MOVIE REVIEW: 1984 (1984)

 Written and Directed by Michael Radford

Produced by Simon Perry 

Director of Photography Roger Deakins

Edited by Tom Priestly

Production Designer Allan Cameron

Music by Eurythmics and/or Dominic Muldowney

Starring

John Hurt as Winston

Suzanna Hamilton as Julia

Richard Burton as O’Brien

…

Corruption is the cement that holds this country together. Besides, corrupt people are the first to want love stories.

-Michaelangelo Antonioni, Identification of a Woman (1982)

…

Review by William D. Tucker. 

In another timeline, the fate of a totalitarian regime rests on the love between a man and a woman. 

That’s not the truth, of course, but you could use that as a marketing hook. 

Sure, people who’ve read Orwell’s novel will laugh and roll their eyes, and say, “It’s about the love for Big Brother, stupid!” but many more will not have read the book, and so they will go into the movie version thinking-singing, “It’s the power of love!” 

And, well, the movie wouldn’t absolutely contradict any of that . . . and Winston does say “I love you” in the end-oops! My bad . . . Spoiler . . . sorry . . . 

Look, you’ve read 1984, right? You can buy it at a Target, for Christ’s sakes, alongside the latest volumes from this or that New Age con artist or The Art of the Deal or some incoherent reactionary screed assembled from rotting pieces of pop psychology and outmoded essentialisms by some pretentious Canadian philosophy professor-what’s his name? 

Ah, doesn’t matter.

We’re not here for the shit.

We’re here for the champagne. 

1984 . . .

 . . . the same year that Godzilla returned from the molten depths of the Earth to terrorize Japan once more . . . 

 . . . a massive miner’s strike meets violent suppression in Britain . . . 

 . . . the Union Carbide plant disaster kills 2,500 in Bhopal and creates an ongoing environmental catastrophe . . . 

. . . New Zealand is declared a nuclear free zone . . . 

. . . first CD players available commercially . . . 

. . . Bishop Desmond Tutu wins the Nobel Peace Prize . . . 

. . . Ronald Reagan wins a second term as US President . . . 

. . . Famine in Ethiopia . . . 

. . . William Gibson’s Neuromancer introduces the word ‘cyberspace’ into the pop culture zeitgeist . . . 

. . . four independent businessmen repel an extradimensional demonic invasion of New York City . . . 

. . . scientists in America and France jointly discover the virus that comes to be known as HIV . . . 

. . . Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to go on a space walk . . . 

. . .  DARPA launches the Strategic Computing Initiative which is a program to create autonomous robotic land vehicles to be used in war . . .

. . . Waseda University invents WABOT-2, a prototype humanoid musician robot . . . 

. . .  US Congress cuts funding to the Contra death squads who continue to be funded by secret financial support from Saudi Arabia . . . 

. . . Apple Computers were going to free us from technocratic corporate oligarchy by creating a rival technocratic corporate oligarchy with killer form factor for a change-look at the Olympian Steroid Babe as she throws a hammer through that stuffy goddamn IBM telescreen . . .

. . . 1984 . . . 

. . . in both Orwell’s novel and this film version, we’re not even sure if the year is actually 1984. Our protagonist, Winston, seems convinced that he knows what the actual date is, tho’ even he is afflicted with doubt. Winston works in a warren of offices rewriting history according to the dictates he receives via telescreen. A telescreen is a kind-of old-fashioned tube TV with a camera behind the screen that’s always watching you, and that you cannot turn off unless you are a member of the upper ranks of the Party-the Party being Ingsoc, which is a designation derived from the collapse of the words-and the ideals-of English and Socialism. 

Ingsoc, in practice, resembles a nightmarish amalgamation of Stalinism and Fascism and Naziism. But, as an American, I can’t help but see reflections of my own oh-so-wonderful crapitalist society. The de facto caste system based upon (mostly inherited) wealth; a media machine much too cozy with the state that’s all too eager to spit out the infallible metrics of GDP (conveniently ignoring the plight of the working poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, and those marginalized because of their immigration status, skin color, sexuality, and/or gender identity) whilst singing the praises of martial virtue attained in endless warfare upon nebulous enemies abroad; and all this while medical costs skyrocket amid epidemic rates of drug addiction, suicide, and eroding faith in public institutions. 

Happy endings all the way ‘round!

Orwell’s novel-and this faithful film adaptation-depict a world with no hope. That’s not to say that there’s no escape. You’ve got state-subsidized Victory Gin which will get you good and fucked-up, even if it burns like jet fuel on the way down your gullet. You’ve got the ritualistic denunciations of confessed Thought Criminals broadcast on Jumbotron-style telescreens in massive public arenas-which are like super-angry high school pep rallies. 

