The near future, and the world has seen increasing privatisation of public services. In 2001 a new act was passed where private companies took over the running of prisons as the criminal population soared. A van containing a batch of new prisoners heads towards one of these prisons. This one is a particularly nasty example of the new system, where the inmates are truly running the asylum. The prison is split into four wings, each wing has its own leader, each more deadly than the last and known collectively as The Gang of Four. They control their wings with the blessing of the heads of the prison, who are just as twisted and cruel as the convicts they preside over. One of the new prisoners is Ricky (Fan Siu-Wong) who was convicted of murder, and sets off the prison’s metal detector thanks to the bullets he carries in his body that he keeps as ‘souvenirs’. Its obvious that Ricky isn’t like the others, he shows no fear for the power wielded by The Gang of Four, or any other man in the prison. Samuel of the North Wing isn’t one of the gang but is influential. He victimises another older inmate, he ruins the man’s face with a wood plane, but as he leaves he is tripped up by Ricky, falling onto a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it! Bad luck! He runs from the room with the board and his hand nailed to his face, but strikes back by having his the old man’s upcoming parole overturned. Ricky is greatly upset when later on he discovers that the man, who had been desperate to see his wife and son again, had killed himself rather than face any more time in prison.

Samuel then turns his attention to taking revenge upon Ricky using an enormous fat man, so huge and scary that he was in solitary confinement for eating the warden’s horse (!). Though this elephant of a man seems formidable when he punches Ricky across the shower room, Ricky quickly dispatches him with a deadly disembowelling punch to his huge stomach, before turning to Samuel and killing him with another gory blow. This catches the attention of the North Wing’s leader, Hai, who says he will make sure Ricky is punished according to the North Wing’s rules once the assistant warden has done with him. That night in his cell, Ricky is attacked by pains in his chest, but uses meditation to ease his suffering and then we enter a flashback sequence! A young Ricky, looking as much like a goofy teenager as he possibly can, goes to a graveyard to pay his respects to an unspecified dead person. There he finds his Uncle Ghost, who he has not seen since he was a young boy. His uncle notes that even as a child he had super strength (sorry folks, that’s the closest we’ll get to an explanation) but is dismayed that goofy Ricky is still clumsy and cannot focus his power, despite having learnt martial arts. Ricky remembers that his uncle is a master of chi gung, the development of your inner strength and spirit, your chi, to make yourself more powerful. Uncle Ghost agrees to train him, which involves meditation, oh yeah, and smashing the crap out of a load of unfortunate peoples’ grave stones. Now I’m not expert on Chinese beliefs about the dead, but I don’t think dishonouring people’s graves is such a good idea, in fact Ricky is lucky he wasn’t attacked by hopping kung fu vampires. Man, that would have been SO awesome.

The head warden is on holiday in Hawaii and so the assistant warden (Fan Mui Sang, real life father of Fan Siu-Wong and star of numerous other movies including Magnificent Butcher) is in charge. He is a strange fat man, with a hook where his left hand should be and a false eye which he uses to store his supply of mints (!). According to official records, after doing badly in school Ricky disappeared for two years, before reappearing and being arrested and tried for murder. The assistant warden is extremely suspicious of him after seeing the amazing strength he showed against Samuel and his enormous friend, and wants to know what he was doing for those two years. Ricky has no answer for him, even when the warden shows him a letter that had arrived for him featuring a picture of a cute girl, and even when he uses his hookto stab Ricky’s hand and pin him to a desk. Ricky destroys the desk, deflects a bullet with a metal tray in awesome slow-motion style and leaves. Ricky sits in his cell that night and has a goofy flashback to him and the girl in the picture playing with a remote control plane. The girl does look rather young, so its not clear what their relationship was, whether she was his girlfriend or sister or something else, but his ending up in prison could very well have something to do with her.

The excitement doesn’t stop however, as the next day one of Samuel’s former lackeys is being threatened by Keung, a grisled character who somehow has smuggled a huge serrated sword into the prison. This backfires on him though as the leader of the north wing and member of the Gang of Four, Hai, appears and angered by Keung not respecting his authority, takes the blade and buries it in the side of Keung’s face. Ouch. Keung is used as bait to trick Ricky into a confrontation with Hai, who uses power to blind Ricky and slashes the muscles in his arm in an attempt to render our hero helpless. However Ricky washes the powder from his eyes and ties the tendons in his arm back together (!!), proving why some in the prison call him a demon. Hai has no alternative but to use his ultimate form of attack, hacking open his own stomach and trying to use his intestines to choke our hero! Really! This doesn’t work however, as Ricky launches him into the air and smashes his face in with an almighty punch (complete with bone-crunching x-ray view), as if ripping out his own intestines wasn’t enough to kill him. Sensing the tide of power shifting, the prisoners of the north wing attempt to rebel, only to be put in their place by the other members of the Gang of Four – the enormous Tarzan, the diminutive White God who has power of amazing weapons that look oddly like knitting needles, and the effeminate Wong Chun (actually played by Japanese actress Yukari Oshima). Hai was the weakest of the Gang of Four, can Ricky possibly stand up to the combined power of the remaining trio? What dark secrets does this prison, and its warden, hold that could be threatened by Ricky’s presence? Also, what awful thing happened for him to end up in prison in the first place?

