Tetsuo

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a man (called only "the man" (Yatsu) in the credits, or the "Metal Fetishist" in English-language film criticism), cutting open a massive gash in his leg and then shoving a large threaded steel rod 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, a Japanese salaryman (Tomorowo Taguchi), and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara) try to cover up the mess by dumping the body into a ravine, but the dumped man gets revenge by forcing the salaryman's body to gradually metamorphose into a walking pile of scrap metal. This process starts when the salaryman 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 cuts to the salaryman at his home having breakfast, with a bandage over his cheek. He receives a phone call, consisting of nothing but him and the other speaker (possibly his girlfriend) continuously saying "Hello?" to each other and flashing back to having sex after dumping the Metal Fetishist.
The first of several highly stylized chase scenes starts with the salaryman pursued through an underground train station by a woman whose body has been taken over by the Metal Fetishist as he is on his way to work. The salaryman seems to win this encounter by breaking the back of the radically transformed woman (she begins the sequence as a demure office worker and ends it as a wild metal-infected woman) after even more metal has erupted on his ankles and arm.
The next segment is a terrifying dream sequence where the salaryman's girlfriend, transformed into an exotic dancer with a snake-like metal probe, terrorizes and rapes the salaryman. After waking from this 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. A fight ensues where the salaryman terrorizes his girlfriend, and acquires more and more metal on his body. She fights back and in the end impales herself on his drill and dies.
Helpless to do anything, the salaryman, now the Iron Man, is visited by the Metal Fetishist, who emerges from the dead girlfriend's corpse to show him a vision of a "New World" of nothing but metal and turns his cats into grotesque metal creatures. This is where the film suggests a post-apocalyptic future. The Iron Man flees and is followed by the Metal Fetishist into an abandoned building. After the Metal Fetishist explains to the Iron Man how both of them became what they are, a final battle ensues. The Iron Man ends by attempting to rust/combine himself with the Fetishist and this merges both of them (in a hallucinatory rebirth sequence where the two are connected by a metal umbilical cord) into a two-headed metal monster. The two 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!" The duo charges through the streets of Japan in a horrific fusion of the two men and the accumulated metal, in a largely phallic form. The film ends with the words "GAME OVER" as opposed to "The End" after the closing credits.

Tags: realism, paranormal, cult, violence, atmospheric, psychedelic, sci-fi

Review:
Now I viewed it again last night, and I am totally shocked and speechless, when it comes to this masterpiece of Shinya Tsukamoto, the genius multi talent behind films like Tokyo Fist (just don't try to watch if you think Raging Bull is too much), Gemini and Bullet Ballet.
The soundtrack is made with different sounds of metal hitting together, scratching against something and most notable, there is also synthesizer use to create very ominous and threatening atmosphere that never stops, and the music is again one of the most important elements of this film.The effects are totally outstanding as the director made them by himself.
Tsukamoto also wrote, directed, photographed, art directed and edited this film among special effects, and the most help he got came probably from Kei Fujiwara, who plays the girl friend in the movie, and she also directed her own similar film, Organ, in the middle of the 90's.
The feeling in Tetsuo is exactly similar, even though the things themselves are not scary or threatening, because they should be only dead pieces of metal and plastic, products in other words.Shinya Tsukamoto made also sequel to Tetsuo, but it is in color and never as stunning as this brilliant original, but still worth checking out for lovers of this kind of cinema.
Shinya Tsukamoto is among Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Ishii and Takashi Miike the most interesting, personal, creatively lunatic and overall stunning artists to come from Japan today, and by watching their films, all the nonsense entertainment coming too often from Hollywood nowadays is easy to forget and just concentrate on these miracles in the field of cinema.
Cinema is magic and Tetsuo is one example to show that for the lovers of independent films, since this is not going to reveal to mainstream audience due to its difficult imagery, violent scenes of nightmarish terror and overall personality that demands a lot from the viewer.
This is far too difficult and intelligent cinema for mainstream audience, and thus would never come out from some big studio that wants only money and commercially potential films.Tetsuo is a 10/10 masterpiece and one of my personal favourites.
I've tried to describe this film as clearly as possible, and without using too many praising adjectives, and since this movie's power is somewhat hard to describe with words, I recommend that all the lovers of Japanese cinema and the ones who think they're interested in Tetsuo check this out and see and experience the magic for themselves..
