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From a RoboCop x Russ Meyer story to Shu Qi as sexy avenger, Hong Kong exploitation films
Hong Kong cinema was late to the exploitation genre, but made up for lost time. We recall three 90s classics full of sex, violence and gore
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“Exploitation films”, which rely on copious amounts of soft-core sex, gore and violence to attract an audience, began in the United States in the 1960s with films like Blood Feast. By the 1970s, hundreds were being made.
Hong Kong did not really explore the genre until the late 1980s – but once it started, it went for it, no holds barred.
We recall three classics of the exploitation genre made in Hong Kong.
1. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991)
Prison films were a big part of the exploitation genre, and the gross-out Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, often regarded as Hong Kong’s most outrageous action movie, takes the idea to the max.
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There are sadistic wardens, brutal gang bosses, buckets of blood and gore, and plenty of hard-hitting futuristic kung fu courtesy of choreographer Philip Kwok Chun-fung, whose time in the Five Deadly Venoms perfectly prepared him for the theatrical action on show here.
Set in the then-future of 2001, the story sees the lean and muscular Ricky (Louis Fan Siu-wong, who later played Jin in 2008’s Ip Man) incarcerated in a maximum-security prison for killing the gangsters who murdered his girlfriend.
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