TETSUO

1989/Director: Shinya Tsukamoto/Writer: Shinya Tsukamoto

Cast: Tomorowo Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka, Renji Ishibashi, Naomasa Musaka, Shinya Tsukamoto

Here is a film I saw on video not long after it was released and one that I still watch once in awhile, and yet one, like Eraserhead – a film it is often compared to – I really have no clue as to what is really going on. Despite that I am always intrigued by the images and sounds in this short (about 67 minutes) dark little jewel that came out at a time when Japanese cinema needed a good jolt. Influences from Lynch, David Cronenberg (especially Videodrome), H.R. Giger and classic Japanese horror films and even old stylized Hollywood films can be seen all over the place. The sound track is perfect as well. It is all frantic and pulverizing and non-stop action after a common looking office worker and his wife or girlfriend hit a man in their car and hide the body in the woods. The guy they hit is introduced into the film while performing some very strange act in the form of ramming a chunk of rusty looking into his leg that is soon covered in maggots.

Exactly what begins to happen later is not really clear except that the hit and run office worker soon begins transforming into a half flesh, half metal monstrosity. It is not explained why and that is not necessary really, since the film moves at a fantastic pace and the mood it evokes is more surrealistic than linear. After a period of time of him spurting blood from his face on the mirror after removing bits of metal from his flesh there is a really freaky sex sequence that starts off with a sodomy-nightmare and then progresses into a violent sex-murder encounter that has become one of the most famous (or infamous) scenes from the film involving a huge drill bit phallus and excessive blood spatter on the walls. The film culminates in a duel between the completely metamorphosized metal/flesh creature and the resurrected “metal fetishist” who was killed earlier in the hit and run.

There are no computer graphics in the film and the effects are achieved by old school schizoid film editing and ingenious camera work, as well as stop action photography reminiscent of the strange and disturbing stuff done by Jan Svankmaver. While the film it is most alluded to most often is David Lynch’s Eraserhead I think the comparison is not totally accurate. In the sense that both are hot in sharply contrasted B/W and employ effective, industrial soundtracks, they are similar but the films seem to be drawing from totally different source for their influences and imagry. I have seen some of Shinya Tsukamoto’s other films, such as the disappointing and in color Iron Man II and the pretty good Tokyo Fist, but so far I consider this to be his best work, even though the budget was lower. Like Eraserhead it is not a film for everyone, but if you are a regular reader of The Uranium Café it is a film for you.

I may also want to add at the end of this short comment that the world has become a slightly more dangerous place to live in since I finally figured out how to use this gif file making program. It is a lot of work really and I will not be able to do a lot of them, but when I can I will spice up some posts with a few animated images. The converting is easy, using Total Video Converter, bu the trimming is a head ache. I tried my first one in the recent post about The Ghastly Ones, with a dancing Necrobella. It was pretty simple and made of two pictures. Here I give you five actual clips from the film converted to cool gif images to send your friends and family or decorate your own site with. Hopefully they will peak your curiosity and you will check out this unique film that brought Japanese cinema into the nineties with not a whimper, but a cacophonous bang.

TETSUO: THE IRONMAN THUMBNAIL GALLERY

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Japanese and Asian Cinema, Science Fiction-Fantasy . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.