“Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky” is a ludicrous martial arts prison film from Hong Kong and it is supposedly based on a manga (Japanese comic). It’s not a good film but I did at least get the sense that the filmmakers were really having fun making this absurd picture. It’s an incredibly gory film but it is so cheesy that you will be laughing at a lot of it.

Ricky (Siu-Wong Fan “Ip Man”) is a young man with superhuman strength that is placed behind bars in a privatised prison that is rife with corruption. Every few scenes pit Ricky up against a villain where eyes, brains and intestines will be ripped out until finally Ricky makes it to the prison’s warden.

Ricky is one of the most overpowered characters that I have ever seen in a martial arts film. He’s more like a superhero than anything else as we see him literally punch through people. As you probably guessed, the characters are not exactly deep in a movie such as this. Most of them are just there to be ripped to shreds in some hilarious way. The warden even turns into a monster that looks like something made by Dr. Frankenstein at the end.

The fight scenes are truly a spectacle but the rest of the movie is barebones (no pun intended). The plot is almost non-existent and the characters are hardly riveting. The movie does at least give us a lot of action scenes but it really does feel like that is all that is really on offer with “Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky”. Although I’m sure film buffs and particularly those that enjoy their cheesy martial arts films will want to see it, I cannot imagine the average person wanting to sit through it. The highlight of the film is probably seeing one man pull out his own guts and try to throttle Ricky with them.