Monday, October 9, 2017

TETSUO, THE IRON MAN (1989)

The story (and I'm totally guessing here) is a dude, the "Metal Fetishist" (according to the English credits), slices his leg wide the fuck open and crams in a metal rod.  After that, he runs out into the street and is hit by the car of "Man" and "Woman".  Man and Woman then dump him in the woods and romantically hump while the Metal Fetishist dies.  He doesn't take too kindly to this, so he, somehow, haunts the living fuck out of them by slowly turning them into metal and driving them completely insane.  Then things really get weird.

Anything you imagined while reading that description doesn't even capture 6.66% of the frantic madness that happens onscreen.  TETSUO, THE IRON MAN is a nutty as fuck film and I can't even imagine the hardship and torment the filmmakers went through making the movie.  That said, it was also a chore to sit through the entire thing.  Even at 67 minutes, I felt my handsome brain starting to melt out of my beautiful ears.

Surreal story, amazing visuals, interesting (but repetitive) industrial music, mechanical drill penis, awesome B & W photography, male rape, lots of screaming. TETSUO, THE IRON MAN might be kinda boring to sit through, but it's still worth watching for anybody interesting in experimental cinema.

Part 2 - Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992)
Part 3 - Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009)