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| MISCELANNOUS |
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| TETSUO: THE IRON MAN By Yodasnoog |
| Imagine a film, which has the intense, claustrophobic paranoia of David Lynch’s surreal masterpiece Eraserhead, the escapist vision of oh so many Anime movies, and stick in Sam Raimi working the camera whilst intoxicated with speed and LSD. If you can, you’ll be somewhere near the intense experiences of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man. The film opens with the “metal fetishist” returning home one day, slicing open his leg and placing metal piping into the wound. When maggots begin to infest his leg he screams and runs outside but is hit by a car. The driver of the car, the “salary man” (Tomoro Taguchi) begins to change over the next few days. Instead of waking up and finding a spot on his face he finds a small piece of metal embedded in his cheek. |
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| On his way home from work a woman, whose arm mutates into a twisted mass of metal, attacks him. He narrowly escapes death and goes to see his girlfriend and this, quite frankly, is where the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan. As if it hadn’t already… Yes, I know that isn’t a very big plot description (and it’s pretty damn vague too), but it’s one of those flicks that really has to be seen to be believed, and I’ve left some things out ‘cause I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. The best way to describe Tetsuo would be to call it a twisted masterpiece. I mean, where the hell else are you going to see death by big metal drill-penis. Certainly not in Hollywood, unless they remake it as Corey: The Metal Dude. |
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| This is a flick that reminds what is so great about independent cinema made on a shoe string budget, it’s highly original, it’s fucking weird and you appreciate the amount of work and talent that was required to make it; take the jittery frame by frame running sequences for example, it hurts my brain to think that they were edited by hand and not a computer. The stop motion animation is also of mind-blowing proportions, and blinding too. (Seriously, don’t even think about watching this if you suffer from epilepsy) The soundtrack (composed by Chu Ishikawa) is a vital ingredient too, providing an assault on your ears with its pounding ferocity, as the film itself assaults your eyes. Tetsuo was made at various times during the late eighties by Shinya Tsukamoto, one of Japans finest “new age” directors (I hate that term). And when I say, “made” I mean “made”. Tsukamoto directed, edited, produced, was co DP and starred as the infamous Metal Fetishist. He also oversaw the special effects. It took me 3 watches, over the course of many years to finally appreciate BOTH Tetsuo movies for what they are, classic cyberpunk nightmares, which you will never forget. Even if you love it or hate it, it’ll be one of the most intense 67 minutes of cinema you’re likely to see in your life. |
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