( Lin Wong / The Story of Ricky / Ngai Kai Lam / 1991 )
New prisoners being inducted to a privately-owned prison are introduced to a system which thrives on cruelty, the only way to survive is to be crueller than the next prisoner and pay frequent homage to the most fearsome prisoners and the even fiercer prison governor. This is something that new inmate, sometime super hero and all round nice guy Riki-Oh cannot abide, and he spends the entirety of this pulp thriller fighting injustice with whatever implements come to hand.
Adapted from a manga RIKI-OH is told in a live action anime style where its raison d'etre is gore, and lots of it. Riki-Oh, along with the principal villains, is imbued with a superhuman strength and resilience so, amongst other things, RIKI-OH's special effects team were required to help with a sequence where Riki disembowels another prisoner with his bare hands, who then turn the tables on Riki by pulling out his own guts and using them to strangle Riki. Although the quality and realism in gore effects has advanced considerably in the twenty-odd years since RIKI-OH was released, along with these advancements has come the tendency for a more unpleasant and nihilistic tone in horror. RIKI is as cheerful in its ultra-violence as an ITCHY & SCRATCHY cartoon and with its very pleasant hero (who only fights in self-defence, tries to save the bad guys from death, and is nice to disabled people) RIKI is not a sadistic ordeal but a good-spirited, if admittedly very very gross, joke. A masterpiece of gore (as long as you don't expect much else from it).
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