You can pass your nights dreaming of a future in which the orgasm is physically and neurologically excised from the human being as both an individual and as a species. All people shall exist as either providers of wombs and/or providers of sperm’n’eggs so that the state can perpetuate itself unto Infinity, with no masturbation or other non-productive forms of sexuality allowed. 

Oh, yeah-and public executions of prisoners of war. You can lose yourself watching someone get machine gunned at the knees so they bleed out real slow-like. 

And if you ever engage in any illegal activities-which is basically anything that Big Brother decides deserves punishment-you get to be tortured for days, weeks, and months until you agree to confess all of your actual crimes-things which you did do-and all the crimes which Big Brother instructs you to confess-things which you did not do-over the national telescreen network, which is a kind of Next-Level Fox News-style form of state media. 

Oh, and there’s death! How could I forget that one? 

Death’s an escape. You can be shot in the head by an executioner. You can drink yourself to death. You could even perish accidentally while being repeatedly electrocuted by one of Big Brother’s beloved and loving torturers. 

Oh, shit! I forgot about the Victory brand cigarettes! State subsidized lung cancer . . . once again, as a selfish All-American Asshole, I keep thinking of my own country-specifically, in this instance, of Big Tobacco’s denials of the carcinogenic effects of their best-selling products . . . I’m also reminded of a video I found on YouTube where a guy talked at length about how chewing tobacco would never give him cancer or any other health problems because he felt very strongly that had to be the case . . . and now I’m thinking about all the religious fundamentalists in my nation that deny evolution . . . deny the scientific consensus on climate change . . . deny COVID-19 . . . are in denial about the results of the 2020 Presidential Election . . . in 1984, the action is confined to an England which is dominated by a single totalitarian political entity-Ingsoc-whereas in America we have . . . The Marketplace of Ideas! Whoever makes the most money gets to purchase the Marketplace and decide which ideas get a come-up! Have the most money and be Big Brother! Sports bar! New Age wellness prattle! All ‘organic’ cookbook recipes! Right-wing tele-pundits authoring nationalist revisions of history! Pro-abstinence parables hidden inside gothic teen vampire romances! How-to manuals focused on regressive ideas of masculinity! Hate rally! Go team! Hoo-ray! Kill ‘em all! Jump for joy!

Yeah, I know. It’s easy-cheap, even-to be a pessimist when everything is absolutely motherfucked beyond recovery. Shame on me for stooping to such negativity of attitude-of outlook, even!

This film version of 1984-which was both produced and released in 1984-works as both a credible science fiction scenario and as an all-too-Orwellian nightmare of pessimism. Orwell constructed his literary output upon the dual bases of powerful moral conviction and the profound disillusionment he experienced as he saw humanity charge boldly into two World Wars which brought about so many wonderful products: death camps, Atomic-Biological-Chemical weapons, and totalitarianism. 

Orwell protested all of it even as he lost hope that humanity could legislate or theorize or fight its way out of a final and complete self-obliteration. This film emobdies the Orwellian despair while offering up an extremely detailed production design which extrapolates from 1948 England what the worst possible 1984 England would look and feel like, and the result is a potent example of a retro-future. But not a trendy, steampunky retro-future that Los Angeles actors would want to tabletop roleplay in via YouTube livestreams-this is the Bummer From Way Back-an alcoholic and tubercular writer’s prophecy of fear where the only feasible painkiller is that goddamn Victory Gin that you could probably use to power a tank to flatten a slum full of starving sex workers and manual laborers. 

But it is all fine. It will be fine. For all times. If you can just look Big Brother in the face, and say the magic words,

“I love you”

and it’s not like you have to mean ‘em, or that Big Brother’s even concerned that you’re speaking from the heart. 

Big Brother, at some level, is a realist. He knows that if you ruthlessly torture someone for months on end to get them to make a public confession they’re probably doing it to make the pain stop. 

But Big Brother is as fair as they come. 

You see, everybody’s been through the ringer in 1984. Your number’s come up, that’s all.

Even the torturers were tortured once upon a time. 

And history’s been re-written so many times, now-who knows what’s real? 

How do you even know what today’s date is?

Even if your dayjob’s re-writing all the history books . . . how many times were they re-written before you got rotated into position, hm? 

You’ve got a box that’s supposed to be a jigsaw puzzle of a picture of an old church. You open the box, and you start fucking around with all the pieces . . . only to find they’re all pieces from different puzzles of pictures of who knows how many different old churches . . . you’ve basically got just enough to know . . . that you’re totally defeated. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the sensation that your sin wasn’t trying to solve the puzzle-your sin was that you thought there was a puzzle you could solve in the first place.

Nope.

Just a bunch of random crap rattling around in a box. However, for your deductive efforts you shall be rewarded with a mandatory thought reform period. Congratulations. 

