Tetsuo II: O Homem-Martelo

What a movie. You don't stumble onto a film like Tetsuo II: Body Hammer every day, and that's probably a good thing. The jerkier-than-Blair Witch cinematography, the wild & crazy stop motion special effects, and the bucketloads of gore are fairly sufficient to ensure that some viewers won't like this movie. Since you're actually reading this, though, you're probably a pretty jaded and open-minded film fan, which is exactly the audience that would end up liking Body Hammer. It's one of the craziest and most extreme movies I've ever seen, particularly in the brutal, nearly unwatchable flashback sequence which occurs in the last twenty minutes. It's one of those scenes that you never, ever, ever forget. But aside from the brutal and bizarre violence, there is great artistry here; the scenes between Taniguchi and his family strike a real chord of tragedy, and the special effects somehow succeed precisely because they DON'T look real at all. And Tsukamoto's vision of Tokyo is terrifying-- he makes the city look like a nearly uninhabited frozen hell of silent glass towers and crumbling steel factories. If any of this sounds appealing, you might just like this movie as much as I do. Tsukamoto's style can be incredibly jarring, but you'll end up running out to find everything else he's directed (to my knowledge, his only other films available in the US are the original Tetsuo and his horrific boxing film Tokyo Fist). Shinya Tsukamoto is one of the most inventive directors alive-- you never know what abomination he's going to create next. And Tetsuo: Body Hammer might just be his best film.

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 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.

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.