Independent Films, Film Profiles

Tetsuo: The Iron Man
by Shinya Tsukamoto

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (鉄男: Tetsuo) is a 1989 Japanese Cyberpunk film by cult-film director Shinya Tsukamoto produced by Japan Home Video. This, his third film, is an extremely graphic but also strikingly-filmed fantasy shot in the same low-budget, underground-production style as his first two films. Tetsuo established Tsukamoto internationally and created his worldwide cult following. It was followed by Tetsuo II: Body Hammer.The film opens with a man (called only "the man", or sometimes the "Metal Fetishist") cutting open a massive gash in his leg and then shoving a rusty metal pipe into the wound. Later, upon seeing maggots festering in the wound, he screams, runs out into the street, and is hit by a car. The driver of the car (cult actor Taguchi Tomorowo) tries to cover up the mess by dumping the body into a ravine, but the dead man comes back to haunt him—by forcing his body to gradually metamorphose into a walking pile of scrap metal. This process starts when the driver finds a piece of metal stuck in his cheek while shaving. He tries to remove it, but realises it is growing from the inside. The first of several highly stylised chase scenes starts with the driver pursued through an underground station by a woman whose body has been taken over by the Metal Fetishist. The scene shifts to the driver at his home, seemingly with no regard as to the assault of the woman, where he and his girlfriend are having sex. Later, the driver receives a phone call, consisting of nothing but him and the other speaker continuously saying "Hello?" to each other. In one of the film's most controversial sequences, the man discovers his penis has mutated into a gargantuan power drill. This is how his terrified girlfriend meets her demise. The film ends with a duel between the man and the Fetishist with the pair transformed into a giant mutated monster, which then proceeds to "take over the world".