What if Orwell had drank less? What if he had access to cognitive behavioral therapy? What if he hadn’t caught TB? Would he have been more of an optimist? Would we have accepted a more hopeful vision? Or does Orwell’s personal despair give us all a way out of trying to make things work-a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it were, hmm?

1984 exists, possibly, as a challenge from a man writing well beyond hope. 

Do we have what it takes to live in reality without white supremacy, slavery, hyper-competitiveness, social stratification, colonialism, fanatical systems of belief, empire, propaganda, and war eternal? 

Orwell tells us that history isn’t on our side. 

But, you know, maybe, like . . . Christmas cheer will yet save us?

Or, like, I dunno . . . the Protestant Work Ethic?

How about . . . a really-I mean really terrific after dinner speaker-like, uh, like totally Toastmasters level of quality-that could do the job, couldn’t it?

Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! I know! I know! Ooo! Teacher! Teacher! Over here! Me! Yes!

I got it. If I show up at my local open mic stand-up comedy show, and, like, do just, you know, like a total slayer of a five minute set-eh? That’s got to move the needle, comrade! I could even get laid! Humor’s sexy, y’know?

Ahhh . . . yeah . . . okay . . .

I’m spitballing here. 

Don’t look at me like that!

You’re reading a blogspot blog, genius, and you’re looking for the next-level breakthrough on the problems articulated by Orwell?

Like, Christ-humping fucknuts, people-whaddaya want from me?!

(Shrugs elaborately)

That’s all I got. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have multiple glass tubs of nacho cheese to microwave and consume one after the other, so, if you wouldn’t mind . . .

(Gives you little flicky waves of his hands to indicate ‘get the fuck out’)

Alone at  last . . .

(Redefines ‘abject’ as he abuses his body with a nacho cheese orgy-glut)

MOVIE REVIEW: OUTLAND (1981)

 Written and Directed by Peter Hyams

Special Effects John Stears

Special Optical Effects Supervisor Roy Field

Production Designer Philip Harrison

Art Director Malcolm Middleton

Costume Designer John Mollo

Make-Up Peter Robb-King

Director of Photography Stephen Goldblatt

Head of Video Department Richard Hewitt

Editor Suart Baird

Produced by Richard A. Roth

Music by Jerry Goldsmith

Leisure Club Music Produced and Composed by Richard Rudolph and Michael Boddicker and performed by Ganymede

Starring 

Sean Connery

Frances Sternhagen

Peter Boyle

James B. Sikking

…

“It figures. It’s all happened too sudden. People gotta talk themselves into law and order before they do anything about it. Maybe because down deep they don’t care. They just don’t care.”

-Lon Chaney, ex-Wolf Man, former Jr., in High Noon (1952)

“Never send a human to do a machine’s job.”

-Agent Smith in The Matrix (1999)

…

Review by William D. Tucker.

The Company is back. Kinda. I’m talking about the Company referred to in the  1979 film Alien, and, well, they’re up to their old tricks of exploiting workers’ desire for wealth and adventure out on the frontiers of space. This time the setting is a harsh, dystopian mining colony on Io, a moon of Jupiter. The colony proper comes across on screen as a  warren of cage-like capsule bedrooms and spartan apartments alleviated by a laser light titty bar, some wall tennis courts, a bleak cafeteria, video golf for the hardcore assholes, and legalized prostitution. 

Workers have been behaving erratically in statistically significant numbers: suicides, assaults, murders, all seemingly coming about due to the extreme psychological stress of working in an ugly, depressing, dehumanizing environment. A guy takes off his spacesuit helmet while on a moon surface worksite. Another guy enters an airlock with no suit, just regular clothes, and a cigarette behind his ear. Guess he was going out for a smoke. Sex workers are reporting injuries due to assaults, rapes, and beatings in higher than normal numbers. The Io colony is not a happy place. 

Head explosions are a thing in this movie. Caused by explosive decompression. Which is not scientifically accurate. I dunno, maybe there’s something weird about the way the pressurized atmospheric environments interact with the monumental gravitational force exerted by Jupiter? Eh? (Shrug) I never been to Jupiter, okay, so I can’t speak about it from direct experience. Of course, the movie follows a theme of ‘people under pressure’ which is to some degree literal, but also metaphorical. So, I don’t know, maybe the various head explosions are meant to be taken, um, not so literally? Look, if you’re a stickler for scientific accuracy, you’re probably gonna laugh at those bits, so that’s not super-terrible. It’s kinda fun in a sicko sort of way.  

On top of everything else at the Io colony-the suicides, the murders, the brutalizations, the sexual violence-on top of all of it . . . there are fucking cops on the moon of Jupiter. That’s right. LIke they needed that as a cherry to lord it over the turd cake. Not just regular cops, either-space marshals. And who is the Number One Space Marshal on Io? Sean Connery, of course. 

