Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Rating: Horror Vision 5, Story and Plot 1 (/5)
Definitely not for the faint of heart-even if in just black and white. Starting off with self mutilation in the opening scene of someone slicing open his thigh to insert a electrical conduit.
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

Warning if your husband ever becomes a mechanical man and has a twirling member of steel blades, run, run, and run. Too many montages of rapidly sequenced random shots.

"Let me show you a new world"
It ends like any good Monster Movie with two monsters fighting out for control of their small world.

PS:
The main character in the movie for some reason wanted to combine man with machines. Thus a creation of the H+ man. He starts by cutting open his inner thigh and inserting an electrical conduit. Then he goes out and runs.

Eventually he combines with more and more metal stuff including some car parts he acquires in an accident. This iron man creates another iron man and in the Godzilla like battle scenes the main character combines with his antithesis to become an even bigger Iron Man that then goes out to destroy Tokyo (actually not sure city).

No comments: