Tetsuo: The Iron Man Movie Review

“Your future is metal!” Weird 16mm live-action Japanese “normal-sized monster movie” about an office worker gradually transformed into a walking metal collection of cables, drills, wires, and gears. The mutant creature faces off with an equally bizarre metals fetishist (played by the director) whose rituals somehow spawned him. Graphic violence and mutilation (the Hound, for one, was glad this was in B&W!) mated with near-nonstop stop-motion f/x and nightmare/folklore imagery. Tough going if you're not in the mood. Or even if you are in the mood. Allegedly a metaphor of homosexuality in rigid Japanese society, for what that's worth. Big-budget sequel Tetsuo II: Body Hammer is thus far commercially unavailable on American home video. English subtitles.

1992 67m/B JP Tomoroh Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Shinya Tsukamoto; D: Shinya Tsukamoto; W: Shinya Tsukamoto. VHS FXL