Madeline
This is another movie coming out of my love of and listening to Movie Crush. Riki-Oh The Story of Ricky is a martial arts movie from Hong Kong about a prisoner with superhuman strength. This is one of those movies that is so bad it makes it fun to watch.
The Premise of Riki-Oh The Story of Ricky
Part of the premise of this movie is that in ten years (from 1991) prisons will be privatized and the people running them will be corrupt. Riki-Oh is doing his best to escape the prison and therefore get away from the possibility of living in this corrupt prison. Flashbacks through the movie explain how he got into prison and why he is so angry about the whole situation. There is not much to the premise of this movie as it is more about the visualizations than the plot. Especially when watching it for the cheesy visual effects.
The Blood and Guts
This movie is violent and full of blood and gore. Men have their faces cut off of their skull. Spikes go directly through a person’s biceps. Punching another person’s hand so that is explodes. They use a meat grinder as a weapon to grind the various parts of various people in the prison. There is a baseball sized crater of a hole in a man’s head. The transformation of the warden into a snotty nosed martial arts gorilla is absolutely hilarious. And the list goes on with the bizarreness of this movie. The only saving grace is how bad the prosthetics and “special effects” are. It makes this movie more hilarious than cringeworthy.
The Bad Guys
The bad guys are numerous, each with their own odd characteristics that have them stand out amongst the other bad guys. My favorite, and the least deadly, is the Warden’s son. He laughs, he kicks, he throws temper tantrums. His outfits are awesome. He has footie pajamas with a matching pointy hat. He may not be deadly but he does have the power to have others kill for him.
My Final Thoughts
If bad movies are your thing, this movie is a perfect watch! But I will not be putting this movie on again, ever. I will laugh about the absurdity of this movie but never would I recommend it nor consider it again to watch for a movie night.