But this isn’t 007 Connery. This is Connery when he was in his real prime as an actor. When he was older, and when the roles had nuances worth digging into. A lot of people like to say, “Oh, Connery was the best Bond. He was the best as 007!” And, you know, sure. You can say that. But if you actually look back at those Connery Bonds, I think you’ll see he was at his best during moments of absurdist comedy. The look on his face when a woman tells him her name is Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. It’s the same look he has on his face when he shows up  dressed to the nines at a sleazy casino full of cowboys in leisure suits in Reno in Diamonds Are Forever. Connery mastered deadpan comedy beats as 007. But I don’t think he really came into his own as a dramatic actor until much later in his career. 

In Outland Connery’s marshal character is very much inspired by Gary Cooper’s beleaguered lawman in High Noon, as he realizes that the entire system of the lunar mining colony runs on greed, corruption, and the murder of anybody who fights the extractive-capitalist status quo. Gary Cooper gets deserted by the entire town of Hadleyville. Sean Connery stands alone on the moon of Jupiter. Harsh realm, my dude, harsh realm. 

Like Alien, Outland is a highly inductive piece of film, assembling a wealth of fascinating science fiction world-building details that eventually submit to the grand deduction of the total fuckedness of existence under no limits gangster capitalism. The Company has constructed the perfect system that can function no matter the misery and waste it generates in volumetric quantites. 

But there are moments where the inhuman perfection glitches:

-an assassin using a futuristic infrared scope botches his shot when sweat gets in his eye;

-the greedy corporate supervisor played by Peter Boyle as a version of his maniacal character from Joe-think of him as ‘Joe made good’-playing video golf. Just like a proper all-American oligarchic asshole would;

-Sean Connery and his corrupt subordiante James B. Sikking slamming tennis balls against a slab of what looks like the Berlin Wall to pass the time, and avoid confronting their growing rift directly;

-Connery wields a sawed-off shotgun because buckshot scatters, and that’s safer than a rifled shell which would drill holes through the walls of the pressurized space colony and thus cause everyone’s head to exlode . . . but I think we can all agree: buckshot or shell, let’s not go firing off guns inside space colonies or space ships, okay? Glad we all agree . . .

-the fact that Connery actually engages in some detailed detective work, aided and abetted by Frances Sternhagen’s ornery moon doctor-how much actual sleuthing happened in 1982’s Blade Runner, eh? Yup. Outland, tho’ mostly forgotten by pop culture, is a better police procedural future investigation than the 1982 world-building trendsetter.

Speaking of forgotten movies: my legitimate Warner Brothers DVD copy which I bought for $5+applicable sales tax some, I dunno, ten or eleven years ago? It has the video quality of a bootleg VHS rip. Technically, it’s in letterbox-not the ‘enhanced for widescreen TVs’ lies printed on the insert paper on the inside of the plastic sleeve-which means you can watch it in its proper aspect ratio but it’s smaller on the screen than it should be. This kinda sucks . . . but it is amusing that I can have the thrill of watching what feels like a bootleg VHS-perhaps purchased through a late-1990s Luminous Film Works catalog of gray market reduplications-from a ‘legitimate’ home media release.

It’s the fuckin’ Company, man.

You just can’t win.

BOOK REVIEW: THE FEELIES (1990)

by Mick Farren

Originally published in 1978 by Michael Dempsey/Big O publishing. 
Revised version published June 1990 by Del Rey Books.

PLEASE NOTE: This review is based solely on the revised edition.

...

"Those who remain in the real world will be those who are able to accept reality for what it is."

...

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Combined Media has got a future for you, my friend, if you can afford it. They call it Integrated Entertainment, or IE for short. IE is a mixture of life support system, and virtual reality via chemical/electrical stimulation of your central nervous system. You can seal yourself into a self-contained bed, have the IE techs run nutrient drips into your veins, put your respiratory and circulation systems in sync with life support apparatus, insert a cybernetic feedback array into your brain, and you're ready to techno-trip balls for the rest of your days. No more messy interactions with a world filled with crime, drug resistant disease, poverty, and people who will always be smarter, more beautiful, and more successful than you. Once you plug into IE you can be Billy the Kid, a paperback space pirate, the Marquis de Sade, or a Ku Klux Klansman-it's all doable. Nothing is forbidden. After all, it's inside your own head. As long as you got a triple AAA credit rating, you're good to go.

