Tetsuo II : Body Hammer
Yet again, a sequel which isn’t a patch on the original. Tetsuo II : Body Hammer is essentially a bigger budget and full colour remake of Tetsuo : The Iron Man but, while it maintains some of the energy of the original film, the frenetic muti-themed plot has been dropped in favour of a simpler mad-scientists/conspiracy of violence story with plenty of action-slowing breaks to explain what is going on.
The story centres on an average Japanese family - father, mother and a young son - and begins in earnest when the son is snatched from between his parents in a shopping mall. The parents give chase in a sequence in which the jarring and disjointed camerawork effectively conveys the sense of panic and confusion experienced by the parents and whose resolution pretty much sets both the storyline and the tone for the rest of the film.
The father becomes the victim of an experiment, sponsored by a violent and destructive conspiracy, to see if he can be induced to sprout weapons if suitably enraged. The results of the experiment are not entirely as expected and the reasons for this are explained via a series of flashbacks to the father’s forgotten childhood. The plot works pretty well and manages to keep you hooked throughout the film, but lacks the dense layering of themes that made The Iron Man such a mindblowing experience.
And, to be honest, my main problem with Body Hammer is that, compared to The Iron Man it looks so plain. The stop-motion animation used to portray the metal morphosis in The Iron Man has been abandoned in favour of more conventional special effects - and these look more cheap than surreal. The characters have names, the settings look ordinary. The film is bizarre… but not that bizarre.
There is a lot more explanation of what is going on in Body Hammer which, while making the plot easier to follow, slows it down so that it lacks the frenetic pacing that was such a signature of The Iron Man. The shaky, panicked camerawork used in the chase sequences is initially effective, but is overused later in the film until it becomes more annoying than effective.
That said, there is still a lot in this film that is worth seeing. The relationsip between the father and his wife as the film progresses is well handled and (largely) believable and the action sequences are spectacular. The plot drives the film forward in a manner that holds your attention from start to finish and then resolves itself in a manner that is reasonably satisfying but a little too neat.
Although it lacks the raw stylistic energy of The Iron Man, Body Hammer is still a bizarre and action packed blast of adrenaline and one which I’d have probably given four stars to if I hadn’t watched The Iron Man. If you can get hold of Tetsuo : The Iron Man, watch it. If not, you could do a lot worse than Tetsuo II : Body Hammer.
Sunday 27 Aug 2000 | Paul Pritchard | Science Fiction
