Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

Casting

18-year-old Fan Siu-wong was an upcoming martial arts actor slowly gaining attention in mainland China and Hong Kong when he was approached by Golden Harvest after finishing filming "Stone Age Warrior." He claims he was picked up at the airport by Golden Harvest and immediately offered the main role in "Story of Ricky." Fan signed up for the role before researching his part, being shocked when he learned about the graphically violent manga. He initially was very nervous that nobody will like the film because of the blood and disgusting violence. Fan Siu-Wong eventually said the role of Ricky is still one of his most memorable and people in rural areas in China will often come up to him and talk to him about the movie and say stuff like "You were in "Story of Ricky" right?" He then says the violence is the ultimately the main reason why people still remembers the movie and why it is a cult hit among fans.^[3]

Fan's father Fan Mei-sheng, himself a veteran martial arts actor, played the Assistant Warden.

Filming

Much of the film was shot at a real prison located in the Coloane section of Macau.

Style

The film is notorious for its excessive use of splatstick violence and gore, primarily due to the fact that the lead character is practically invincible, has impossibly great strength and can virtually withstand all pain, which is partially explained by Ricky being a practitioner of a superhuman form of qigong. This leads to attempts by other characters to subdue him which end up being extremely gory and over-the-top.

Aside from the aforementioned head crushing and meat grinding scenes, most notable is a fight scene between Ricky and a knife-wielding prisoner named Ah-hai ("Oscar" in the English dub). During the fight, Hai throws powdered glass in Ricky's eyes and then slashes Ricky's right arm. Ricky seemingly finished, smashes a water pipe and cleans his eyes, then uses his teeth and left hand to tie the veins and tendons in his arm back together. Hai then charges at Ricky, but Ricky dodges and smacks him in the back of the head, popping one of his eyes out, leaving it to be eaten by crows. Seeing himself at a disadvantage, Hai attempts suicide by seppuku. However, when Ricky approaches Hai to try and stop the suicide, Hai grabs his own intestines and wraps them around Ricky's neck in an attempt to strangle him, prompting the assistant warden to exclaim in the English dub: "You've got a lot of guts, Hai!". Ricky then punches Hai in the face, with an X-ray image showing the front of his skull shattering. The deceased Hai crumples to the ground without so much as a visibly broken nose.

In another fight scene, Ricky punches and graphically breaks the Gang of Four member, Tai Zan's arm, then lands an uppercut with such force that Tarzan's jaw is torn off. Finally, Ricky goes for the Coup de grâce and punches several of Tai Zan's fingers off as he attempts to punch Ricky.

Another scene includes the warden's graphic death which depicts Ricky throwing him into an industrial meat grinder. Ricky pushes the struggling warden through the grinder, until his whole body is shredded and only his head remains. In that scene, so much fake blood was used that Fan Siu-wong could not wash the blood off his skin for three days.

The film's low budget shows in the scene where Ricky's girlfriend Keiko jumps to her death. For this scene, an obvious mannequin wearing her clothes is thrown off the top of the building, landing with a dull thud and a slight bounce. A dummy is also used in some scenes where there is a close up.

Home media

In the U.S., Tokyo Shock released it on a bare bones DVD in 2000. In 2002, DVD was released by Hong Kong Legends in Region 2.^[4] In 2003, Fortune Star (formerly Mega Star), current holders of the Golden Harvest library from Media Asia, released a Remastered version of the film on a 3 disc set along with The Dragon from Russia and City Hunter.

The film was released on Blu-ray by Media Blasters in 2011.^[5] Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky became available in its original Chinese with hard-coded English subtitles on Netflix's Instant Streaming service in mid-2012. The film aired on Turner Classic Movies on 2 November 2012 and 14 April 2013 as part of TCM Underground. In the UK, the film was first released on Blu-ray from a new HD restoration by Mediumrare Entertainment in 2015^[6] before going out of print. In 2021, British distributors 88 Films released their own Blu-ray edition of the film with new remastered English subtitles and both Cantonese and English audio tracks.^[7]

In November 2023, the movie was released on Criterion Channel.^[8]

Box office

The film grossed $2,147,778 HKD in Hong Kong. Despite the box office performance, Fan Siu Wong said that the movie was a major hit on rental since many kids who were not allowed to view it in theaters could now rent the film and watch it.^[3]

Critical response

On the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, Riki-Oh has an approval rating of 90% by 10 reviews, and with an average rating of 7.1/10.^[9] Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice called it "a rather astonishing, starkly stylized blood flood set inside a privatized prison."^[10] Kurt Ramschissel of Film Threat gave the film 5 stars, saying that "the violence comes fast and furious and is just as outrageous and over-the-top as Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson ever were."^[11] J.R. Jones from the Chicago Reader said, "If you can handle the torrent of grisly violence, you'll find yourself royally entertained by this Hong Kong actioner."^[12]