IE is the central technological commodity that powers a grim New York City in Mick Farren's The Feelies, a lean, insightful dystopian novel about the consequences of building a capitalist economy around a powerful form of escape from flesh and blood reality. IE, at first, is only for the super rich. Well, not really super rich, just those who have triple AAA credit ratings. The poor are left to fend for themselves by joining ultraviolent street gangs, or to work mindless jobs maintaining the IE infrastructure. The smart ones have signed up with the militarized police forces who have formed themselves into heavily armed and armored CRAC (City Combat and Riot) squads who love nothing better than busting civilian heads. If you can't be one of the ones born to wealth, status, and a guaranteed life of ease working in the upper echelons of corporate leadership then at least you don't have to be one of the little people. You can put on a uniform, grab a truncheon or an assault rifle, and lord it over the lowly shitizens.

Or, if you're ambitious, lucky and attractive enough, you can land a role on the Reality TV anticipating Wildest Dreams, a kind of R-rated Double Dare-style game show built around inane trivia games and sexually humiliating obstacle courses. The unwashed masses go nuts for the insta-celebrities who make it on to this show, often times mobbing the stars when they make publicity appearances or stalking them in their own neighborhoods.

More disturbing ideas float to the surface: all those cameras down at the subway station? Rumor has it that no one's watching the feed anymore. Even the pan-optic surveillance infrastructure is crumbling. No one is in control, even though everyone is fighting to maintain the illusion of control.

Farren's book alternates chapters following a handful of central characters, a selection of random citizens, samples from various IE fantasies, and the machinations of the corporate officers to give a fast-paced but comprehensive portrayal of Combined Media's infiltration and lockdown of human consciousness at the individual level. Two people emerge as significant point-of-view characters: Ralph, an alcoholic technician who services the IE beds, and Wanda-Jean, an underemployed pill popper who pursues her dreams of becoming a celebrity on Wildest Dreams. Neither of these characters are anti-corporate messiah material, nor are they meant to be. Farren's intention is to show how these two all-too-average beings respond to their growing awareness of the absolutely fucked nature of the world around themselves. Ralph and Wanda-Jean are both funny and grimly authentic.

Eventually, CM decides to offer IE at economy prices to draw in the masses. The implication is that only the most down and out and the super wealthy will remain outside of the VR fantasy trip. And then . . . a final showdown between the haves and the have-nots? Farren doesn't say. In the end, even the powers that be seem to be in thrall to the economic paradigm they've unleashed. No great visionary or rebel messiah shall emerge to save humanity from being enslaved by the New Corporate Predator State. It's a beast which cannot be defeated or satisfied. It can only self-destruct.

MOVIE REVIEW: TETSUO II: BODY HAMMER (1992)

Starring
Tomorowo Taguchi as Tomoo Taniguchi
Nobu Kanaoka as Kana
Keinosuke Tomioka as Minori
Shinya Tsukamoto as Yatsu (The Guy)
Hideaki Tezuka as Big Skinhead
Tomoo Asada as Young Skinhead
Torauemon Utazawa as Mad Scientist


Writer/Director/Co-Producer/Art Director/Co-Cinematographer 
Shinya Tsukamoto


Original Music by Chu Ishikawa
Special Effects by Takashi Oda
Cinematography by Fumikazu Oda, Katsunori Yokoyama
Produced by Hiromi Aihara, Hiroshi Koizumi, Fumio Kurokawa, Fuminori Shishido, Nobuo Takeuchi
A Kaijyu Theatre Production 

...

"I don't want money. Destruction is all I need."

...

Review by William D. Tucker. 

A drunken salaryman staggers through a subterranean underpass somewhere in the bowels of Tokyo. The camera, slasher movie style, seems to stalk him, putting the audience in a first person POV. A hand, the hand of the stalker, makes a gun and pretend shoots the salaryman. The salaryman is irritated by these juvenile shenanigans, but not for long. Two loud bangs, and bullets drill into his torso. He slumps to the ground, one of the comparatively few people in Tokyo who will be classified as a gun homicide that year.

The stalker is revealed in a reverse angle shot as a strange man with a smoking arm attended by an awestruck young man with a shaved head. The stalker seems to be pretending that his arm is some kind of gun. What kind of pretend results in actual bullets and an actual dead body, though, seems to be the question at hand . . .

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer resurrects the themes and imagery of the first Tetsuo movie, but dials back the surrealism a little bit. Or maybe it dials it up to eleven. I guess it depends on how you reckon such things. The first Tetsuo movie was a creation of pure sensation and outrageous imagery with little regard for the usual film grammar and character motivations. There was a story, and there were characters, but these things were subordinate to the overall spectacle of uncontrolled psychic and biological mutations. No motivations or causes are given for the wild transformations in the first movie, and Tetsuo II is comparably mysterious, but the sequel offers more of a science fictional rationale for the mutations. They are seemingly tied to rage, to deadly threats to one's survival, and memories of the past long suppressed.

In the world of Tetsuo II, mutation is also a matter of applied willpower. From the wellsprings of one's rage, one can focus thoughts into mutagenic agents.  An arm and a hand can be morphed into a cannon. Soft flesh becomes layers  of breathing, sweating steel. The most advanced mutants can seemingly manifest concrete as well as steel to further armor up against all enemies. Such thoughts can also be focused into a magnetic field, like Magneto in the X-Men comics, and used defensively and offensively against other metal mutants. Tetsuo II brings an amusing comic book logic to the story which makes it more of a traditional narrative experience than the first movie. Some people I've talked to don't like this aspect of Tetsuo II, and prefer the pure lunacy of the first movie which was totally unbounded by narrative and logic. In fact, it seems that many people were let down by Tetsuo II. Maybe I'm too much of a fan to see this movie in a harsh critical light, but I've always found Tetsuo II to be commendably ambitious. It takes the notions of mutation and creative destruction out of the purely internal, surrealistic mode of the first movie and amplifies them into instruments of mass destruction. In the sequel, it would seem that anybody has the potential to grok the Tetsuo state of mind.

Tomorowo Taguchi is back for another round of mutation and creative destruction as the suit and glasses stiff who transforms into the Iron Man when pushed to the limit by a mysterious tormentor. Shinya Tsukamoto writes, directs, operates the camera when he's not in front of it, art directs, edits, and incarnates a new version of his metal fetishist character from Tetsuo, the Iron Man.

 In the first Tetsuo film, the characters were broad types sketched in by enthusiastic actors. This time around, the characters are given a little bit more in the way of human details and specifics. Taguchi's character is given a name, Tomoo Taniguchi, and a chic apartment in ultramodern Tokyo. He shares it with his wife, Kana, who is played by Nobu Kanaoka. Kanaoka had a cameo as a woman possessed by a piece of biomechanical scrap metal in the first movie. Tomoo and Kana have a young son, Minori, and to all appearances their lives are not the stuff that films are made of, seeing as they live in a comfortable home and even sleep together in an adorable cuddle every night. Tomoo's got a secure job, presumably in some cubicle warren in some skyscraper, and Kana is a devoted mother, preparing breakfast each morning, and encouraging her husband to exercise regularly. Their apartment is a modernist refuge from the biological and technological chaos of the living city. Tomoo makes his way to his office job, wearing a dorky little backpack like a student, on foot and by bullet train and during these trips he is portrayed as having some bizarre anxiety, some sense of being engulfed by the city and its crowds, and yet also passed by, maybe even superseded . . . Tsukamoto shoots Taguchi standing still and staring into the camera as the crowds, backs to the camera, rush by him on the subway platform at high speed. Taguchi, as Tomoo, seems to be standing still, and yet vibrating with repressed energy at the same time. He has a power he wants to unleash, but can't tap into it. He's been too rundown by the workaday grind, by easy living, and he can only sense in an oblique fashion the potential within him.

Tomoo, Kana, and Minori are at the shopping mall one day when they run into a pair of trenchcoated lunatics. One of them zaps Tomoo with some kind of injection gun, and then snatches Minori. Tomoo staggers around in shock and pain, while Kana zips off after the kidnappers. Tomoo finds his way to the mall rooftop where he has the shit knocked out of him by the kidnappers, one of whom sadistically dangles him over the side of the building, while the other one threatens to throw Minori from the roof. But the kidnappers back away at the last moment, leaving Tomoo hanging off the building's ledge like a hero in some old silent film. Kana rescues him at the last moment, pulling him to safety, and they see that Minori has been left behind.

What the fuck was that all about? Were they really kidnappers? Maybe yakuza? Or were they were just particularly sick pranksters? Kana pressures Tomoo to start pumping iron at the gym, maybe to be able to better fend off the rising tide of punks and criminals infesting Tokyo these days. Tomoo can't lift the weights at first, but then he thinks of the leering faces of the thugs who assaulted him and his family, and he finds himself to be stronger than he thought. Next, he hits the workout bike, and his breath capacity and leg muscles have all been augmented by Tomoo's rich inner vein of rage, fear, and paranoia. Is Tomoo on a trajectory to become Tokyo's version of Paul Kersey?

Meanwhile, in the depths of an iron foundry, a small army of cultish skin heads lift gigantic weights crafted from discarded scrap metal and chunks of concrete. Fire and smoke and liquid metal pour from demonic apparatus, and the skinheads are seemingly trying to make their bodies over in the image of junk and machines. The kidnappers are revealed to be agents of this cult, and they hand their strange injection gun over to a portly mad scientist direct from central casting for maintenance. The leader of this cult, played by Shinya Tsukamoto, appears to be the shooter from the opening: a man with a scarred lip who luxuriates in a Jacuzzi filled with molten metal. The kidnappers describe Tomoo as a "mild specimen" and suggest that they have injected him with some kind of substance which will transform him. Tomoo is, perhaps, the subject of some sort of bizarre experiment.

