Tetsuo II: El cuerpo de martillo

A brilliant re-imagining of Shinya Tsukamoto's 1989 cult classic now with more story, more special effect and a bigger budget. Body Hammer is my favorite movie in the tetsuo series because it's expanded more with the story while keeping the storyline same and doing something new.

The effects are unique and uniquely unreal, as they were in the original. This is one filmmaker's nightmares rendered real. These two films, along with Lynch's Eraserhead, are the real deal. The cutting is fast so as to cause many (already extreme) shots to register on the subconscious more than the seeing eye. It will haunt you.

This is truly a worthy sequel that is a worth to watch.

I will rate this movie: highly watch this movie out of 10.

The original 'Tetsuo' knocked me out with its inventiveness and disturbing originality. This sequel/remake/cash-in (whatever you want to call it) bored me witless. The budget is obviously increased, the ideas and confrontation decreased. 'Tetsuo' is a much more difficult movie to watch/understand but it is worth it. 'Tetsuo II' is way to conventional, with a "plot" and "characters", and loses the unique vision and mystery of the original. What you end up with is a dumb ass action movie - the complete antithesis of 'Tetsuo'. Avoid this, watch the first movie instead.

The original Tetsuo: the Iron Man was a pretty unforgettable film. Shot in intense black and white and very pure in its intentions, it was an avant-garde sci-fi horror movie. An immediate cult film. With the follow up, director Shin'ya Tsukamoto has made a film which is more a remake than a true sequel. In this one, he shoots in colour and tries to incorporate a story of sorts. Although, this is a relative statement, as this is still a very weird film and it hardly adheres to cinematic storytelling norms. In essence it is once again about a man turning into a cyborg.

Like the first it's visually very striking indeed. It seems to have influenced an awful lot of industrial bands from the 90's, seeing as many of their videos mimic the imagery found in this one. It's soundtrack I guess adds to this seeing as it is full on rock a lot of the time. As a piece of visual art Tetsuo II is a success. However, I do not think it reaches the same level as the original movie, which for my money was such an original piece of work it is hard to outdo. I think the introduction of more story here is also to the film's detriment. The story gets in the way, something you could never accuse the original film of. Still, this remains a pretty intense experience.

Whereas the first Tetsuo was a sweaty, psycho-sexual fever dream, Body Hammer feels like an attempt to make things more approachable. There's more of an over-arching plot, there's a (very) bare bones attempt at explaining why the things on the screen are happening, and the movie is in color with a much larger cast. Don't get me wrong, if the first movie didn't exist, this would still stand out as a bizarre a surreal film. There's some of the same impressive stop motion (though much less than the first film), a young child dies violently 20 minutes in, and the overall tone is a confusion of dark and distressing events. That being said, the first film revels in dragging the audience through a non-stop barrage of inscrutable set pieces on its spiral into fetishistic destruction. Body Hammer on the other hand, has some sequences that feel right out of a tokusatsu movie, with people in giant metal muffins and rubber suits shooting gun arms at each other. The first movie doesn't give you a chance to think about anything except for what's happening on the screen in the moment. Body Hammer has enough down time that the plot holes start to stack up. An entire group of characters just inexplicably disappear for the second third of the movie. In the end, is Body Hammer a remake? Is it a sequel? I think it's more of just another stab at a similar idea using some of the same cast. Worth a watch, but firmly in the shadow of its predecessor.

This movie is highly recommended for the fans of its predecessor, although it's not in black and white, doesn't have as good of a soundtrack or have as much surrealism as the first film, but it remains to be a bit more action-packed and (let's not forget) makes a bit more sense. This time, the salary man (the protagonist from the first film) lives a normal life with his family until one day his son gets kidnapped and the salary man is forced to be experimented on by a large a gang of skinheads which speeds up the mutating process of becoming a part-metal weapon and part-human being. It's not really a sequel but it surely is one of the greatest underrated films of-all-time and is about as good as the first film (TETSUO), if not, better.