The Story Of Ricky

One Of The Bloodiest Battles Ever Committed To Celluloid!

Any fervent follower of a movie genre always has a share of “must sees” jotted down somewhere. For instance, if you like Sci-Fi, there’s no way you haven’t seen 2001, Alien or Blade Runner (off the top of my head) or at the very least plan to see them once in your life. Similarly, if you’re into horror there are few classics that you shouldn’t miss: Evil Dead, Dead Alive, Dawn Of The Dead, etc (what’s with the overuse of the ‘dead’ word anyway?). As you get into these classics, more and more tend to appear, either by recommendation from friends, reviews or just plain hype. One such classic that had eluded me until now is the gory masterpiece from Hong Kong, The Story Of Ricky. To say this movie is excessive would be a disservice. It is, above all things, an incredibly entertaining film bordering comedy rather than horror and I’m ashamed to have neglected it until now.

Think about The Story Of Ricky as a cross between Bruce Lee, Dead Alive and Quentin Tarantino. It is unsurprisingly based on a Japanese comic and the influence of the format shows: outrageous fights, overblown acting and loads of gore are just some of things you can expect. The movie deals with Ricky, a martial arts expert with special powers of sort, that is sent to prison after being accused of attacking and killing the man responsible of his girlfriend’s death. While in prison, Ricky becomes involved in internal qualms among inmates, the pornography-addict warden and the ruthless “Gang of Four”, a group of thugs each of whom controls a different wing of the prison. Every character is wildly original and a classic of its own right, including an asexual member of the Gang who, for the life of me, I still haven’t figured out whether it was a boy or a girl. Ricky is unwillingly dragged into this struggle for power even though he really avoids fighting until strictly necessary. But once he’s witness to the abuse and consequent death a poor defenseless inmate, he turns into deadly killing machine and (of course) chaos ensues.

It does sound fairly straightforward on paper but The Story Of Ricky is quite multi-layered with several cool subplots interweaving as the movie progresses. Actually, if I have to be honest with you, the gory scenes are fewer than I expected and there’s far more dialogue than in your average horror movie. There’s absolutely no problem with that as the script is brilliant and, as I said before, highly entertaining. The outrageous sequences do deliver though: in one of the most over-the-top and ridiculous scenes I’ve ever seen, a tattooed massive thug from the Gang attempts to strangle Ricky with his intestines after committing hara-kiri. Only the Asians could pull something like that! The grand finale, where the director of the prison turns into a hulking monster out of effin’ nowhere, has to be seen to be believed as well. Whatever you do, don’t die before you watch The Story Of Ricky as it truly belongs into the hallmark of horror movies.

The Story Of Ricky can be acquired from Media Blasters.

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