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Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky Director: Ngai Kai Lam Number of Items: 1 Format: Color Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 90 minutes Studio: Media Blasters Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2000-09-05 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 85 Average rating: 4.5 "Ricki - So-So" I purchased the DVD after seeing it shown on the 100 most goriest films on Channel 4 (UK). I found a copy in Virgin and read the review quotes. The quotes made a comparison to Brain Dead and Evil Dead 2, incidating that Riki-Ho was something special. I have been watching Hong Kong films and gore fest films for over 20 years and this film was clearly nothing special. The special effects were quite graphic, but to be honest in terms of, what I call, 'upsetting gore', the film was pretty tame. It was fantasy violence to the extreme; the kind of gore that you laugh at and don't think to yourself 'now that's nasty'. As this film is purely about gore (the script having about as much depth as a paddling pool), its reputation of containing graphic violence was unjustified. Compared to the George A. Romero's films (especially 'Day of the Dead', where the guy's face is torn off and he screaches his head off with a high pitch noise) Riki-Ho was Manga/Hong Kong cartoon ridiculousness. If you want real gore films, Peter Jackson's Bad Taste/Brain Dead are still untouched by this Hong Kong rubbish. Be wise - Do not purchase this item - If you are not convinced rent a copy for a few quid - do not spend £20 on your own copy. "Yeah baby, yeah!" The Story Of Ricky directed by Ngai Kai Lam 1991, 91 mins. Riki-Oh, or The Story Of Ricky, or King Of Strength, or Li Wang, or Lai Wang, or Riki Ô, is quite the infamous movie. Originally based on an ultra-violent manga, it revolves around a guy named, get this, Ricky (crowd cheers: "No really!?"). Ricky is going to jail. Why is Ricky going to jail? Because Ricky killed some drug dealers. Why did Ricky kill some drug dealers? Because they killed Ricky's girlfriend. Why did they kill Ricky's girlfriend? They didn't, but that's a different story. See the movie, and you'll see. Hilarious. However, Ricky is in jail. And it's hell. This jail consists of four divisions, each with one leader. All of those leaders are quite brutal and they give Ricky, who stands up against them, quite the hard time. Well, that's the story. So apparently, Ricky's so called story, isn't much of a story at all. Then why should one watch this movie? Well, maybe for the hilarious scenes, and more likely for its reputation of 'one of the most violent Hong Kong movies ever made!!!' (as the box of my Riki-Oh DVD modestly states). The humor is quite obvious, although it shows that this movie was made to be at least semi-serious. However, the props are of such bad quality, that you can do nothing but burst out in laughter when you see a man falling face-down on a piece of wood with spikes sticking out of it, since the man very obviously is not a man, but a shamefully bad looking doll. Wow. However, this has its charm. It makes you feel sympethetic towards the creators, because they obviously tried to make something good out of this; they just didn't have the money, nor the ability, nor the talent. As for this movie being 'REALLY VIOLENT AND SHOCKING' and yatta yatta, well, to a certain extent. There's some (exquisite, I must say!) gore featured in Riki-Oh. Be amazed when you see a guy trying to strangle Ricky with his own intestines, be shocked when you see a woman stuffing Ricky's mouth full with razor knifes and then beating him in the face repeatedly, be in awe when you see Ricky punch holes all through some other dude, be warned. Ultimately, this is a great kung-fu movie with a brilliant amount of gore. It doesn't make for a good movie, but it sure does make for a nice one! Sven says: Scares? -1/10 Gore? 10/10 (albeit obviously fake) Number of people slaughtered in incredible ways? I lost the count/10 Fun factor? 10/10 Did-they-really-kill-his-girlfriend? 