Tetsuo II: Body Hammer

All creative fun from the first Tetsuo is gone. Story is more straight forewards and the most of the experimental special effects are a repetition. Only a few very good scenes; too much shooting and running around. Characters loose they intrestingness pretty soon. Both Tetsuo's got the story of they own. The famous drill cock visits here a split second and there is only one steamy sex scene spoiled with childish gun play.

Essentially a remake of the first but with an altered 90s colour aesthetic & more backstory to the characters. Both toned down & amped up in conflicting ways that mostly distract from the direct biomechanical surrealism at the heart of this bizarro concept. Doesn't quite expand it enough to transform into something new or more "mainstream" & disappoints fans of the original. Still, it's about as crazy as you dare to expect & I loved the setting of the primal cyberpunk gym inside a metal foundry.

The sequel to "Tetsuo: The Iron Man"(1989) is kinda like if Shin'ya Tsukamoto remade the original "Tetsuo" but into more of like a "movie" movie, and not the weird experimental short film, that just happens to be feature length, that was the first. If that makes sense. Like strangely this story is more straightforward, which I like, but the shocking experimental charms seemed to have been replaced with a kind of anime schlock. However, probably enough here for fans of the original to enjoy.

BODY HAMMER. A frontrunner for my favorite title of all time. It would be difficult for me to not enjoy a movie so utterly audacious; to be so bold and shameless in its outward manifestations of strong emotional states means there is no room for subtlety. All heart and imagination. The visual schemes are just so fucking cool. It feels like live action anime, which I mean in the most complimentary sense. I like this better than the first film, not least of all because it's called BODY HAMMER.

Again, lots of work and lots of care went into this retelling of more or less the same story, and with its minimal dialogue and complicated use of visual and audio techniques there is something quite "cinematic" about it. Despite all that, clearly I'm not the right audience for this kind of thing, given that at no point was I really involved, interested or even entertained.

Unlike the tagline (should not be missed...), I think its quite OK to miss Tetsuo II, especially if you've already seen the real thing. In Tetsuo II, Tsukamoto substitutes a larger budget in lieu of the unique and innovative narrative we find in Tetsuo - the Iron Man. The compromise is bad all around. For starters, this style of merging man and machine works FAR better in B&W than it does in color. The surreal believability factor of the FX drops significantly in color.

Not as good as the first one, and repeats a few too many ideas without adding anything new. But Shinya Tsukamoto's mind is always an... interesting place to travel to.

Not as jaw droppingly good as the first one, but still worth a looksee Toe knee :-)

Sadly, not on the level of the original Tetsuo. It has bigger production values & color cinematography, more effort to tell a coherent story and a more polished electronic score, but in turn it loses that something that made the first film so unique. It's still so weird that you can hardly blame Tsukamoto of selling out, but it just doesn't flow or grab you like in the same way, and even with such a short runtime, it starts to feel overlong.

Watchable, still... a little messed up.

A little longer, a little less shocking (because no longer unique) than the original, and a little heavier on the story, but still: what a ride. The effects and cinematography are more imaginative than virtually anything any Hollywood genre film has to offer. The world needs more industrial-cyberpunk-body horror-action films. It's pretty clearly the best genre.

Gang members begin fucking with this guy and his family. After they take his son and a guy holds his son up by his feet and explodes him, he starts to become a metal man who can manifest a gun arm and a bunch of guns in his chest. This isn't half as good as 1, but it's still kind of interesting if you can stomach the fucking dumb anime bizarreness of it all and the shaky cam travel sequences.

I don't think it reaches the same level as the original movie, which for my money was such an original piece of work it's 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.

Although not as experimental, the more straight-forward sequel has a better story and there's still plenty of cool effect sequences and rad music.

Compared to the mind-bending insanity that was Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Body Hammer just seems so flat in comparison. Nothing seems to be working properly as it did in the first one. The effects are still gorgeous for the time and budget but it just doesn't catch on as the first one did because everything seems to have been dumbed down to straight forward cinema. The fact that it is shot in color offers a different contrast but it just doesn't work, sadly. I can't wait for the third one, though.

Damn I like that style...the pictures...conected to the sound is so uncomfortably and uncommon.