THE STORY OF RICKY – Infamous HK action-gore flick set in a futuristic prison, in which 'Ricky' has been incarcarated after avenging his gf's death. Ricky has supernatural strength-related powers. We are told this in a flashback sequence, but it is obvious from the way his hand-to-hand combat maneuvers tend to rip through human flesh without him having to try very hard. This attracts the attention of the prison warden, a strange dude with a metallic claw who keeps mints in his false eye. He also, for slightly baffling reasons, keeps a massive porn collection on open display in his office. Warden is a bit bad-ass, and sets the prison community's 'top dogs', a bunch of badly dressed lags who look like they were conceived during the New Romantic era, onto Ricky. Bloodbath follows etc etc. You'd be hard pressed to find a film which matches 'The Story Of Ricky' for both charm and gore, for not only is this movie ultra-violent, it's endearing, too. You don't get that combination very often. I guess the presence of goofyness, intentional humour that falls a bit flat, a hero you're supposed to unambiguously root for and wholesome values concerning who's bad and who's good go some way to lending the film a weird kind of cuteness. On the other hand, I guess most sane audiences would balk at the notion they're supposed to be entertained by the frequent spurts of utter and unremitting sadism, so maybe I'm in a minority in finding 'Ricky' a bit on the winsome side. Whatever, there's so much to enjoy about 'Ricky', which is a trash fest to end all others. The threadbare sets, the fact that people mutate into monsters just so that there can be a mega-fight scene with a human mincing machine in it, the 'Cuckoo's Nest' type ending... it all washes over you with a kind of 'why not?' feeling attached. You've probably already seen it, but if not, remedy that right away.
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