Tetsuo II: Body Hammer

The bad things here: repetitive music, shaky cam, most of the action takes place in scenes where the light is obscured a lot. There is only one sound for the protagonist.

The good stuff: manic overacting, great VFX, Shinya Tsukamoto as the main villain, insane sweaty buff monks. Lots of body horror albeit a bit light.

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.

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.

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer is Tsukamoto's Evil Dead II, a sequel that reworks the original with more technical polish on a larger budget. There's a big thematic shift from the erotic to the militaristic, with a greater focus on biogenetic weaponry, one that's far less frantic, instead focusing on developing its characters and providing them with a narrative to inhabit. The production values are much higher than that of its predecessor with Tsukamoto's head-spinning experimentation still on full display, the move away from monochrome allowing him to add strong colour filtration to a heady visual brew of crazy editing and bizarre cinematography. Shinya Tsukamoto is a man who knows what he's doing at this point. Ultimately while Tetsuo II: Body Hammer may lack the more disturbing elements of the original, the eccentricities are still here; filled with some excellent sequences and something to say about industrialisation while incorporating some top-notch effects work, leaving it as a very solid piece of filmmaking and a prime example of confrontational underground Japanese Cyperpunk cinema.

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.