This horrific, bizarre, psychedelic Japanese film, created and directed by renowned cyberpunk filmmaker Shinya (TOKYO FIST) Tsukamoto, was originally released in 1992. Now, in association with Manga Video and Palm Pictures, the film has finally come out on DVD in late 1999. Tsukamoto’s visual style is similar to that of early David Lynch and David Cronenberg, only with an added dose of hyper kinetic activity. He puts his filmmaking skills to task here and result is mind boggling, but bound to go over the heads of many. For the uninitiated, TETSUO II: BODY HAMMER is the follow up (though not truly a direct sequel) to the director’s 1989 highly acclaimed TETSUO: THE IRON MAN. The Tetsuo films are psychedelic live action sci-fi films with heavy doses of Anime themes combined with the cyborg imagery (and attitude) of THE TERMINATOR.

Tomo (REBORN FROM HELL: SAMURAI ARMAGEDDON) Taguchi plays Tokyo businessman Taniguchi Tomoo, a cowardly, brooding man who suffers from hallucinatory nightmares and who has no memories of his life before he was 8 years old. He lives with his wife and son, played by Nobu (TOKYO FIST) Kanaoka and Keinosuke Tomioka respectively. Director Tsukamoto cameos as the villain Yatsu.

As the film opens, Taniguchi’s family accidentally brushes against two skinhead thugs on an escalator inside of a large skyscraper. One of the thugs abducts his son Minori, and heads to the top of the building pursued by Taniguchi and Kana. On top of the building, one of the thugs pushes Taniguchi off of it, but he manages to grab on to the roof, struggling for his life. One thug holds his wife and son while the other one injects Taniguchi with a high tech looking device, and then takes off. Taniguchi is horrified by the whole experience and his wife wants him to start working out with weights and toughen himself up.

Having put the whole experience behind them, the Tomoo family, forget about the incident until one day Taniguchi gets a phone call saying that they have again abducted the boy, this time right out in front of his parents watchful eyes. Taniguchi sees the thugs right outside their apartment and begins to give chase.

When he corners the kidnappers on the roof, they kill his son and Taniguchi does nothing and the killers escape. It turns out these killers are members of a skin head cult, led by the villainous Yatsu who employs an ingenious scientist who has developed a parasitic process that combines a normal man with a deadly cyborg machine. The villains had injected their prototype into Taniguchi, who they now plan to use as a guinea pig.

The thugs kidnap Taniguchi, and bring him to their lair to experiment with him. They strap him to a device and probe his mind and mentally torture him. Screaming with pain, huge holes begin to appear in Taniguchi’s body, and metal guns form from his flesh. He breaks his bonds and does battle with the thug who killed his son, only this time the thug has been given cyborg abilities similar to Taniguchi’s. Taniguchi destroys his son’s killer and escapes the fortress and returns home in human form. Yatsu proceeds to create more iron men from his cult of skin heads.

Kana, devastated at their loss, is despondent with Taniguchi, and leaves him. But right as she leaves the apartment she is abducted by the villains. Tetsuo starts to transform and gives chase on foot. The thugs take her back to their lair and await Taniguchi’s arrival, and when he comes he has metamorphosed into a walking tank complete with multiple gun barrels protruding from his entire body. Now the stage is set for the final battle between Yatsu’s iron men and Taniguchi. But no matter who wins, the world will still be in great danger.

The film has some truly bizarre images and events:

A human/cyborg tank shoots a tendril through it’s victim’s forehead to gain the knowledge from their victim’s brain.

A man (who is a gun enthusiast) makes love to his wife, and sticks a gun in her mouth. Their kids spy on their parents and watches as their dad accidentally pulls the trigger during their orgasm and splatters her brains on the wall.

A villainous cyborg creation gets crushed by a steel door causing his eye to pop out.

The scientist who developed the cyborg creations, has a huge chunk of his head blown off in a vicious scene.

Another cyborg’s hand morphs into a gun that shoots projectiles.

The human-cyborg transformations show skin stretching to the breaking point and being replaced by living steel protrusions.

A giant killer tank rolls down the streets of the city with unhealthy intentions.

A child is blown up (from a skinheads attack) and only the child's hands remain intact as the skinhead holds them up for the camera to see.

These are just a sample of the strange, visceral imagery this film conjures. Lots of scenes of human to cyborg to vehicle transformations, internal robotic organs, and apocalyptic images. And the plot description above does not do the film justice; there is a lot more to the story that would take pages to discuss. Wrap up the story content with Tsukamoto’s frenetic visual style and pacing and you have a winner. The original Tetsuo was superior to this one in many ways, but not in story. The first film was strong on visuals and imagery, but short on story, characterization, and logic. Tsukamoto makes up for that here.