While hilarious, there is a scene involving the man and his "woman" (as credited) that, while serving a purpose, became more of a sick joke than a part of the film.As the movie continues on you get more and more lost as to what is going on when cuts become more frequent and the film becomes extremely frantic and fast paced.
But here are a few that apply: Japanese, hyperactive, perverse, industrial, surreal, Faustian bargain, contrasty, black-and-white, Kafkaesque, scifi, stop-motion, manga-influenced, revenge, technology, alienation, supervillains.Shinya Tsukamoto is an actor (he's the antagonistic "Metals Fetishist" here as well as Jijii in Ichi the Killer) as well as a ground-breaking writer/director/cinematographer.
Tetsuo's influence can be seen clearly in directors as diverse as Darren Aronofsky, Takashi Miike, and even David Cronenberg.There is definitely a plot, but due to the non-linear editing and sparsity of dialogue you'll need to pay close attention on a first viewing or else you'll be overwhelmed by the engrossing visual style (which might be a good thing).
The real meat was Tetsuo.The "plot" of this film revolves around a businessman (who apparently like to have sex with his girlfriend in public places and film it) who is involved in a hit and run auto accident with a metal fetishist.
If this isn't bad enough he soon finds out the man he hit (played by the director of the film) is in fact alive and rather peeved.Absolutely insane violence permeates the film which retains its punch through the black and white film.The review I read about this film compared it to Eraserhead (A film I still have not seen) which I believe says a lot about Eraserhead.
To compare it to a film I've seen I'd say it reminds me of "Un Chien Andalou" with about three more lines of dialog and a lot more gore and violence.I also recommend the sequel Tetsuo II: Body Hammer.
He comes back to haunt tetsuo as tetsuo turns into a human scrapyard and then attacks him physically in a very strange dual of metalic body morphing near the end of the film.A lot of the movie is stop motion animation mixed with live action actors.
The industrial music is perfect for this film because the film is based on dirty grimy and rusty industrial metal garbage and even the environments are all streamlined industrial parks and monotonous suburbs.The thing i like about this movie is although it is "artsy" it's the kind of art that's fun to look at.
In fact it fails to explain anything so you will sit on the sofa in a state of confusion that will not lessen on repeated viewings until you come to realise as I have that there is no reasoning behind this film.Take "Akira" without any character development whatsoever, minus the amazing action action sequences, minus Otomo's skill at directing and scriptwriting, lose the detailed world in which it takes place, replace the Japanese drums and naked voice soundtrack with good old fashioned industrial and of course replace the Cristal clear animation with grainy black and white that looks like it was shot with a nineteen thirty's handicam and you have "Tetsuo, Iron Man!"Basically the plot is the same, Tetsuo has a traffic accident with someone who has unusual powers, develops those powers, kill his girlfriend in a grotesque manner then an orgy of violence and manga style metamorphosis ensues.
I believe it omitted anything else as there were no other characters or events.If this wasn't enough the editor was clearly unsure about the order in which the scenes were intended to go (if indeed they were intended to go in any particular order) so they were simply spliced into one second shots and shuffled like a deck of cards so that each shot barely corresponds to the once which precedes it.Try as I might I cannot understand why this film has had such a positive reception from the various websites I have encountered, so I assume that there must be an audience for films where loosely related scenes are jumbled together like a Spanish paella (and I mean no offence to those of you to do like to watch films without narrative) But I can't help thinking that Tsukamoto's "masterpiece" Tetsuo takes all the worst elements from Manga like the flashing lights and unexplained morphing and put them in a live action film that doesn't include any of the good elements that make manga great or for that matter any good elements in the slightest..
I feel that most viewers are not mature enough/experienced with extreme cinema to look beneath the superficial "story," of which there is very little, to appreciate the wealth of subtext lurking beneath the most mind-blowing and exhilarating hour and seven minutes ever committed to film.At once, it is an allegory of technology in the modern age (and the dehumanizing effect it has on its unwitting victims), a commentary on the psycho-sexual fetishization of industrialization, a critique of vengeance and violence, a celebration of nihilism and the potential beauty of destruction, a deranged superhero fantasy, a metaphor for failed dreams, an indictment of sexual repression (including homosexuality) and, at its core, a modern day ghost story, in which a hit and run driver (of sorts; he does carelessly dump the metal fetishist's body in the woods) is haunted by his metal-obsessed, ambiguously homosexual, marathon runner victim, a crazed nihilist who has acquired the ability to manipulate metal with his mind after a piece of steel (from the car) became lodged in his brain during the accident.
