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Tetsuo
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Year: |
1989
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Director: |
Shinya Tsukamoto
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Stars: |
Tomorowo Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka, Renji Ishibashi, Naomasa Musaka, Shinya Tsukamoto
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Genre: |
Science Fiction, Weirdo |
Rating: |
         8 (from 1 vote) |
Review: |
A metal fetishist (Shinya Tsukamoto) goes to a shed in a scrap yard and arranges some objects he has been carrying onto a flat surface. He then sits on the floor, takes a blade and cuts a deep opening into his right thigh; in unbelievable pain, he picks one of the objects, a length of piping, and forces it into the wound. Whatever pleasure he might have got out of this is overwhelmed by the agony and he rushes out into the street to be knocked over by a passing car. Little does the salaryman motorist (Tomorowo Taguchi) know, he is now infected...
Not a film to watch if you're suffering from a headache, Tetsuo, known as Tetsuo: The Iron Man in English (the name "Tetsuo" is written with the symbols for "metal" and "man" in Japanese) was an incredible melange of nightmarish and industrial imagery accomplished on a tiny budget. In many ways, the fact that writer and director Tsukamoto (yes, he plays the person who starts the story off as well) was working with such a lack of funds meant that the grungy quality he achieved with what he did have could only have contributed to the overall effect.
And what an effect it is, by turns hilarious, delirious, and disgusting, but you won't forget it. Seemingly taking parts of David Cronenberg and David Lynch (it's comparable to Eraserhead at one hundred miles an hour: black and white too) to fashion, as its protagonists do with machinery and appliances, a whole new world, it harks back to the literature of J.G. Ballard but less contemplative, more living in the moment. At first the salaryman notices a small steel spike sprouting from his face while shaving, but when he pulls it out he has to resort to covering the wound with a large plaster.
This is just the beginning as when he is on the subway he notices a fellow commuter (Nobu Kanaoka) has been similarly infected with metal (how? Never explained) and not only that but when she notices him she is intent on capturing him and introducing him to some serious metal that has engulfed her hand. The salaryman manages to escape after a chase, but the damage is done and his arm, then his feet become mechanised. This doesn't put off his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara) for reasons best known to herself, at least until one of the film's most notorious scenes when his penis turns into a large, revolving drill.
His girlfriend dispensed with, the mutations can really begin and there's a homosexual overtone to the manner in which the salaryman and the fetishist are locked into combat, all thanks to Tsukamoto's simple special effects that may be cheap, but fit the insane plotting perfectly. Stop motion animation is implemented most extensively, and the way the two leads have a go at each other can bring up memories of manga battles or Godzilla epics, although the finale plays out less like one character victorious over the other and more like a meeting of minds and bodies as a love affair of screaming metal results in an impending apocalypse. It's difficult to do justice to what a mindbending experience Tetsuo is: you have to see it to believe it, and even then you might not be one hundred percent sure of what you've watched. Great techno music by Chu Ishikawa.
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Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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Shinya Tsukamoto (1960 - )
Japanese writer/director and actor whose controversial, stylised films have bought him considerable notoriety in the West. His 1988 sci-fi body-horror debut Tetsuo: The Iron Man was a hit at international film festivals, and he followed it with the colour sequel/remake, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. Other films include the supernatural yarn Hiruko the Goblin, boxing fetish tale Tokyo Fist, the urban drama Bullet Ballet, erotic thriller A Snake of June and mental breakdown drama Kotoko. |
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