The film’s special effects are not entirely special in this age of the jaded CGI audience. But they are nicely used and shot at the right angles to get the most mileage. Some of the robot effects and the pyrotechnics are somewhat amateurish, but original. Many of the transformation scenes are reminiscent of John Carpenter’s THE THING, but with a cyborg twist. There are several dream and hallucinatory sequences (that are Tsukamoto’s trademarks) and they are mind blowing.

SIGHT

TETSUO II: BODY HAMMER is presented in a full frame 1.33.1 transfer. That’s the way it was filmed, so no picture information is missing. The image appears soft, the colors muted, and without detail. However, this is not the fault of Manga Video or the folks at Rycodisc. This is the intended look of director Shinya Tsukamoto. TETSUO: THE IRON MAN was originally filmed in black and white which attributed to the otherworldly look and made the budget effects look convincing. For TETSUO II, Tsukamoto used color stock film, but he still played down the color scale. There are no scenes in the movie where vibrant colors are glimpsed. Even the explosions are not colorful. Tsukamoto filmed the entire movie at dusk, at night, or during a cloudy day. This simple shooting restriction contributes highly to the dark, somber tone of the film. The dream and hallucinatory scenes uses the same dark color scheme to achieve the desired effect. People may scratch their heads at this full frame low resolution transfer (because of the sharp image quality we have come to expect DVD), but this is the filmmakers technique. He is an artist, and he has a vision for this otherworldly film. Who are we to question him? I believe his unorthodox film techniques work. Yes, the detail level is heavily sacrificed, but the dark, apocalyptic tone of the film is intensified. The print is free of nics and scratches and grain is visible in many scenes, although its primarily buried by the rapid fire imagery. The movie is mainly a combination of dark blacks, blues, grays, which produces a similar effect that stark black & white does. The films best effects shots look mostly convincing, its the common ones (like a cyborg with a gun shaped appendage) that don’t work so well. The hallucinatory sequences are appropriately dream like. The imagery and camerawork are the stars of the movie, and though the visuals are not clear and sharp, this DVD transfer does justice to the director’s bizarre vision.

SOUND

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack is nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done. The dialog, sound effects, and music come through with nicely. The mix has no dropouts, pops, or other anomalies, but sometimes a hissing sound is audible. The film is dialog driven with the original Japanese dialog coming through clearly. My only complaint is that sound field has virtually no directionality. The bass is restrained but it is there, and it lets you know it’s there without being overpowering. It’s like Tsukamoto is playing with the audience’s mind not only visually but sound-wise too. Composer Chu Ishikawa creates a tension filled techno score which punches up during the action scenes and remains subtle at other times. The tempo changes with the tone and mood of the film, and sounds good in the mix.

FEATURES

The great theatrical trailer, even though it does no justice to the film, is full frame, stereo, and is 3:22 long. The Manga Video Commercial is a compilation of clips from Manga’s properties that are hopefully emerging soon on DVD. This is an interesting feature: It is full frame, stereo, and runs for 4:05. This compilation is accompanied by TETSUO-style industrial music by the techno-rock band KDMFM, and the visuals comprise scenes from MACROSS PLUS, NINJA SCROLL, DEVILMAN, MADBULL, THE GUYVER, WINGS OF HOMMENAISE, GIANT ROBO, GHOST IN THE SHELL, DANGAROH, and THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF TOM THUMB. The Manga Video Fan Club Trailer features pictures of the artwork and video products that are orderable directly from them. You can get their contact address and Web site information in the Web Link Information menu. There is also an unrelated anti-drug trailer. There is a menu containing information about Tetsuo creator/director Shinya Tsukamoto, and a menu containing the films credits in English since you can’t read the Japanese credits unless you know Japanese.

CONCLUSION

A great, original cult film that, while adds nothing new to the TETSUO saga, establishes a linear plot and characterizations, something the first film lacked. Looking back at the film, its almost as if Tsukamoto remade the first film in color, removed the sexual symbolism, and added those elements which were missing from the original. Since the films do not share the same characters (except for Tomo Taguchi) and have separate realities, the two films are not really related like a normal sequel. They both have that trippy, frenetic visual style of Tsukamoto though. So if you are a brave filmgoer who is looking for something refreshing and new, you must check out this foreign film. But be prepared to stretch the boundaries of your sanity, because this is the real deal. If you are a fan of the original you must check this one out, because it really flushes out the story behind the madness, though the film is not a continuation to the original. It’s more of the same story told a different way. But it the way that the story is told is what makes it unique. Manga Video and Rykodisc do a decent job of preserving the director’s vision in the video and audio elements of the DVD.

TETSUO 2: BODY HAMMER is available from DVDEmpire.com

TETSUO: THE IRON MAN is available from DVDEmpire.com

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