The events of the film, when taken to be no more than the actual images depicted, are too disturbing, complex and, ultimately, too alien, for the average, unthinking audience member to make heads or tails of, and thus are insulted as pointless, "offensive" and "weird," as if these highly subjective concepts denote something inherent in the movie.
"Tetsuo The Iron Man" is the brainchild of Japanese film director Shinya Tsukamoto and it is a brilliant piece of industrial cinema.
60 or so minutes of mind blowing, psychedelic images, moving at 200 miles an hour, it is violent and it is disturbing and it is like nothing you've ever seen before.There is a man obsessed with metal to the point that he insert various metallic parts on his body.
Utter bonkers, making no sense whatsoever (well, a kind of flimsy one), the movie is an almost silent film with amazing imagery but close to zero story.It all starts with a guy running around after sticking a metal rod on his leg.
However, I also can't see myself recommending it to my friends anytime soon or re-watching it again.After a businessman hits someone who recently inserted a rusty, metal rod into their leg, metal slowly starts to pop up on his body as he begins to mutate into a massive chunk of metal.When the film first opens up, you get a couple minutes of quiet and calm pacing showing someone walking down an alleyway.
At several points it is nigh on impossible to distinguish where the shrapnel-like eruptions of skin end and the twisted metal fixings begin.I recommend you watch this film loud, on a big screen and slightly under the influence.
The sexuality is shown as a pure act of aggression (somwhat typical for Japanese movies as well) to spread the cold metal and let it run free.The most disturbing thing is the gory violence, which is explicit, but artful, cause it is so well filmed (in black-and-white) and edited with incredible speed and skill.Last but not least this sure is an extraordinary work of metal sculpturing!So my vote is: 7 (if you like to see a Cronenbergesk movie-trip without a "story")..
Let me say that Tetsuo is not for all tastes, not even for those of you who liked the aforementioned Akira (actually, the movie's name is based on one of the protagonists from the film) and Blade Runner.
there's been lots of arguing about whether Tetsuo is a masterpiece or a steaming heap of artsy junk, but one thing is for certain: it's one of the strangest movies ever made.The story begins as the character usually referred to as 'the metal fetishist' (since the characters really don't have names) cuts open his leg and sticks a metal pipe inside.
If the director, Shinya Tsukamoto had gone for a more conventional story-telling method, Tetsuo could be shrugged off as just another movie barely worth watching only for it's visual ideas.
Piling some really quite disturbing imagery into a melange of stop-motion animation, sped-up and slowed-down film and lots and lots of fast-cut montages, this gradually builds into an at least slightly coherent plot involving a man slowly turning into a giant metal monster, then fighting some kind of rust-man-woman-thing on jet-powered skates.
All the elements such as the jaw-dropping stop motion effect, the incredible metallic soundtrack, the smart sound mixing, the extreme film editing, the black and white cinematography and an highly innovative story come together beautifully and prove that cinema, indeed, is limitless and low budget can never suppress a man's vision.
And the strange electronic music by 'Chu Ishikawa' brings to life the metallic, teeth gnawing, body-horror, that is frequently compared to David Lynch and Cronenberg.It's hard to describe the story in Tetsuo, it's a true surrealist nightmare!
A man known only as the "metal fetishist" (played by the films director Shinya Tsukamoto), whose insane 'fetish' is to insert pieces of scrap metal into his own body, is hit by a car.
After that, strange things start happening to poor Tetsuo as metal pieces appear on some parts of his body and becomes almost like a semi-cyborg as the person who originally started the whole accident begins to taunt him through his horrifying transformation to the path of destruction.Weird and mind bending Japanese Sci-fi horror shock-feast with surreal and disturbing imagery blended with bizarre special effects and stop motion animation with it as well, the movie is a hyperactive and gory little movie with a complicated plot but some nice gore and violence along with it.