0/10 "Two severed thumbs up" A friend showed me this movie and after seeing it, i knew i had to add it to my collection. I always wished someone would make a live action ninja scroll, and this is the closest i have seen(Minus the monsters). Well, i guess there is one "monster" in the movie and it could have been done better. But, hey if you dig horror and kung-fu, you should check it out. I don't think you have to be really into either genre(horror/kung-fu) to fully enjoy this movie, Just dig alot of action in your movies,Oh and blood and guts. Hey, i have a pretty good dvd collection and some of my movies are great and some most people wouldn't waste their time with, but i've played this movie for alot of my friends and we all had a good time watching it. Maybe it was all the alcohol and whatever, but riki-oh is a cool movie and should be in every <film> lovers collection. "Faster, Riki-oh---Kill! Kill! Kill!" Blood! Guts! Glory! Look, let's boil this thing right down to brass knuckles and make sure *nothing* gets lost in translation: if you want to know what you're getting with "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky" (or "Lai Wong", as it's known in Hong Kong), you're getting what an Arnold Schwarzenegger/Sylvester Stallone flick filmed in the mid-eighties could have been---would have been---had not Hollywood suffered beneath the lash of Jack Valenti and his fascist MPAA Ratings regime. The Plot? I'll humor you: martial arts master and all around good-ol-boy Riki-Oh gets sent to prison for---killing someone in a noble cause, I think, but I don't remember. I don't think it matters much. He offends the Assistant Warden, and has to fight for his life. That's pretty much it. You get John Carpenter-style shooting and synthesizer score; you get the heartless uber-capitalistic prison with its sadistic Assistant Warden (Cheng Chuen Yam, who could pass as Mao Tse-Tung's fat twin) who keeps breath mints that taste like rotten eggs in his glass eye. You get a completely deranged Warden with his incorrigibly nasty and wicked little kid (shades of "Midnight Express", if "Midnight Express" had been written by Satan). You get a hugely over-muscled protagonist, the hapless (but noble) Riki-Oh, played by the endearing Bin Shimada. I think his delivery was good, but I couldn't tell: for fun I was toggling between the Cantonese and Mandarin dialogue settings. I don't think the flick was shot originally in either language, because the lips don't match up to the dialogue---and hey, it looks like the film was shot in formerly Portuguese Macao (look at the name of the Prison as Riki's bus enters the fortress: looks like something "Masculino", which would be 'men' in Portuguese). You even get soul-wrenching sentimentality. But you get something we *never* got in Arnold flicks: you get sheer, unmitigated, untrammeled gore and brutality. For sheer second-by-second drunken entertainment value, Ricki-Oh is Hong Kong's Fort Knox. You get faces ripped totally off, heads smashed in and quivering gelatinously, arms torn out of their sockets, eyeballs gouged in by rusty spikes, hideously fat men getting Ricky's free "hands-on" liposuction technique, one of Riki's slobbering rivals gutting themselves and using their own bloody entrails to strangle our hero. And that's just the beginning! Be warned: uber disgusting-film-God Ngai Kai Lam shot "Story of Riki" for less money than I probably have in my pocket right now. These are cheap effects, set in a cheap (but effectively industrial) setting---but my God, they work some potent magic, and by the time the credits rolled I was giggling like a schoolgirl. Frankly, some of the battle set-pieces are primally effective: the scene where Riki-Oh challenges a cell-block gang leader, who sits, adorned with his Chinese gang tatoos, on a crucifix bearing the corpse of Riki's friend. If you ever wondered what Arnold would *really* do to those Mafioso without an "R" rating, see this flick. If you ever wondered what the real meaning of "guts and glory" was, see this flick. If you ever wanted to see an intestine used as lethal weapon, see this flick. Enjoy. "RIKI-OH-MY GOD!!!!" This is the Dead Alive of all kung-fu movies. The ultra violence is so over the top it is cartoonish and you won't take it seriously, but man do you find youself lovin it! I haven't had so much fun with a movie in a long time, you had the big tough guy thugs that you wanted to see beat up in the way only riki-oh could and boy did riki deliver. There was so much blood and gore in this movie it is hard not to compare it to Dead Alive. This is easily one of the best kung-fu/cult movies ever made and you would be doing yourself a favor if you added it to your movie collection or at least watched it.