The kidnappers strike again, stealing Minori from Kana and Tomoo's apartment. Tomoo gives chase, ending up on the apartment building's roof. He battles one of the kidnappers, who taunts him by telling him that he threw Minori off the roof. Tomoo goes berserk, and he mutates his right arm into a long, penile cannon straight out of the H.R. Giger calender. Tomoo blasts away . . . and ends up obliterating his own son, whom the kidnapper uses as a human shield. Kana witnesses this accidental homicide, and begins to see her hubby as some kind of monster.

The cult then kidnaps Tomoo, taking him to their lair in the iron foundry, and hooking him up to some sort of bizarre machine that looks like a BDSM version of virtual reality gear. The mad scientist,  at the direction of the cult leader, probes Tomoo's mind, and agitates his memories of the kidnappers and the death of Minori. These memories are like some sort of malignancy, and the mad scientist encourages them to grow and colonize more of Tomoo's consciousness. These cancerous thoughts give Tomoo a jolt of rage, which causes his body to begin to mutate into a living weapon, bristling with bouquets of penile cannons. Tomoo yells and screams in supreme agony, and fires his cannon appendages indiscriminately in the armored testing facility. The cult leader and the mad scientist are satisfied with their new creation. The mad scientist speculates they can use this new process of induced mutation to make piles of money enabling customers to transform themselves and others into screaming, writhing, bio-mechanical weapons batteries.

The cult leader isn't interested in money, though. His stake in the project is highly personal. For he and Tomoo share a secret history that the salaryman has all but forgotten. But the cult leader has forgotten nothing. He seeks not only to mutate Tomoo, but to reawaken his buried memories.

Tomoo's mutations progress into wilder, outsize forms. Eventually, he resembles a kind of lopsided golem fashioned from mud, concrete, and steel. His mutations increase as the cult leader agitates them by dropping hints of their buried past together, and threatening Kana's life. One of the dilemmas that Tomoo faces is that as he mutates and increases his power, he seemingly must struggle to control his destructive tendencies. Sure, he can kill and destroy property at will, but he cannot save any of the people he cares about, and  these frustrations only amplify his rage. Usually, in films about people with superpowers, the powers they gain or are granted are used to increase their agency, and to do good. But in the twisted universe of Tetsuo II, the powers come at great cost. One's body is subjected to out of control transformations, and it is all but impossible to unleash the powers within without causing massive unintentional casualties.

There is also a nasty rust disease which can afflict those who decide to unleash their inner Tetsuo. The cult leader starts using the injector gun on his skinhead disciples, and the war with Tomoo escalates.

Tetsuo II suggests that the mutational process can be guided, maybe even controlled and transformed into a commodity. Such a reproducible mutation process could even be co-opted by extremist political elements. The skinhead cult seems to exist as some kind of fascistic organization, all the members of which have been recruited from boxers, bodybuilders, and other devotees of physical culture. The leader seems to see such people as prime candidates for mutation. His motivations are murky, but he seems to have some aim beyond tormenting Tomoo. The imagery of the skinhead cultists and their willingness to be mutated into living weapons suggests some resurgence of Japan's militaristic past.

There is also a theme running through the movie that the city of Tokyo itself is somehow a repressive force, one that is ambiguous: it is the fruit of Japan's struggle to rebuild itself and thrive after World War II, and is therefore an improvement upon the imperialism which once led the country to total destruction. Everyone is employed, well-fed, and safe. But much of this security has a hidden cost. Society is ruled by powerful corporate interests. The common citizen is expected to practically kill themselves to make good grades in school and land in a plum corporate office job. Those that don't make the grade can look forward to a life of manual labor or maybe something in the service industry. Not everyone fits into such a conformist society. Tsukamoto, as a nonconforming artist, rather perversely suggests that there are those who would choose to obliterate such a society almost as an act of creative expression.

Tetsuo II is that rare fantasy movie that doesn't deal in simplistic conflicts between good and evil. In this reality, comic book superpowers offer their own peculiar kind of bondage. Men of metal suffer from rusty leprosy. Painful memories metastasize into psychic cancer. A sinister tormentor may organize a cult only to get you to remember what you've forgotten. And maybe that tormentor is a psychopathic murderer willing to put your family's lives at stake, but shouldn't any lover of truth be willing to go the distance? Moreover, in the world of Tetsuo, the most dangerous WMD is not a nuke or a biological agent or a bunker busting bomb. It is the rage simmering within the human heart. After all, isn't it that rage, combined with fear, hatred, and distrust, which builds the weapons and wages the wars?