The movie is like a dark nightmare come true in the tradition of David Lynch and David Croneberg, this film is not for every taste but worth a view if your into Japanese flicks, Sci-fi with horror and gore flicks.Also recommended: "Videodrome", " Scanners", " Akira", " Re-Animator", "Dead Alive", " Street Trash", " The Fly ( 1986)", " The Toxic Avenger", " Doom", " Day of the Dead", " Ichi The Killer", "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky", "Battle Royale", "Versus", " Perfect Blue", " Eraserhead", " High Tension", "Caligula", "Hostel", " Bad Taste", "C.H.U.D.", "Evil Dead 1 & 2", " The Thing ( 1982)", " Shivers", "Rabid", "The Brood", " Terror Firmer", " 3 Extremes", " Fist of the North Star ( 1986 anime version)", " Ghost in The Shell 1 & 2", " Driller Killer", " Troma's War", " Predator", " Cannibal Holocaust", " Cannibal Ferox", " Cannibal Apocalypse", " Basket Case", " Sin City", " From Dusk Till Dawn", " Vampire Hunter D (1985)", "Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend", " Demons", "Suspiria", " Inferno", "Phenomena", "Terminator 1 & 2", "City of the Living Dead ( a.k.a. Gates of Hell)", "Bio-Zombie", " House By The Cemetery", "Hellraiser 1 & 2", " Evil Ed", " Nightmare on Elm Street Series", "Freddy Vs. Jason", "Tokyo Fist", "Oldboy", " Shogun Assassin", " Jason X", "House of Wax (2005)", "Blood Diner", " Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday", " Bride of Re-Animator", "Beyond Re-Animator", " Metropolis ( 1927 and 2001 versions)", " Natural Born Killers", "Maniac ( 1980)", "Last House on The Left", " Se7en", " Jin-Roh", " Saw 1 & 2", " The Elephant Man", "The Devil's Rejects", "Men Behind The Sun", "Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger part 4", "Robot Carnival", " "Troma's War", "Combat Shock" and "Blood Feast"..
Unlike most movies known for their extremely divisive weirdness, "Tetsuo" is a film that definitely has a clear plot, as well as reoccurring main characters.
If a movie in which a man tries to stick his power tool penis in a screaming victim in one of its more toned down scenes sounds good to you, you will adore this perverted work of genius!Personally, I love weird movies; after all, my favorite film of all time is "Eraserhead", which obviously inspired "Tetsuo" heavily.
Just think of it as a long nightmare that you can't escape.The scenes where the man slowly mutates into living metal is as horrible as it is satifying, and the labido thats turns into a drill.....enough said.This film rates as the ultimate head f**k, it only goes on for about an hour but you can't really go on watching it for much longer after that as it really messes you around.
This is a  masterpiece of Japanese underground-cyberpunk-sci-fi.The whole 65 minutes of this movie are crammed and intense.Sure it is uncomfortable,sure its sick but hell,its compelling.Watching the metamorphasis of the main characters and using unique cinematography, gives this film the edge over a lot of its "underground" alternatives.Using stunning (though confusing) cut scenes and having an astonishing sondtrack ,makes Tetsuo an extremely difficult,but enjoyable viewing experience..
Things in this movie could and should had been wrapped up sooner and perhaps would had been a better watch if it was going somewhere different with its story toward the end.But for most part "Tetsuo" is simply being a visual experience.
Although the Salaryman and his girlfriend try to get on with their lives after the accident, things begin to go astray when the Salaryman notices a metal prong protruding from his cheek.Shot completely in black and white, the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie is quite stimulating because of its fast-paced action sequences, strangeness, and pulsating background music of Ishikawa Chu. However, for me anyway, the film grows a bit dull after thirty minutes because while visually stimulating, I would of liked the film to have more of a story..
The movie is entirely shot in black and white and it has an important use of the stop-motion technique, also used so many times by Tsukamoto in other films.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man is, definitely an amazing movie that tells a story in a weird cause-effect logic but that still understandable for the audience who males this travel throughout the mechanic and dirty world that the creator presents.
this is the second movie i've seen by Tsukamoto (the first being A Snake of June) although i've been wanting to see this and many other films by the director for a long long time.Tetsuo confused me a lot, i wasn't always 1005 sure of what was going on and the distorted camera angels and crazy re-arrangement of the plot made this even more difficult but i did enjoy this film very much and can see where it's influences were from and how it has since influenced (the ending of this film being very similar to that of D.O.A: Final by Miike Takashi for instance.I will definitely watch this movie again, i've come away from it remembering the atmosphere much more than the story and i feel this is a primal aspect of this film, it's very much a mood piece that engulfs everything.So what's the atmosphere like?
Yes, both Tetsuo and Eraserhead are weird films shot in black-and-white.