1:85 ratio.Blu Ray Version: A small little f*** up has occurred within this blu-ray. When the movie plays it's in full screen. You'll have to alter the opinions on your TV to widescreen to get the 1:78 aspect. To me it's minor but it's sort of moronic. Anyways, the picture quality hasn't changed much but I don't care. I like crappy picture. You have three audio options" English, Mandarin and Cantonese with readable subs. What gives this blu-ray SOME greatness is an interview with the main actor, Fan Siu Wong. The interview is 19 minutes long but it's a great interview about his life growing up and learning martial arts, his father, his time in the movie business and his thoughts on the movie Story Of Ricky which is great. He has a very buoyant personality and all that s***! Also some g@y s*** with some director.Movie review: This is my 2nd favorite movie of all time. It is a gore movie but it's the type of gore movie I like. It's story and unintentional humor is what makes this movie golden. Plus the martial arts action, violence, OST, acting and so forth consummates the brilliance this movie has to offer. Perfect in every way.Conclusion: 4 stars for the DVD, 4 1/2 for the Blu-Ray and 5 stars for Story Of Ricky.

I heard about this movie in a Grindhouse/Exploitation movie group on Facebook. Everybody thst raffled about it had so much love for this film thst I had to order it and check it out.HOLY COW. This movie is so fantastically nuts it's amazing!!! The basic story is that a mysterious inmate named Riki shows up at a corrupt maximum security prison full of a bizarre group of criminals. Each cell block is controlled by a powerful martial arts master criminal. Riki must fight his way through them all to get to the evil warden.When I say he fights his way THROUGH them, he really does. It is super gory and violent, but in a kind of over the top way. I swear that Mortal Kombat got a lot of their finishing moves from this movie. It is AMAZING. Exploding limbs, hearts getting ripped out, heads getting punched through. It is really something to see.This instantly became one of my favorite martial arts movies of all time, even though the fight choreography isn't as tight as a lot of Kung Fu movies, it makes up for it in pure carnage.You simply HAVE to see it to believe it.

Work's great in the US , in DVD player, I was a little nervous it wasn't going to work but it did ad now I can watch it wherever I want.

Ricky was born with superhuman strength, thugs kill his sister, he kills them. That's shown in flashback. The movie starts with Ricky arriving in jail. He wants no trouble, but the won't submit to the prison bullies who work for the sadistic warden. That's as complicated as the plot gets. Weak story, gleefully cheesy gore effects(e.g., bad guy cuts his arm with a machete, Ricky ties the cut tendons back together with his teeth, finds he can still make a fist, continues to fight, etc.), pretty much hilariously bad. I loved it! If you like the cheesy B's, give The Story of Ricky a chance.

Film incroyable, tout comme le vendeur!

great dvd presentation of one of the most violent, non-stop action films from HK. There is an interview on this disc with the star Fan Siu Wong that I found interesting. Japanese film fans will notice Mr Tamba Tetsuro in a small role.

Ottimo riversamento in dvd di questo "(s)cultone" dei primi anni 90, considerato l'età di questa produzione non ci si può proprio lamentare, chi legge questa recensione conoscerà di sicuro il film e la sua storia, passando all'aspetto tecnico si segnala che:il film è frutto di un nuovo transfer HDcome extra ci sono il trailer, un intervista a Fan Siu Wong e un doc "Ricky with a shotgun"Audio:1) inglese 2.02) inglese 5.13) cantonese 2.04) cantonese 5.15) mandarino 2.0Sub:1) IngleseATTENZIONE: il film è codice regionale 1 (ossia USA) non funziona sui player europei che sono settati su codice regionale 2, quindi o avete un lettore comprato in USA oppure uno dezonato, la scheda di Amazon trae in inganno con la dicitura "edizione germania" che è un palese errore.

Ridiculous. Over-the-top. Hilarious. Demented. Do any of these words really do justice to this brilliant but quite insane film? Probably not. But make no mistake. `Story of Ricky' may have been filmed on a miniscule budget and with virtually no concessions at all to realism or even consistency, but it is 87 minutes of pure, undiluted entertainment of the highest order and about as much fun as movies get. It also makes Jackie Chan's `City Hunter' look like the work of Ingmar Bergman by comparison!Fan Siu-wong is Riki Ho (or Ricky Oh), imprisoned for slaying the sleazy drug-dealer who caused the death of Ricky's girlfriend. Once he's incarcerated, Ricky finds himself dealing with those old prison film mainstays: bullying inmates, corrupt authority figures and cell-block hard-men. But that brief synopsis, applicable to all too many undistinguished action films, doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how crazy this flick is.For starters, there's the violence. Exaggerated and super-gory don't even begin to cover it. Trained by his Uncle Ghost, Ricky is superhumanly strong to a cartoonish, comic-book degree (apt enough, given this film's basis in Japanese manga), and this leads to some magnificently mad conflicts. Holes are punched in stomachs, fists are disintegrated, eyeballs go flying and are eaten by birds, heads are thumped clean off, people are skinned alive, razorblades are consumed, and limbs are forced into meat-grinders. As other reviewers have observed, if this was remotely realistic, it'd be nightmarish. But while the cheap 'n' cheerful special effects are great fun, everything is so deliberately ludicrous that the whole hyper-kinetic spectacle is an unforgettable 'splatstick' joy.And of course, there are the characters. The film has the feel of a 90s beat-`em-up video game, with a serious of consecutively harder `bosses' for Ricky to combat. There's the fatman who ate the warden's horse (one of the rare spectacles the film denies us a chance to see!), the thug who planes a man's face with a woodwork tool, and the Gang of Four, a motley crew of inmates who each hold mastery over one wing of the prison. Each, of course, has their own fighting specialities (from simple brute force to wielding what looks like a pair of knitting needles, yarn attached!) and distinctive appearances. Indeed, one is in fact an actress playing an understandably effeminate male role! And on the side of order there's the Warden (you wouldn't like him when he's angry...) who wields an explosive pistol and has a fat, obnoxious, candy-guzzling little son. The biggest villain of the piece, however, is Cyclops, the monocular assistant warden, a man who keeps mints in his false eye, torments our hero with his hooked artificial hand, and meets one of the funniest fates in the film. And that's not to forget Ricky himself, a moral crusader who sets off metal detectors due to the number of bullets he's got rattling around inside him, a man whose limbs seem able to take massive damage and be oddly unscathed in the next scene, a man who punches gravestones apart for laughs, a man, nay, a god amongst lesser mortals.Downsides? Well, as noted, this is a very low budget piece, and clearly all the money has gone into the gore effects, meaning that the actual prison sets are very bland, `vanilla' and characterless for a supposedly `futuristic' facility. But the film still manages to fit in bizarre visual spectacles, like an inmate strung up on a vast crucifix, so it's hardly as if it's lacking in visual flair. Besides, the pace and performances have so much energy and enthusiasm, the film is more than carried by them.Overall then, if your sense of humour does not extend to watching one man pull out his own intestines and try to strangle another man with them, steer well clear. For the rest of us, this is an absolutely unmissable piece of cinema.

Best kung-fu goriffic movie out there! I love everything about it. I wish the director would make more like this.