Review: Riki-Oh/Story of Ricky

Set in the supposedly future date of 2001, Siu-Wong Fan stars as the title character, whose girlfriend (adorable Gloria Yip, seen in flashbacks) was killed by drug lords. He swears bloody vengeance and as a result of his actions is sent to a maximum security prison, convicted of murder. Prisons, as in most cinematic future societies, are now corporate-owned, and totally corrupt, exploiting the prisoners as slave workers. Riki-Oh/Ricky must not only contend with the evil and sadistic Assistant Warden (Miu Sang Fan), but also the vicious gang that control certain areas of the prison, known as The Gang of Four. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for the audience, our hero is no ordinary man. This is a dude who has been trained in a most unique martial art, a kind of internal kung-fu and breathing technique that gives him a kind of indestructibility to any form of pain or torture. Basically, you mess wit’ him, he gonna fuck you up, real good! So of course, every bad ass in prison decides to mess with him. Legendary Samurai star Tetsuro Tamba (whom non-martial arts movie aficionados may remember as Tiger Tanaka in “You Only Live Twice”) turns up as Riki-Oh’s martial arts instructor, sometimes inexplicably credited as ‘Uncle Ghost’.

This 1991 Japanese Manga adaptation from Hong Kong writer-director Ngai Kai Lam (director of “Erotic Ghost Story”, “The Seventh Curse”, and “Peacock King”, all excellent schlock films) is one of the most notorious of HK’s Cat III films, the classification usually reserved for softcore porn films (like the aforementioned “Erotic Ghost Story” or “The Weatherwoman”). Ain’t no sex or nudity in this one, folks. No, this one’s chief source of infamy is its insanely graphic display of violence and gore. Quite simply, this is just about the most graphically violent movie I had seen when first watching it about 15 years ago. I’m still not sure if there are too many others since then that I’ve seen of equal or greater violence. With one rather unfortunate and nasty exception, it’s also a helluva lot of fun for those who can take it.

Whether it’s due to the sheer over-the-top, oversaturation of gore, or whether it’s the budgetary limitations on display here, one cannot really get too horrified or sickened by the gore here. And oh what lovely, grisly stuff it is. The super-strong hero punches right through a guy’s stomach and out the other side (!), he strangles another man with his own intestines (!), a guy gets the crap beaten out of him with a wooden toy (!), a guy gets stabbed in the eye with a nail stuck in a block of wood (!), and the finale...well, that’s just totally indescribable (hint, it somewhat borrows a special FX moment from the climax of “Big Trouble in Little China”, and believe me, it just gets more messed up from there!). It’s all so hokey and ludicrous (and clearly based on a comic book/Manga), that whilst grandma ain’t gonna touch this one, I’d say it’s hardly comparable to the grisly, realistic gore one can easily view on PG-rated medical shows on TV. That stuff just makes me wanna puke, not this silly nonsense. The only time this film went over the line for me (and let’s face it, most Cat III films have that moment, such as the ‘Hello Pervert’ scene in “The Weatherwoman”) was when a dog gets kicked in half. I found that to be unnecessary and just plain foul. Yeah, I really can make a justification, in case you’re wondering. Violence against humans (or ‘ultra violence’ to use a rather appropriate term from “A Clockwork Orange”), whether extreme or not, is generally accepted as entertainment in movies, but violence against animals...I can’t off-hand think of a time when that has been in any way justifiable entertainment. I don’t even particularly laugh when Mongo punches his horse in “Blazing Saddles”.

Overall, this is truly an impressive, one-of-a-kind movie experience that makes all other futuristic prison movies look like pussies, even the really good ones like Stuart Gordon’s underrated “Fortress”. We also have a totally badass hero in the title character, played with much charisma and awesome physicality by Siu-Wong Fan (dude is ripped!), whose career sadly never really took off (possibly because of his association with such a controversial film). It’s a shame, because this dude could make Chuck Norris his bitch, and then some! I mean, he punches right through a fat dude’s stomach- can Chuck Norris do that? I don’t think so. He even punches another guy’s fist and the other guy’s fist crumbles. Can ol’ Chuck do that? Hell no, he can’t. Only Riki-Oh can do that! That’s the star’s dad, Miu-Sang Fan playing the grotesque deputy warden, btw, and more interestingly that’s a butch-looking woman (Japanese actress Yukari Oshima, with male voice dubbing) playing a sadistic male henchman. And check out that training montage where instead of breaking bricks, this morbid movie has our hero working out in the cemetery breaking headstones! I think it’s a really cool idea for our seemingly indestructible hero to be taught to have super-strength like it’s some kind of meditative state one is actually capable of mastering.

One-of-a-kind, balls-out over-the-top ultra-violent fun. How’s that for a hyphenated sentence? Sure, the ending is completely anti-climactic (and makes the whole film seem pointless if you allow yourself to think about it too much), and the futuristic setting seems like a bit of an afterthought and never properly integrated into the story, but those are minor complaints for a film with this much grisly upside. Even the prison in the film looks like the harshest, ugliest, and most depressing place ever. Everyone’s gotta see this movie at least once in their life, folks, so long as you can stomach it, of course. Here it is folks, the one cult classic that there’s no way Hollywood would dream of touching for a remake, and we can all be thankful for that.

Rating: B