In the year 2001, many government institutions have become privatized commercial ventures, like the men's prison where young Riki-Oh (Sui-Wong Fan) is sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter and assault. The ruthless gangsters who control the prison break an old man's face open in the prison lavatory as the film begins. The nearly superhuman Ricky trips one of the guards so his face is impaled on a spiked board in retaliation, and vows to avenge the old man when he hangs himself in despair. When the guards send the huge, Sumo-like Zorro after him in the prison shower, Ricky bloodily disembowels the man with his bare hands and apparently breaks another man in half with a single punch. Ricky is taken to the assistant warden, who has a metal hook-hand and a glass eye (he keeps mints in the socket). He impales Ricky's hand with his hook and beats him, but is quickly reduced to quaking fear by Ricky's incredible abilities. In an outrageous fight scene, a gangster named Oscar cuts Ricky's arm open with a knife and throws ground glass in his eyes, but Ricky ties his own veins together and knocks Oscar's eyeball out with a sharp cuff to the back of the head. Oscar then commits hara-kiri and tries to strangle Ricky with his own intestines before dying. There's a head broken like a vase, a saw-toothed machete to the face, people skinned alive, and the main plot -- Ricky fighting the evil opium-growing crooks running the prison -- gets somewhat lost in the flood of gore and guts, but it doesn't matter a bit. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
is neutral about it.
Of all the thousands of exploitation films which have come out of Japan and Hong Kong over the years, only a few have managed to find worldwide cult audiences. This startling co-production is one of them, an outrageously wild and gory prison film that is unlike any in recent memory. The most interesting thing about the film (other than its unbelievable silliness) is its view of the human body. People burst like ripe melons full of blood and guts at the slightest punch or kick, except for Ricky, who is subjected to a phenomenal level of abuse with no apparent ill effects. At one point, Ricky is beaten across the cheeks while holding a mouthful of razorblades, only to spit them back into the warden's face. Everyone else, however, seems to be made of onion skin, barely more than human balloons full of viscera. This might suggest some sort of existentialist statement, if it didn't appear in a film featuring a giant monster made into hamburger in a revolving fan, a man shot in the buttocks before exploding in an oven, and a dog being kicked in half. As it is, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky offers the sort of insight into the human condition best appreciated in an altered state of consciousness. But it
is a lot of fun. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide