Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

In the near future, prisons have been privatised. A convict called Ricky arrives and turns out to be extraordinarily strong. The prison is run by four guards and a one-eyed warden, and everyone is part of a system of torture. Ricky dismantles it one man at a time. The subject is not prison but excess itself. The film does not try to make its violence realistic; arms come off, bodies burst, and the effects are deliberately overblown. In one scene a character ties a knot with his own intestine. That register is the main reason it is now considered cult. The form comes from comics and does not hide it: the compositions read as panels and the characters are drawn as types. The source is a Japanese manga by Masahiko Takajo and Tetsuya Saruwatari; the film was made in Hong Kong and carried the exaggeration of the comic across directly. It ran into censorship in most countries where it played and circulated in cut versions. Lam Nai-Choi directs. Louis Fan Siu-Wong plays Ricky and William Ho the warden. Who it is for: viewers who like extreme cult violence and comic-book exaggeration. Who it is not for: anyone unable to look at blood and organs; the film recognises no limit at all here.