Tetsuo: The Iron Man

MOVIE #1,210 •🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿• 10.28.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! For the last edition of “Japanese Saturdays” here in Spooky Month ‘23 we close things out in the 80s with another one that’s been on my radar FOREVER: Shinya Tsukamoto’s legendary lo-fi body horror fever dream, Tetsuo: The Iron Man. From the practical effects and design of everything, to the lovely stop motion beautifully intertwined, its frantic editing and amazing score (bass-heavy proto vaporwave??), what else is there to say about this other than it's a stone cold classic? It was far more experimental than I anticipated although there is a loose narrative. For the whole of its barely-a-feature run-time of 67 minutes, it never lets up. I’m sure the metaphors and meaning of this have been elaborated on to death, but it’s probably best to let it wash over you, at least in the first viewing.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,209 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,211 ⫸

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Tetsuo: The Iron Man (鉄男, Tetsuo, 'iron man') is a 1989 Japanese science fiction horror film directed, written, produced, and edited by Shinya Tsukamoto. The film centers around an unnamed Japanese salaryman who wakes up to find pieces of metal sprouting from various parts of his body and becomes haunted by visions of metal-oriented sexual fantasies. As the man steadily becomes a hybrid of man and machine, he develops a connection with a victim from a hit-and-run accident, who is undergoing a similar transformation. It was released on July 1, 1989.