{"id":1811,"date":"2012-02-02T20:28:48","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T02:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ragtagfilm.com\/blog\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2012-02-02T20:28:48","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T02:28:48","slug":"notes-from-the-attic-riki-oh-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/notes-from-the-attic-riki-oh-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from the attic: Riki-oh Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

We've been slumming it real hard lately in movie club. We recently watched two cult classics: Street Trash<\/strong><\/a> (1987) and Riki-oh: The Story of Ricky<\/strong><\/a> (1991).<\/p>\n

I don't know what exactly to call this genre of cinema. These would fit nicely into Troma's<\/a> catalog (Class of Nuke 'Em High, Toxic Avenger), but they're not from Troma so you can't just say, \"Oh, you know, they're Troma films.\" Meaning: they're ultra low-budget, full of super-fake nasty gore, ridiculous acting and some amount of sleaze. And usually pretty entertaining, if you go for that sort of thing. Maybe gore-gore cinema (with a nod to H.G. Lewis), horror-comedy, killer B, gore-cult, trashploitation...or maybe just nasty. These movies are nasty.<\/p>\n

Street Trash was a hard movie to get for a while. In college I remember watching a dubbed VHS copy that my friend had got on eBay. I, of course, then dubbed my own copy. (Don't worry, I recently purchased the DVD so we could watch it for movie club). Street Trash might be a perfect cult movie. It's not over-long (a common cult problem), it has good pacing, the director obviously had a lot of friends since the cast is great, and the gore effects are outta sight. Oh, I guess you'd like to know what the film's about, too: A liquor store owner unearths a box of Prohibition-era booze that melts anyone who drinks it. Mix that with a colorful group of homeless people, jerk cops, and junkyard employees and you've got yourself a party.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Street Trash makes great use of technicolor gore.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Street Trash is full of wonderful group shots.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0No cult film is complete without a Vietnam flashback.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ouch.<\/p>\n

I think it took me a little over ten years to finally get around to watching Riki-oh...and I'm glad I did. This movie is ridiculous. Ricky goes to jail to peacefully serve time for a crime he did commit. While there he learns of the great injustices in the prison system and sets out to correct them...with his fists. Oh, and did I mention he has super powers? Part of what makes this movie so fun is that it's insanely dubbed into English.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Stick a nail in Ricky's hand. Ricky don't care.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0Bad things happen to bad guys.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like I said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0Every martial arts master should practice in a cemetery.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wall? What wall?<\/p>\n

Ricky's just been rereleased on DVD (with intro from the director of Hobo with a Shotgun).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We've been slumming it real hard lately in movie club. We recently watched two cult classics: Street Trash (1987) and Riki-oh: The Story of Ricky (1991).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","category-opinion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ragtagcinema.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}