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The far, far future, otherwise known as 2001 A.D.: Prisons are now run
by private corporations, and everybody who has ever seen a science fiction
prison film knows what that means: The warden and the guards have teamed
up with the meanest inmates to keep the others under control, convicts are
bullied, exploited and killed at will, and the prison is used for one
criminal activity or another - this time around it's the heroin-trade.
Enter Ricky (Fan Siu-Wong), the good guy-convict, who soon
enough has killed Wild Cat (Yam Cheng Chuen), the bully of his cellblock,
and is next set to fight Hai (Frankie Chin), and is next up against Hai
(Frankie Chin), part of the all-powerful Gang of Four, the top
fighters among the convicts who have divided the prison among them. But
Ricky too is a very impressive fighter (who can even withstand bullets by
the way), and he manages to defeat and kill Hai, who at one point even
cuts his own belly open to strangle Ricky with his own intestines.
Why is Ricky so good though ?
Because his uncle (Tetsuro Tamba) has taught him one or two secret
moves of Kung Fu so Ricky can even pierce stone and stuff.
And why is Ricky so hell-bent on destroying the prison's drug-dealing
activities instead of joining the Gang of Four in Hai's stead
(which is offered to him) ?
Because his girlfriend (Gloria Yip) was killed by heroin-traders.
Soon enough, Ricky has to face - and annihilate - the other three
members of the Gang of Four, then he goes against the sadistic one-eyed
assistant warden (Fan Mei Sheng), and finally against the warden (Ho
Ka-Kui) himself, who during their fight turns into a monster - but finally
Ricky throws him into the meatgrinder and turns him into minced meat
(literally). And when he presents the warden's head to everyone, fighting
between his fellow inmates and the guards stops, and with a powerful blow
by his fist Ricky shatters the prison wall ...
On a pure story level, The Story of Ricky is blunt as can be,
compared to it even the one-dimensional Sylvester Stallone prison vehicle Lock
Up seems to be subtle ... or to put it otherwise, the story of The
Story of Ricky is pure shit, there are no two ways about it. The
film's only saving grace is its extreme violence that is so
over-the-top that one just can't take it seriously for even a second, its
brutal fantasy gone wild, but to such extremes that realism has nothing to
do with these scenes anymore, a little bit like in the funnier films of
Herschell Gordon Lewis - and yes, the violence in Story of Ricky is
in a way very funny - never more so than when Frankie Chin tries to
strangle Fan Siu Wong with his own intestines or the warden is turned to
minced meat in great detail.
If the gore scenes were supported by a better story (and a better
score, for that matter), The Story of Ricky could have become a
genuine cult classic, as it is it is one of these many gore films that
have not really deserved their cult status ...
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