MOVIE REVIEW: SOYLENT GREEN (1973)

Dir. Richard Fleischer 

Starring Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young, Brock Peters

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Soylent Green tells a story about a nightmare future where the population bomb has exploded. People are everywhere. Clogging the streets, the stairwells, the hospitals, the jails, the prisons, the schools, the homeless shelters, the supermarkets, the social services offices, the unemployment lines . . . the only places that are free of excess people are the high rise luxury apartment buildings reserved for the wealthy and the power elites, and the fenced off ditches that serve as barricades between the haves and the have-nots.

Real food is a scarce luxury. A small hunk of beef can go for hundreds of dollars on the blackmarket. Hygiene items like soap and toothpaste are also equally rare. Forget about real sugar and spices.

The populace is fed various product lines of kibble called Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow, and, the latest, Soylent Green. Soylent is the name of the super-corporation that cranks out the artificially engineered and flavored all-purpose nutrition products. Soylent food isn't all that flavorful, but nobody much remembers the flavor of real food anyways, so few complain.

Or maybe the population bomb hasn't exploded. Maybe there are just too many poor people.The wealthy and the powerful don't give a good goddamn about the downtrodden. They are more than happy to cling to their luxury and influence, and ghettoize the excess people in the world.

No more social safety net, no more due process, and no more public education. The younger generations coming up are barely literate. The only people with any knowledge of the past are the elderly and the middle aged. The middle aged are already starting to forget. The elderly are dying off. History is an obsolete profession.

Police work is an interesting affair in this world. Meet NYPD homicide detective Robert Thorn, played by Charlton Heston in one of his best screen performances. Thorn's partner is a "bookman" named Sol Roth, a former university professor who does all the background work on Thorn's murder investigations. Sol is played by screen legend Edward G. Robinson in his final film role. Thorn and Sol aren't just partners. They're roommates in a cramped apartment. Thorn is edging into middle age. Sol is elderly. Sol remembers everything that is gone in the world, and Thorn gently teases him about his griping. Sol remembers the taste of real food, real fruits, real vegetables, actual meat. Thorn eats his Soylent Red, Yellow, and even Green, and doesn't get too upset about the pleasures of a world he never knew.

That's not to say that Thorn doesn't appreciate the good things in life when they come his way. One of the perks of his job as a homicide dick is that anytime he goes to investigate a murder in one of the luxury high rise apartments he gets to loot the place. The deceased have no use for that lightly used bar of soap, that odd cut of beef in the fridge, or that bowl of apples and bananas. Maybe he'll take a few hardback books home for his partner Sol. Hell, while he's working the crime scene, maybe he'll take a shower break, and revel in the sensation of high pressure, scalding hot water. Top it off with a solid hump with one of the bonded concubines who are part of the package deal for the elite renters. These concubines are known as "furniture." The furniture are sex slaves who are, presumably, sterilized, and exist to serve the mostly male occupants' lusts.

There's little pressure on Thorn to actually solve any homicides. He's got a backlog of cases about two years or so deep. Homicide is just another form of population control, when you think about it.

When Thorn isn't on homicide duty, he's on riot duty. That involves him and other cops putting on fascistic looking football helmets and suppressing frustrated hordes of starving people with clubs. They're supported in this duty by bulldozers which come in and scoop up people and take them off to who knows where. Most of the riots seemed to be triggered by scarcity of the Soylent food products. Citizens queue up to get their weekly ration, but the rations run out, and there's still a line, and the riots begin. Thorn isn't a great cop, but he doesn't much like cracking the heads of hungry, desperate people.

Soylent Green is notorious for its surprise ending, so I won't say anything about it. If you have no idea what the ending is, then you're in for a helluva story.

But even if you know the ending, but have never actually seen the whole film, it is well worth watching.

First off, it features a great performance by Charlton Heston as Thorn. Heston could've sleepwalked through this role. He has the chiseled looks and the booming voice of a classic actor. He could've overplayed it. Instead, he embraces the flaws of the character: his casual larceny and corruption, his griminess, even his sexual frustration. Thorn isn't exactly evil, but he's not perfect, either. And he's still got some strong instincts as a detective.

The other great performance comes from Edward G. Robinson as Sol. Robinson was dying while making this movie. He gives a humane and humorous performance as a kind of Last Man On Earth. He is the last man who remembers history, literature, and good food and drink. He also, perhaps, has some memory of the atrocities of the twentieth century that helped pave the way for the world of Soylent Green. His final scene is mindblowing and reveals a depth of strangeness and absurdity to the world of the story.

The plot of the film revolves around a murder which sets Thorn on the trail of both the murderer and a possible link to a larger political/business conspiracy related to the murder. Soylent Green has been much parodied over the years. I knew the secret of its ending going into it, and had seen plenty of spoofs in TV shows and sketch comedy, but what surprised me was how serious the actual film is. It has an outrageous conclusion, and yet it doesn't play as camp. It is the final condition of a world subjected to the nightmare logic of business as usual.