Main Cast: Tomoroh Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Shinya Tsukamoto, Naomasa Musaka
Release Year: 1989
Country: JP
Run Time: 67 minutes
Plot
An hour-long feature from Japanese director Shinyu Tsukamoto, Tetsuo (also known as Tetsuo: The Iron Man) tells a horrific, cyberpunk-influenced science fiction tale about the intersection of man and post-industrial technology. The central character is a Japanese salary man, an average office worker who is transformed by a brief encounter with a metals fetishist, a man who has purposefully implanted pieces of scrap metal in his body. The salary man soon begins sprouting pieces of metal from various parts of his body, a change which is accompanied by increasingly nightmarish visions and bizarre, metal-filled sexual fantasies. As the man evolves into a strange hybrid of man and machine, he also develops a telepathic connection with another of his kind: the metal fetishist, who has been undergoing a similar conversion, and may indeed be the cause of the salary man's transformation. The two engage in a violent, destructive battle throughout the streets of Tokyo, accompanied by an appropriately industrial soundtrack. Shot on a small budget in 16 millimeter black-and-white, Tsukamoto reprised many of the images and plot elements of Tetsuo in a higher-budgeted sequel, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
Review
An over-the-top study in urban nightmares and body horror, Japanese auteur of the grotesque Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man in a nonstop barrage of nerve-shredding, mind-splitting surrealism that serves as a jarring analysis of the paranoia of industrialization. The constant manipulation of multiple cinematic techniques, including film-speed and stop motion, coupled with the film's fever-pitched assault on the senses, creates a consistently unsettling aura of impending doom reminiscent of David Lynch's Eraserhead, punched up with the frenetic aesthetic of Sam Raimi, and rounded out with the intensely graphic physical horrors of David Cronenberg. Equally discordant is the grating and vivid sound scheme, crackling and pounding with the searing sounds of scraping metal and rending tissue, easily as assaulting on the ears as the film's visual scheme is on the eyes; this is one film in which covering their eyes during the more graphic displays will by no means shield viewers from the audacious atrocities that may become too much for some to bear. Difficult to endure and impossible to forget, the film will leave a lasting impression on those who subject themselves to its cognitive horrors, searing itself into not only your mind, but into your entire consciousness. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (鉄男: Tetsuo) is a 1989Japanese cyberpunk film by cult-film director Shinya Tsukamoto produced by Japan Home Video. This, his third film, is an extremely graphic but also strikingly-filmed fantasy shot in the same low-budget, underground-production style as his first two films. Tetsuo established Tsukamoto internationally and created his worldwide cult following. It was followed by Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) and the upcoming Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2010).[1]
The film opens with a man (called only "the man", or sometimes the "Metal Fetishist") cutting open a massive gash in his leg and then shoving a rusty metal pipe into the wound. Later, upon seeing maggots festering in the wound, he screams, runs out into the street, and is hit by a car. The driver of the car first known as the Japanese Salaryman (cult actor Taguchi Tomorowo) tries to cover up the mess by dumping the body into a ravine, but the dead man comes back to haunt him by forcing his body to gradually metamorphose into a walking pile of scrap metal. This process starts when the driver finds a piece of metal stuck in his cheek while shaving. He tries to remove it, but realizes it is growing from the inside. The scene shifts to the driver at his home, seemingly with no regard as to the assault of the woman, where he and his girlfriend are having sex. Later, the driver receives a phone call, consisting of nothing but him and the other speaker continuously saying "Hello?" to each other and thinking back to having sex after dumping the Metal Fetishist. The first of several highly stylized chase scenes starts with the driver pursued through an underground station by a woman whose body has been taken over by the Metal Fetishist. The next scene shows an exotic dancer with a probe who terrorizes the Salaryman. After realizing this is a dream, The Salaryman and his girlfriend have sex at his apartment and eat erotically. As she eats each bite given to her, he hears the sounds of metal scraping. The Salaryman suddenly discovers his penis has mutated into a gargantuan power drill. This is how his terrified girlfriend meets her demise. Now helpless to do anything, The Salaryman, now the Iron Man is suddenly paid a visit by the Metal Fetishist who uses his power to terrorize now only him, but turns his cats into grotesque metal creatures and comes in through the corpse of his dead girlfriend and shows him the vision of a "New World" of nothing but metal and fight each other. After the Metal Fetishist explains to the Iron Man how both of them became what they are, The Iron Man duels the Metal Fetishist once more. Seeing no way to win, the Iron Man and the Fetishist Merge into a horrific Metal Gestalt life form and agree to turn the whole world into metal and rust it, scattering it into the dust of the universe by claiming "Our love can put an end to this fucking world. Let's Go Get'em!" The duo charges by firing a fused gun and speeds off towards Japan. The film ends with the words "GAME OVER" as opposed to "The End" after the closing credits.
Cinematography
This was Tsukamoto's first movie to be shot on 16mm, all of his previous work being done with Super-8 cameras. The camera work was split between himself and Kei Fujiwara both of whom also play the roles of major characters. (Fujiwara has since directed several of her own films.)[2]
