Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tour de force of blood, mayhem, and carnage - 5 stars, August 24, 1999
By A Customer
You MUST buy/rent/steal the video "the story of Ricki Oh"....An instant classic and quite possibly the most violent, gory, and graphic film ever made. Multiple gorings, eye gougings,stabbings, impalings, and dismemberments. Dudes get buried alive, encased in concrete, flayed, their tongues cut out, crushed under presses, and run through meat grinders. Guys are chopped in the face with swords, boards studded with nails, and have wood planes run up their face. Did I menntion that the prison warden in this movie shoots prisoners with exploding bullets that make them expand like balloons beforee they burst like road kill underneath a car tire?The hero ricki punched through dudes, decapitates his enemies with oopen fist blows, crushes guys heads like he's popping a zit. There's even a scene where a guy, who is about to die in a fight with Ricki, grabs a knife and stabs himself in the stomach...then he pulls out his intestines and tries to strangle ricki with them.... With memorable lines like: "They gave me 30 pounds of rice to cut you up, turn you into mince meat, and put you in a pie..." "Oscar has shown his tatoos...now he must kill!!!!" "Ricki, I am your uncle. I have known you since your were 7 or 8 years old, when you possessed suoperjuman strength. Do you still possess your super human strength?" "Chi Cong feeds on strength!!!!!" "I have hit you in your death spot..soon you will die" "His style of Kung Fu is unorthodox...I do not think I can defeat him..."
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I was promised seven bags of rice to turn you into mince meat and put you in a pie.", January 4, 2007
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
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing Compares to Ricky-Oh, April 15, 2000
Incredible storytelling and spellbinding performances make Ricky-Oh arguably the finest cinematographic work ever produced. The exposition is unforgettable, suspenseful and riveting. The characters, plot, and conflict are introduced with such masterful artistry that the film could end after the first half hour and rightfully be declared as the pinnacle of movie-making.Yet events transpire, with the awe-inspiring resolution filling you with a surge of emotion. One of the most memorable denouements of all time marks the end of the this most memorable of films. If you never see this movie, in no way can you *ever* claim to be a well-educated person of the arts. This is a bona-fide classic, a seminal work that encapsulates our century. You owe it to yourself to see this film.
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