So, worthless cheap trash, or a greatly entertaining classic full of cheesy fun? This, my friends, is what I can truly call a Great Bad Movie. It has all the hallmarks of a cult classic, an extremely silly bunch of characters, a whole load of ridiculous and cheap gore effects, acting that wouldn’t be acceptable in the worst soap opera, and an utterly po-faced and serious delivery without a hint of irony or self-consciousness. While some other films like Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma output, are cheap and gory fun, there’s always this knowing “look, we’re making a bad movie!” feel to the performances and writing. Story of Ricky (AKA Riki Oh) however is played so seriously, so full it is with bad prison drama clichés and bucket loads of cheesy and unconvincing gore, it’s a b-movie fan’s dream come true. People are stabbed, hacked up, ground into paste, blown up, skinned, squashed, and have their heads smashed to pieces. The amount of gore is mind blowing and had it been far more realistic this film might have been far more unpleasant and mean spirited, but such is the unrealistic cheapness of the whole thing that its just funny, and an absolute riot of wacky, bloody excess. Based on a manga called ‘Riki Oh’, this film went down well with fans of the source material, apparently capturing the feel and extreme gore of the comic very well. Its easy to see the translation of the cartoonish and over the top drama and violence from page to screen, this could be the closest that a live action feature has come to its printed and animated cousins.

Fan Siu-Wong is fabulous as Ricky – a former Wushu performer turned actor, and while he is never going to win awards for his acting, his exaggerated and often near-psychotic facial expressions fit the ridiculous nature of the film perfectly, plus he has the physical presence and ability to portray the incredible power of his character. Having appeared in numerous Chinese TV shows and having a modest filmography that includes Corey Yuen’s Righting Wrongs with Yuen Biao and Cynthia Rothrock, a meaty action role in Stone Age Warriors and an appearance along-side Michelle Yeoh and Rongguang Yu (Iron Monkey) in Project S (AKA Super Cop 2), he admits that he has never shed the image of Ricky, and that it is still the film he is most recognised for starring in. With good reason too, and though this film might have given him a touch more notoriety than he would have liked (in fact some have blamed this film on his career never truly taking off) he has found a place in the heart of many a b-movie fan with his memorable portrayal of Ricky, and surely that’s more important than some silly mainstream success right? Right? Special attention must also go to the senior Fan, Fan Mui Sang, who plays the evil assistant warden to the hint. He goes full tilt on his evil character, aided by the novel look he’s been given – the two-pronged hook that he can use to manipulate objects, and drag unfortunate inmates around by their mouth. His red fake eye is a touch of genius too with its second use as a container for his mints, I mean come on, what sort of twisted mind comes up with insane touches like that? I love it! The extensive porn collection in his office is another amusing touch.

The rest of the cast vary from to utterly dreadful, the cast of extras are one of the most uninspired and confused bunch I’ve ever seen. They were seemingly given little or no direction, as in every crowd scene it looks like they were all told to do the exact same thing – either to wave their arms in the air triumphantly or to point at whatever is happening in front of them, over and over and over. The villainous characters all grimace and look mean when required, the actor who played White God (sorry buddy, I couldn’t find your name anywhere) does a particularly good job considering that he has one of the most ludicrous haircuts I’ve ever seen on a villain AND his main offensive weapon is a pair of knitting needles on pieces of elastic. The most outstanding of the four, and the one given the most lines too, was definitely Yukari Oshima who undoubtedly had the most acting skill out of the lot, her performance full of confident swagger combined with good expressions and breaking out some cool martial arts moves to boot, though what do you expect from an 8th dan black belt in Karate?. She does the Brigitte Lin-ish androgynous character well too, though like the good Dr. Freex said there’s no hiding those lovely curves of hers, and she’s still a cutey pie even with that bowl haircut.

As you might have guessed, this is a film I truly have a lot of affection for, from the enjoyable cast to the bad clichés, the cheap n’ crazy gore and everything in between. This is going to be a film that a lot of people are going to watch and not ‘get’ and I wouldn’t suggest this film is for everybody. Those seeking good stories, strong acting or realistic fighting techniques are going to be sorely disappointed and won’t see what all the fuss is about. However us b-fans know a good thing when we see it, and Story of Ricky will surely go down as one of the great b-classics of our time. Though the shock value is largely gone after the first viewing, but there are many cheesy touches to look out for (like Siu-Wong trying not to smile while sharing the screen with his dad, or the way Ricky’s hair length varies considerably during the course of the picture) and one may relive that first time viewing by inflicting it on unsuspecting friends and relatives, and creating new Ricky converts will keep many a dedicated b-fan happy for a long time to come. Like I said, this truly is a Great Bad Movie.