Despite trying my best to look for a DVD copy during my recent trip, I still ended up empty-handed. It was a big disappointment because I only set out to find a few things, each of them of utter importance. To make me feel worse, the DVD I failed to find was an all-time classic of Chinese cinema: Riki Oh - The Story of Ricky.

Don't let the title fool you: we're not talking about Ricky Reyes here but a prisoner with superpowers and a strangely sensitive side. I remember watching this movie about ten years ago on Star Movies Chinese's late night programming and I was tremendously impressed by the sheer violence of the movie because the gorier clips were actually shown with a red filter to minimize the screen's bloody hues (way before TV Patrol used the same motif). While the overly graphic violence wasn't at all believable, it did make for a wonderful comedy, however unintentional (a favorite scene shows a thug who disembowels himself to strangle Ricky the hero with his intestines). In retrospect, the violence was so ridiculous that what probably appealed most to me was the novelty of it all. While the fight scenes were professionally choreographed, the violence seemed to have been conceptualized by ten-year-olds (the plot, by five-year-olds).

Another thing that left such a strong impression on me was that the film actually had the androgynous Cynthia Luster starring as one of the main villains (this was when she was doing one film after another in the Philippines and singing Tagalog songs on variety shows with Vic Sotto).

While my DVD hunt yielded no Riki Oh, I did spy a recently released movie in HMV which showed the same guy who portrayed Ricky on the cover. Apparently a movie thematically similar to Riki Oh, Shaolin vs. Evil Dead had Master Pai Mei from Kill Bill in the starring role. This zombie/kung-fu gore-fest even saw limited local release early this year. It does have the potential to be a cult favorite, although Riki Oh will still prove quite difficult to dislodge from its spot as the unintentionally funniest violent movie of all time that also features a muscular Asian who can tie his severed tendons together.

Here's an excellent (and rather funny) review/summary of Riki Oh:
http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/storyofricky/default.php

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -