Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992)

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer: Directed by Shin’ya Tsukamoto. With Tomorô Taguchi, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, Nobu Kanaoka, Sujin Kim. When metal-worshipping fanatics abduct his son, a father unleashes his dormant destructive power, as his naked rage transforms the once-feeble flesh into a grisly symbiosis of metal and tissue. Who dares to defy the ultimate body-hammer?

“What a movie. You donu0026#39;t stumble onto a film like Tetsuo II: Body Hammer every day, and thatu0026#39;s probably a good thing. The jerkier-than-Blair Witch cinematography, the wild u0026amp; crazy stop motion special effects, and the bucketloads of gore are fairly sufficient to ensure that some viewers wonu0026#39;t like this movie. Since youu0026#39;re actually reading this, though, youu0026#39;re probably a pretty jaded and open-minded film fan, which is exactly the audience that would end up liking Body Hammer. Itu0026#39;s one of the craziest and most extreme movies Iu0026#39;ve ever seen, particularly in the brutal, nearly unwatchable flashback sequence which occurs in the last twenty minutes. Itu0026#39;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 DONu0026#39;T look real at all. And Tsukamotou0026#39;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. Tsukamotou0026#39;s style can be incredibly jarring, but youu0026#39;ll end up running out to find everything else heu0026#39;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 heu0026#39;s going to create next. And Tetsuo: Body Hammer might just be his best film.”