Michael's Martial Arts Lase-O-Rama: Riki-Oh: Story of Ricky (1992, Star Entertainment)
Ricky Ho (Fan Siu-Wong) arrives as an inmate at one of the nation's recently-privatized prisons to serve out a 10 year sentence for manslaughter. Before he can even be assigned a cell, he sets off the metal detector -- not for smuggling contraband or possession of a deadly weapon, but because of the five bullets still lodged in his chest.
Ricky, in case you couldn't already tell from his incredible physique, took an extra level or two in 'badass'. The guy isn't interested in brawling with guards or escalating tensions with the other inmates, he just wants to serve his sentence in peace. Since this would make for a dull film, we instead have to settle for a non-stop orgy of shattered limbs, obliterated torsos, and a larger-than-average number of eyeballs popped out of heads.
See, Ricky's obvious strength prompts most of the other inmates and guards to leave him alone, but the Assistant Warden (Fan Mei-Sheng, who is Fan Siu-Wong's father in real life) can't abide the idea of some random guy who he can't control, especially when that guy dares to stand up to the injustices perpetrated against the weaker inmates by the larger, more powerful crime lords.
At first, it's low-level prison goons who get their comeuppances at Ricky's hands. Samuel (Lam Kai-Wing), a sadistic con who beats a weaker man and shaves off his nose and forehead with a wood planer, takes a face-plant into a nail-studded board when Ricky trips him. In retaliation, Samuel bribes some guards to let Zorro, a morbidly-obese killing machine resembling Heart from Fist of the North Star, out of solitary confinement early. Promising him 30 pounds of rice if he murders Ricky, Zorro attacks Ricky in the prison shower room.
Ricky retaliates by literally blasting through the guy's stomach, using a punch that enters through one side and exits the other, then tearing open his midriff, unleashing a tsunami of blood and internal organs.
And so it goes for the rest of the picture: the Assistant Warden turns to "The Gang of Four", a quartet of powerful inmates who have each been given control of a specific cell block in exchange for keeping the local prison population in line, to snuff out Ricky. Despite taking some horrific injuries, including a spike driven through his palm, powdered glass blown into his eyes, and a tendon in his arm severed, Ricky returns the damage upon his attackers ten-fold, subjecting them to increasingly barbaric deaths until the Warden (Ho Ka-Kui) returns from his vacation and decides it's up to him to put Ricky in his place.
As everybody knows, only the most powerful kung fu master gets to call himself 'Warden', and while it may not seem like it, this Warden is actually a 'roided-out rage monster of seething hatred, ready to commit acts of unmitigated cruelty with no warning. When he squares off against Ricky in the prison kitchens, we know only one man will be left alive when the last punch is thrown.
That is as it should be.
In the world of over-the-top chop-socky Hong Kong flicks, there's Story of Ricky, and then there's literally every other movie ever made.
How and why this got made could be the focus of another article entirely, but this is a Chinese adaptation of a Japanese manga which had itself already been turned into a pair of reasonably successful animated features. It's best to keep all of this in mind while watching, because once you understand that Riki-Oh is basically a live-action anime, you can turn off your brain and let the carnage speak for itself.
If you're turned off by gratuitous violence, Story of Ricky is not your movie. As stated before, this is a movie which exists to showcase brutality the likes of which are normally left confined to the pages of manga because depicting such things in real life is beyond the ken of most directors.
"Most directors" are not Nam Lai-choi however. Credited here as "Simon Nam", Nam Lai-choi was one of Hong Kong's most notorious directors and cinematographers, having worked on an absurd number of Category III (the Hong Kong version of an NC-17 or 18+ certification in the West) releases over his thirty year career in the industry.
What's most surprising to me about Story of Ricky is how closely it sticks to the manga's source materials, something which can't be said for its anime adaptation which changed or deleted a number of characters and plot points for the sake of expediency and their 50-minute run times. Here, outside of some hilarious name changes for the English dub, what you get on-screen is what you got on the comic page. Even the cover of the laserdisc points this out, showcasing the film's "Gang of Four" right alongside their original manga counterparts.
The main thing Story of Ricky discarded for this adaptation is any sense of seriousness. Sure, the plot wants us to be sad for the death of Ricky's girlfriend, but you could cut the playful flashbacks of Ricky and Anne's (Gloria Yip) carefree, lovey-dovey days and replace them with similar scenes of Anakin and Padme from Attack of the Clones, and you'd get pretty much the same movie. Nam showcases them for the sake of the plot, but its clear his interests lie more in seeing how much of his budget can go towards pyrotechnics, wire-work, and gallons of red-dyed corn syrup.
Lest you think I'm kidding, there are scenes in Story of Ricky which make Paul Verhoeven and Peter Jackson look like masters of restraint when it comes to spilling bodily fluids. One battle which sees Ricky shove his opponent into an industrial-sized meat grinder involved so much fake blood sprayed around the set that it took three days' worth of baths for Fan Siu-Wong to scrub it all off.
Actors' unions? What on earth are those?
Chances are, if you're over the age of thirty, you've already seen Story of Ricky. When I was in high school, it was commonly passed around as a fifth- or sixth-generational VHS copy, commonly offered for sale by less-reputable dealers at local comic book conventions. Nowadays, of course, you can find any number of legitimate releases, most of which offer you multi-language options, allowing you to watch the film in Cantonese or Mandarin with subtitles instead of having to rely solely on the English dub.
If you're under the age of 30, Ricky Ho (or Riki-Oh Saiga, if you're talking about the manga) is the original One-Punch Man. There, you now know everything you need to know in order to understand how awesome this movie is. Literally the only down-side to this movie is that there were a total of seventy-five chapters in the Riki-Oh manga series, and this film only adapts the first twelve (and half of the thirteenth). By all rights, there should have been five or six more Riki-Oh movies, but this and an unofficial sequel (still starring Fan Siu-Wong in the title role) were the only ones ever produced.
What a shame.
Martial arts fans, gore buffs, and those who enjoy cinema with a decidedly grindhouse flare, Story of Ricky is everything you've heard it was, and more. Come for the fight scenes, stay for the violent dismemberment, and bring along friends with strong stomachs. Riki-Oh's the real deal. Enjoy the trailer: