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Overview: 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. As for the story, the whole idea of centering the conflict around a family setting significantly lessens the power of his earlier story, as does Tsukamoto’s attempt to add a more coherent narrative. While his point still seems to be the same one, its told with lots less force, in a far less interesting way, and also in a far less shocking way.

The Bottom Line: I can take screencaps of this if anyone is dying to see the visuals (I understand it’s out of print), but it’s just not a great movie. Tetsuo: Bodyhammer is OK to see this as long as you understand you’re getting a Japanese Cyberpunk movies that’s far less than Tetsuo - Iron Man, or even less than Rubber’s Lover, for that matter. I’ve heard people comment that Bodyhammer sucks so they aren’t interested in seeing the first one - don’t buy this reasoning. While the first screams uniqueness, Body Hammer whimpers “cash in on my earlier success by cutting back the edginess and going more mainstream.” It even stars Tomorowo Taguchi again, who attempts to reprise the same role and crazed scream faces - only this time it comes across more as the last show in a long day of staged repeat performances, similar to what you might find in a theater act at an amusement park late on a Sunday evening. In that sense, Body Hammer comes off as a sequel in true hollywood style.

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Overview: Japanese Cyberpunk films are always looking to extend the boundaries of humanity, but hopefully they do so within the constraints of a semi-coherent plot, with actions by the characters that make sense within the twisted view of the narrative. Android of Notre Dame does away with most of that, and instead goes for massive gross-out scenes with characters whose actions rarely make sense. Gooey substances of all colors and textures come spewing out of every crevice possible from this head in the above shot.

 

 

This story, such as it is, has a Japanese dwarf scientist playing a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein (well, Dr. Frankenstein as the hunchback of Notre Dame, actually) in an attempt to find a way to prolong his dying sister’s life. Yet, instead of going to the morgue, he goes out and finds associates, kills them in gruesome ways and then performs experiments on their various body parts. His most successful one is shown in the picture at the top, where he takes a guy’s head and hooks him up to a variety of wires and implants that allow the “android” (or really, we would call this a cyborg) to have facial movements, control a robotic arm and also can record his visual perceptions into a television. He also has his cyborg head kill this other chick so he can remove her heart in an attempt to fix his dying sister’s heart.

 

Image modified to obfuscate nudity. Go here if interested in seeing the unmodified image.

 

The Bottom Line: The idea behind Android of Notre Dame is rich, and, had it been executed better, might have yielded a pretty good Japanese Cyberpunk Flick. The ending scene in particular, where we see the scientist’s final failed solution is especially intriguing. Unfortunately, it seems that the Kuramoto was more interested in capturing gross-out scenes than he was in pursuing a promising, if limited story line.

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Overview: Rubber’s Lover is one of the truly bizarre Japanese cyberpunk films. Rubber’s Lover is an extreme cyberpunk movie that includes a number of truly outlandish violence and sex scenes. Fukui’s entire message here is summed up well on his interview on the DVD, “Dominant power comes when mental anguish exceeds physical tolerance.” Truly, this is what this movie is about. Chances are, for most of you, this movie will be pretty much completely different from anything you’ve ever seen - which is reason enough to watch it.

 

 

The story concerns three scientists who are attempting to create psychic powers in their test subjects. They use a combination of customized psychotropic drugs and extreme sound wave patterns engineered to torture their test subjects into unimagined mental states in the hopes of surpassing their normal mental abilities. Unfortunately, their test subjects have a tendency to die gruesome deaths by exploding blood everywhere. The corporation funding the research has decided to pull the plug, and have sent Kiku, a low ranking finance employee (who is about to quit to marry the head manager) to relay the news. Two of the scientists go mad and decide to administer the torture treatment to the third scientist, Shimika, as their last hope for developing psychic powers. When Kiku she discovers their torture chamber, one of the scientists abducts and rapes her, and then includes her as a test subject. Shimika and Kiku join forces and try to escape but are captured again and are then subjected to extreme torture in hopes of increasing the speed of success.

 

 

Unfortunately for the scientists, they are successful. During the infamous “rubber suit” treatment, Shimika exhibits massive psychic abilities – so much so that he no longer needs the equipment to mentally attack his captors. There are various side characters in this including Kiki’s corporate slimebag fiancé, and an assistant chick who has a penchant for slapping test subjects.

 

 

The Visuals: The entire movie takes place in a few rooms, and from this perspective, its pretty amazing how realistic and unique a film can be made on such a small budget. The shots seem very well designed to make maximal use out of very meager special effects. Massive quantities of dry ice, blood and screaming make up the bulk of the visuals, but this ends up working in black and white. But what Rubber’s Lover gives you is an ever increasingly insane set of scenes. Whether or not you follow the meager plot, you’ll see some truly bizarre scenes. The weirdest has to be the sex scene near the end where the guy orgasms while ripping the screaming woman’s chest open while he’s watched by the laughing corporate slimebag.

 

 

The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for a Japanese Cyberpunk flick that gives you something different then Tetsuo, Rubber’s Lover is a decent choice. It doesn’t have the deep philosophical message that Tetsuo does, but the cinematography and crafting is done well enough that you will get the sense you are watching an art film versus a purely bizarre sequence of violent images. Truly, Fukui put out a far better film than one would expect given an almost non-existant budget. I had taken a point away for the constant screaming, which began to detract from the film after a while, but I finally decided this is sort of necessary screaming (mostly). All in all, Rubber’s Lover is well worth watching if you’re interested in understanding Japanese Cyberpunk as a sub-genre. Check out page 2 if you want to see more visuals - WARNING - some are explicit.

Page 2: More Screencaps –>>

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Overview: Videodrome, another interesting flick from mind-fuck horror master, David Cronenberg, provides us an interesting commentary on the effects of total immersion into a mass-media culture. Filmed for a paltry 6 million, this movie generated significant buzz upon release as one of the weirder movies ever made. Unfortunately, its FX don’t age well, and maybe I’ve seen just a few too many weird movies to consider Videodrome all that strange now. But if you’re in the mood for a strange cyberpunk horror, this is one to consider.

 

 

The Story: Max Renn (played wonderfully by James Woods), a sleazy two-bit cable TV executive is always on the lookout for shows that pass the bounds of human decency. One day while scanning the satellite feed, his engineer stumbles upon an S&M, broadcast from a strange production company called Videodrome. Not only are the subjects beaten, they may even be involved in creating a snuff film. Curiosity gets the better of Max, and he becomes obsessed with finding the broadcast.

 

 

Along with his pain and pleasure girlfriend (played by Blondie’s Deborah Harry), Max finds the broadcast, and is then shocked to learn that his girlfriend has left to become a star on Videodrome. In pursuing her, and in wanting to experience Videodrome for himself, Max becomes captivated by the Videodrome signal. The wall between reality and fantasy dissolves and Max becomes a pawn in a plot to broadcast Videodrome’s subliminally controlling signal to millions.

 

 

Cyberpunk Musings: If we strip out the bizarre and magical horror stuff, Videodrome’s message is that total immersion into mass media dehumanizes us. It excites us into a state of hyper-violence and deviant sexual desires. Videodrome’s desire to create the “new flesh,” in movie terms is the merging of human consciousness with mass media. In a more post-human sense, Cronenberg seems to be saying that humanity itself is becoming lost as society slips further and further into this new mass-media culture. By feeding our deviant unconscious desires that have been surfaced by addiction to mass media, in effect, our humanity and individualism is lost.

 

 

The Bottom Line: Even though the effects seem dated, Videodrome is still a pretty weird head trip. The characters are by no means deep, but the acting is good enough to keep you entertained in places where the story falters. I will say the as a whole, the cinematography wasn’t the greatest – there were significant lighting issues, and very little imagination in camera angle placements. But whether you watch this movie purely for the horror or the philosophy, the ideas are interesting enough to keep you entertained even with the FX start to falter. I’m torn between giving this film a 7 star rating or an 8 star rating – for now I’ll give it 7 stars until someone provides a good enough argument to merit changing it.

 

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Overview: Screamers is a low budget near future outer-space movie with some cyberpunk elements in it. We get all powerful corporations and some interesting android/robot self-replicating development. While it has some serious story issues, and doesn’t always have the best acting or FX, there’s still enough here to make it pretty interesting, especially if you’re a fan of RoboCop star, Peter Weller.

 

The Story: Screamers takes place in a dystopic near future (2078)e environment, where mining colonies on remote planets have been at war with the N.E.B. Corporation for the past 20 years. After a new substance that made space flight possible, called Berynium, was discovered, the N.E.B. Corporation sent out mining teams to the planet “Sirus 68” to mine the Berynium, but unfortunately, it was discovered that the Berynium was accompanied by massive does of radiation. The miners and scientists on the planey Serius 68 revolted, and soon a larger alliance was formed to fight the all-powerful N.E.B. Corporation.

N.E.B. responded by dropping nuclear bombs to kill the alliance soldiers on Serius 68, and then sent in ground troops to finish the job. The alliance responded by developing “screamers.” Screamers are small sentient robots that can burrow underground at a high rate of speed, and then come up and chop humans to mincemeat. The alliance developed a self-sustaining lab that allowed the robots to self-replicate and included learning algorithms to improve their attack capability. The alliance also included an identification beacon so that the screamers would not attack alliance soldiers. Unfortunately, the screamers have begun to learn, so much so that they have started developing their own models, and worse, have started to disregard the identification beacon.

Commander Joe Hendrickson, who has been on Serius 68 since the beginning of the conflict figures out that the war has forgotten Serius 68, and has decided to try to visit the commander of the N.E.B. forces in order to make a ceasefire. Unfortunately, as he discovers in his trek, the N.E.B. forces are the least of his concerns.

 

The Visuals: Screamers is a cross between Alien inside visuals and a desert-like Road-Warrior setting (without the punk stuff), or perhaps better said, a Pitch Black setting. Orange is the color du jour. In general, the look and feel of the internal set designs are far less realistic than the outside world. Some of the inside sets would look right at home on a sci-fi TV series. The creatures are pretty low budget too.

The Believability Factor: Although originally based on a Philip K. Dick short story, there are enough problems with the story here that cause you to pause. In addition to some real whoppers regarding the overall plot (for instance, if humans could build adaptive learning robots, why didn’t they just get the robots to mine the radio-active Berynium?), and some serious acting issues on the part of some of the minor characters. Still, both Peter Weller (RoboCop) and Jennifer Rubin are good enough to make this worth watching. More so, the evolution of the robots, while often “magical,” is done at least well enough to make you take pause and actually have a deep thought or two about it.

 

The Bottom Line: I’m really torn in deciding whether to give Screamers a 5 or a 6 star rating. This is not a great movie, but there’s just enough here to make watching it worthwhile. If you’re in to dystopic futures, especially ones involving outer space, you’ll probably want to see this. If you’re in to developing AI type movies, this also should hold interest for you. In terms of “cyberpunkness,” the same thing applies – there’s just enough here to include it as watchable cyberpunk, although you’d be find just calling this a space-sci-fi movie.

 

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Overview: Here’s another movie that ranks really high on the weird shitometer scale - yet another cyberpunk movie from the tour-de-force of cyberpunk movies that Korea has become. Save the Green Planet is one of the only movies that has just about every movie genre represented. You’ll find everything from Gilliam-like comedy to graphic horror, to action, to scifi-thriller here. And of course, we get a large dose of Japanese-like Cyberpunk torture visuals in this terrific Korean production.

 

 

The Story: Save the Green Planet is about a completely strange guy and his even wierder ballerina girlfriend - our antihero is convinced that a certain CEO is really an alien in disguise. He has determined its his job to root the alien out and kill him if necessary, just like all the other “potential” aliens he has found in the past. After capturing him, He cuts the CEO’s hair off, as the aliens use hair follicles to communicate. He has other reasons for requiring foot torture and chest ironing. After all, good torture must always have a reason, right?

 

 

The Bottom Line: Its hard to go too much further into the plot for fear of giving key aspects of the movie away. Suffice to say the ending is terrific and fully open to interpretation, and actually has interesting similarities to the ending of Brazil. On top of this, Save the Green Planet is expertly shot, and wonderfully edited. The pacing is simply superb. It’s really hard to imagine that this is Jun-hwan Jeong’s first movie.

 

 

Fair warning: Be warned though. This is a truly weird movie that his NOT for the squeemish at heart. While not a “true” Japanese cyberpunk movie in that, um, its Korean, and doesn’t totally take the “no boundaries” idea, it’s pretty darn close, and certainly merits mention in that sub-genre of cyberpunk. So much so that if you find real Japanese cyberpunk movies to be too much for you (And BTW, Tetsuo 2 doesn’t count, as this movie really doesn’t break ground and isn’t that good besides), Save the Green Planet is a decent entry to at least experience a similar pacing and mindset. Got to Page 2 for more screen caps.

 

 

Page 2: More Screen Caps–>>

 

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Overview: Of all the movies I uncovered during my research for this list, Hardware far and above tops the list of movies I previously had no knowledge of. Put simply, Hardware is absolutely AWESOME low budget cinema. This cross between Alien and the Terminator is set in a totally weird cyberpunk dystopia. It’s scary as shit, it’s totally weird, and DAMN it’s good!

 

Filmed for only one million dollars, Hardware takes place in a truly bizarre dystopic future where a nomadic "parts" scavenger goes into a barren wasteland called the "zone" and finds a strange and seemingly valuable robot head and body parts. Through unfortuitous circumstances, this head finds its way back to a hot looking babe named Jill, an artsy-fartsy type (played wonderfully by Stacey Travis) who accepts it as a gift. She decorates the head with cool colors and stuff and sticks it on her shelf.

 

Unfortunately for her, it turns out this head and body parts make up the bulk of the government’s new prototype Mark-13 droid - a true killer designed to weed out excess population, that’s impervious to almost everything. Once this thing re-assembles itself, this thing begins its killing spree. On top of this, Hardware has some of the most eclectic collection of characters ever assembled. We have a totally slimy pervert that spends his time peeking in on Jill, especially when she’s in the nude; we have a completely shady parts dealer, we have a zen-like unknown nomad, we have a completely weird boyfriend’s sidekick, and some truly bizarre apartment tenants.

 

The Visuals: Like most cyberpunk films, there is one color that dominates the screen - in this case its orange. We get orange EVERYWHERE, along with a nice few accents of pale yellow. All the set pieces are totally futuristic and hip. We get fun advertisements on the radio, a totally hip atmosphere, and truly, one of the best soundtracks found in movies. Quite simply, Hardware ROCKS!

 

Now for the bad news - unless you’re in region 2, you’re screwed. I picked up a used VHS for about 17 bucks on ebay but still found it worth it. Unfortunately, this version is panned and scanned and cut. If I had obtained a "real" version of this movie, no doubt it would be sitting in my top 10.

 

The Bottom Line: Hardware is a terrific, low-budget cyberpunk flick - one of the best low budget cyberpunk movies ever. If you are looking for a great, futuristic terminator-style chase movie that takes place almost completely in a bizarre apartment building, this is your movie!