This DVD item from Tokyo Shock was reviewed on 10-Dec-2008.
Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky Reference DVD. Classifications : General Action & Adventure Genres DVD Video Prison Films By Theme Action & Adventure Genres DVD Video Crime Action & Adventure Genres DVD Video Futuristic Action & Adventure Genres DVD Video General H . Click the following link to view the cover of Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky. Related topics: 1992. General. Action & Adventure. Genres. DVD. Video. Prison Films. By Theme. Action & Adventure. Genres. DVD. requestid: ae5f8680-2354-4ef3-8d7f-623e33fca2b8
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1) DVD DVD Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky by Tokyo Shock. probably one of the most funny gore-flicks ever
a must see, story is weak but riki is anything but weak¤ 2) DVD DVD Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky by Tokyo Shock. I should have just done that FIRST!!! No way would I have purchased it!!! However I went by way of some of the reviews. Not a good thing!! The movie had good production values however the acting was WEAK, and I was really hoping for MORE OVERALL. This film was talked about in a review I read a of the film "Dead Alive" which was WAY BETTER!!! If I were you rent it first before you consider purchasing it!!!!!¤ 3) DVD DVD Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky by Tokyo Shock. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is a truly bizarre film. It´s a hybrid exploitation film combining the prison movie, the martial arts movie, and the gore-fest. Oh yeah, and with supervillains that somehow have magical powers. There´s some hilarious over-acting, plenty of terrible dialogue, and at least a couple totally illogical twists. Basically, it´s everything you want in an exploitation flick.
The big question with exploitation is always about the ´fun´ factor. There are the "so bad it´s good" movies that continually amuse us with their utter ineptitude such as "Plan Nine from Outer Space", and then there are movies that are just bad - not funny, not campy, but merely boring. The latter is usually found in huge collections called things like "Grind House Cinema Collection! 50 Movies on 3 DVDs!" Riki-Oh is clearly the former. It´s amusing from start to finish. The pacing is fast and there are more than enough hilarious and/or disgusting sights to maintain one´s interest for its 90-minute duration.
The downside is that the film was released by the Tokyo Shock studio - a studio synonymous with terrible VHS-quality transfers, distorted sound, and no worthwhile extras. Tokyo Shock needs to stop producing DVDs and let some other more capable studio take over.
The bottom line: any fan of exploitation cinema needs to own this, especially gore fans. There are some things in this films that I´ve never seen anywhere else, but I´ll leave those for you to find yourself. I´ve seen countless exploitations films in all flavors and this is easily in my top ten. Buy it and enjoy!¤ 4) DVD DVD Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky by Tokyo Shock. "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky" is a movie that´s best served to those not expecting it, like walking in a room where it´s playing or renting it with no idea of what it´s like, which is violence first, everything else a distant second. In a lot of ways it reminds me of a variation of the "Dead Alive" kind of gore, which is gore that keeps increasing and increasing to the point of gut-busting hilarity by the end of the movie. I say variation though, because while Dead Alive deals out the gore in doses that increase as the movie progresses (and actually serves the plot and moves the story along), Riki-Oh´s violence is consistently brutal from the first stomach punch to the final aformentioned bloodbath of ridiculousness.
Originally a manga, Riki-Oh is about Ricky, a character who´s name changes from Riki-Ho to Riki-Oh, and is even spelled two different ways on the package cover (I´ll refer to him as Ricky for sanity´s sake). Ricky is put in jail for a crime that we will find out about later on. The prison is apparently high-tech and futuristic, but the only thing futuristic about it are the mutant supervillains that Ricky has to fight throughout the movie. They are called The Gang of Four, not to be confused with the mutant postpunk band. Fortunately, Ricky is trained in the martial art of punching through tombstones, as illustrated in a training flashback. He also seems to have a mutant healing factor, which serves him well in scenes where his arm is almost cut off or he is left in a hole for a week without food and water, and comes out of it completely fine (just a little hungry).
The limb ripping and torso impalements save many of the fights in this movie, as only one cast member, a woman who plays the main (male)Gang of Four member, seems to have any martial arts ability, and actually busts out some impressive moves. Even the main actor mostly punches his way through the obsacles set before him.
In the midst of all this there is some sort of plot, but to pay attention to it only draws out the grand canyon-sized plotholes and simple logic questions, and I don´t mean how a man is still standing and fighting after having his intestines ripped out. No, more like out of sync audio, a warden who´s glass eye keeps switching from right to left, and a prison where the prisoners seem to be allowed to roam around freely at all hours. Then again, considering that the cell block enforcers are superpowered sadists called The Gang of Four, that last one may not be too illogical. In fact, to any gore hound or fan of violence, the spectacle that is Riki-Oh rewards so much on initial viewings that the ridiculous plotholes and logic holes are like extra comedic icing on the cake when you´re subsequently showing it to friends for the fifth or sixth time. This of course is after the sight of a man crushing another man´s head with his bare hands becomes old hat, which I´m convinced can never happen.¤ 5) DVD DVD Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky by Tokyo Shock. Enter the world of privatized Chinese prisons, where individual companies own and control the prisoners lives.
In this tangle of a story we meet Riki-Oh a gifted student of a powerful martial art and follow him through his odd search for justice and random outbreaks of pain and grief.
If one watches this movie the same way you would watch a comedy, they will get a lot of fun out of it.. but, as with most martial arts movies, if you take it too seriously you will end up disappointed.¤ 6) DVD DVD Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky by Tokyo Shock. When mild-mannered Ricky takes revenge on the drug pushing thugs who killed his girlfriend, he is sentenced to a maximum security prison. Within these walls lies a penitentiary like no other, run by a host of evil characters. A sadistic warden, his sniveling assistant, and the powerful Gang of Four all control the inmates through terror and brutal death!¤ 7) DVD DVD Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky by Tokyo Shock. One of the most absurdly violent films ever made, this outrageous comic book of a movie is short on style but makes up for it in sheer audacity and excess. Brooding street kid Ricky Ho (Fan Siu Wang, playing the part of avenging angel with self-righteous earnestness) walks into the corrupt corporate prison system with superpowered martial arts skills and proceeds to punch his way through every bullying thug and sadistic guard who comes his way. Literally. His fist puts a gaping hole through the stomach of a giant sumo-wrestler-sized thug and the jaw of a pompadoured bully, and turns the skull of a pathetic guard into a bloody stump. As Ricky becomes a hero to the downtrodden prisoners, the assistant warden (who keeps breath mints in his removable glass eye) organizes the dreaded "gang of four," the cell block gang leaders, to take Ricky down. Fat chance! There´s nothing realistic about the bone-shattering, blood-splattering spectacle of crushed heads and snapped limbs, but the unrestrained display becomes so preposterously grotesque it hardly matters. You´ll be convinced that the "Oh" in Riki-Oh stands for "Oh my God, did I really see that?" Yes, Ricky really does tie a sliced tendon with his teeth, a thug cuts open his gut and uses his own intestines to strangle Ricky, and the warden (for no apparent reason) puffs himself up into a giant rubber ogre. Ricky´s curvy, feminine nemesis Rogan is played by Yukari Oshima, the butt-kicking, all-woman star of Angel and others. --Sean Axmaker¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 7-Jan-2009, 1586550241631595008623, 8X1-M8B-GWB-0MB-J6B-8KB-V4B-8 
Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky, DVD, Image © Tokyo Shock
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