The Story of Ricky
Review
Format: English Dubbed VHS
Stars: Fan Siu Wong, Yukari Oshima, others

Ricky Ho (Fan Siu Wong) is sent to prison for manslaughter. At that time, the prisons are privately owned and franchised, so there is no regulation. Ricky is subject to torment from the guards, warden, and other inmates, and in return uses his super powers to set thing straight.

This movie is gross. There is more blood here than the spoof horror Dead Alive. Within the first 5 minutes, a guy gets a wooden block jammed into his face, and another guy's hand goes through a bed of nails, which then go into his face. Realistic looking? Not really, but it's enough for you to cringe, a lot. After that, a big fatty (named Zorro, haha) goes after Ricky, and Ricky puts his fist into the guy's gut and tears a huge slit across, with his guts then falling out. Nasty.

Afterwords, a guy named Ox or something, who leads the gang of 4, wants to fight with Ricky. He throws a few punches (slow choreography), then takes out his knife and cuts Ricky's forearm tendon, and Ricky just reaches inside and ties it back together. After seeing how good Ricky is, he cuts his stomach open, but tries to strangle Ricky with his own intestines. Ricky throws him in the air and punches his face really hard, and they go in with an x-ray shot of his skull being crushed. Very entertaining indeed.

Another clever part was where the gang of 4 took a guy and cut his skin off, and you get to see the bottom part of his face being lopped off.

Did I mention that this movie is insane? The assistant warden, who has a hook on one hand and a fake eye, is a goof. He's a big fat dude, and Ricky went to his office and he jammed his hook into Ricky's hand. When he looks at Ricky, the camera has a very good look at the back shelf of his office, where he has his line of porno films. Extremely funny. When Oshima enters later on, the assistant warden takes out his eye and asks, "Want a mint?" HE HAS MINTS IN HIS EYE! That's the purpose of the damn thing. I love it!

When the warden comes from his vacation (in an old Cadillac), he brings his idiot son, who's also fat and does stupid things. When the assistant warden greets him, he takes the gum out of his mouth and sticks it on the guy's head. Silly. The warden wants to see Ricky's super strength, so he gets him in a cell with Tarzan (this movie is dubbed). Tarzan goes after Ricky and bends the The warden also has a heart condition, and has a heart attack and asks the assistant warden to get his medicing, which looks like candy corn bars of the gate down over his arms so he's pinned, and punches Ricky silly for a while. Remembering his Qi Gong (that it feeds off strength), Ricky breaks out of the bars. He first punches Tarzan's arm so his forearm bone is sticking out of his elbow. Next he uppercuts Tarzan under the mouth and his fist goes through the bottom of his face THROUGH his mouth. Sick. Finally, Tarzan thinks he has a chance and throws a punch, and Ricky punches his arm and totally annihilates it, with fingers falling off and blood spewing on the ground.

The warden takes Ricky later on and puts him in the middle of a bunch of metal things. One ugly little dude hits him in the face with a wrench a bunch of times. Then Oshima puts razor blades in his mouth, tapes it shut, and beats him that way. Ugh, sick. Ricky, at this time, has huge cuts in the sides of his face, and when the warden comes close, Ricky spits out the blades in his face. Eww!

The last scene has to be the most entertaining. People are being ground up into meat (for no reason really it seems) inside this kitchen, while at the meantime the warden's son is wearing some stupid full body green and white striped pajamas and Ricky comes in and tries to save the people. The assistant warden, who just got involved in a prison riot, has lost his other arm and Ricky punched out his other eye, so he's useless. Ricky uses him as a shield against the warden's bullets, and the warden shoots him, and the bullet makes the assistant warden blow up to a huge size and then explode. Exciting. Ricky has everyone go away, and Oshima has a little choreographed duel with Ricky, which isn't half bad because the camera follows them nicely, and Ricky takes her leg and puts it into a tube of boiling water and then punches it off. The warden (this is the funny part) warns Ricky that he is an expert at Kung Fu (he's some old, tall, weak nerd), because he's the warden and must be very skilled indeed. Ricky kicks him and he flies across the room onto a table, gets angry, and starts growing into a monster. From here it's pure silliness, but incredibly fun. Ricky punches a hole in his stomach, but that doesn't do anything because he's so big. Eventually Ricky gets him up in the air (you can see a big cable attached to him) and then puts him into the meat grinder, and because of his size, the grinder spits out more blood than there is at a Marilyn Manson concert.

I thought that the middle was slow though. Not much happened. But everything else about the movie is a riot, and people should see this on an empty stomach any day. Maybe they'll release here in the USA in the theatres (dreaming on...). But I had fun. I wanted really good martial arts content, though, but nonetheless if it had that, then it wouldn't be so idiotic.

8/10 - maybe with more insanity it could have been a 10. Like Drunken Wu Tang, it's so dumb that I like it, but not dumb enough for me to love it.

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

4/5 - Insane fun

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