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Tomorowo Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Shinya Tsukamoto, Naomasa Musaka, Renji Ishibashi ... see more see more... , Nobu Kanaoka

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 ... read more read more...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, Rovi

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76% liked it

9,510 ratings

Critics

75% liked it

12 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 7 min.

Directed by: Shinya Tsukamoto

Release Date: January 1, 1989

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DVD Release Date: February 18, 1998

Stats: 954 reviews

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Kei Fujiwara in Tetsuo 'Tetsuo' - poster metal fetishist Nobu Kanaoka in 'Tetsuo' metal fetishist 'Tetsuo' Shinya Tsukamoto as the Metal Fetishist Tomorowo Taguchi as the Salaryman Kei Fujiwara in 'Tetsuo' Tomorowo Taguchi as the Salaryman Shinya Tsukamoto as the Metal Fetishist Kei Fujiwara in 'Tetsuo' Shinya Tsukamoto as the Metal Fetishist Tomorowo Taguchi as the Salaryman Kei Fujiwara and Tomorowo Taguchi Tomorowo Taguchi as the Salaryman Kei Fujiwara in 'Tetsuo' Shinya Tsukamoto as the Metal Fetishist
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Flixster Reviews (954)

  • 366weirdmovies
    June 16, 2011
    366weirdmovies
    A man finds himself transforming, from the inside out, into a creature made of metal in this influential and gory experimental Japanese film. It's an almost nonsensical but extremely intense barrage of images of dehumanization; welcome to the machine age.
  • WrenchLT
    May 10, 2011
    WrenchLT
    This is one hell of a visual assault on the mind! Full of bizarre and bloody depictions of bio-mechanical bodily transmutation as a man eventually turns into a metal mutant being. It's frenetically paced with surreal imagery and all filmed in black and white. There's hardly any d... read moreialogue though and the story leaves a lot of unanswered questions and you're left wondering just what is going on. Definitely not for the casual mainstream movie fan. It's disturbing and original and often credited with starting Japanese splatter genre. If you're into the weird and unusual this is a must-see.
  • MidnightMadwoman
    November 8, 2010
    MidnightMadwoman
    Aw man, what the hell is this? When I hear about a horror movie about a guy becoming a metal monster, I imagine something like Colossus from X Men rising to terrorize the villagers or something. That, I was stoked about. What we get instead is a guy becoming something akin to The... read more Blob, but made out of wires and springs. What bullshit. This movie is ugly from beginning to end, and creates horror in a way that I didn't expect. The scares in this movie come not so much out of fear of the ferocious monster as personal distaste and disguest directed at the main character and his strange hardware fetish. Blech. The thing I hate most about this movie is that I opted against seeing a different rare horror film in favor of this one at the FanExpo. Grrr.
  • flixsterman
    April 19, 2010
    flixsterman
    Avant-garde, surrealist, high-art, ad infinitum... The whole thing is loud and migraine inducing. I just wasn't impressed.
  • newvogueravyn
    July 31, 2009
    newvogueravyn
    Watching this film is a surreal experience. A lot of the ideas were above the technology and budget, which means that many of the special effects are pretty quirky and/or amusing. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, especially after I got further into the film and was... read more able to piece together the narrative a little better. Drill penis and all.
  • kiriyamakazou
    December 23, 2007
    kiriyamakazou
    Twisted artistic expeimental madness. A plot is buried deep within the dark industrial visuals somewhere but this is more demonstrating of low budget black and white photogrophy. Reminiscent of David Lynch, this is certainly more like a very bad dream than an actual film. Great e... read morexample of style over substance and the style being enough to sustain the running time.
  • garyX
    June 8, 2007
    garyX
    A low budget psychological horror shot in grainy black and white is more an exercise in cinematic surrealism than a narrative story in it's truest sense. Full of disturbing cyberpunk imagery, this is not to everyone's taste but fans of Lynch's Eraserhead and the work of David Cro... read morenenberg should check it out. There was also an impressive sequel made on a considerably larger budget.
  • webalina
    May 11, 2007
    webalina
    Bizarro film about a man who slowly becomes a machine. More of a music video than a film. Particularly memorable is the rape by machine.
  • DragonEyeMorrison
    December 1, 2006
    DragonEyeMorrison
    Still holds well to this day, Tsukamoto has certainly growed a lot as a filmaker. Some of his methods may have changed but themes are still very much the same, the lost of hummanity in urban scenarios, and how said enviroments can affect the way people live.
  • gregbart007
    February 7, 2012
    gregbart007
    When I was helping a member of my family move to a coastal region I picked up a small movie book called "101 Sci-Fi Movies To Watch Before You Die" with this film having a write up. With my intrest piqued, I had a look at this Japanese surreal art/cyber punk sci-fi/horror film.
    ... read more
    In Tokyo, a man with a fetish for metal (Shin'ya Tsukamoto, who also directed, wrote, produced and edited the film) sticks bits of metal in him. Running around Tokyo screaming that the flesh around the metal is infected with maggots, he's hit by an unnamed driver (Tomorowo Taguchi) and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara) killing the Metal Fetishist. The unnamed man slowly discovers that in his rage of being killed, the Metal Fetishist is turning the man into a scrap metal monster.

    The film feels like a blender of David Lynch, David Cronenberg, a manga comic and a sci-fi film. The use of quick, fast pace editing with a variety of camera angles filmed on 16mm black and white film, use of flashbacks and use of stop motion (which is refreshing with today's overuse of CGI) as the man is slowly fused with rusty metal portray a cramped, bleak, surreal and nightmarish feel. It feels like a bunch of people's worst nightmares were plucked out of their minds and put on film. The soundtrack is a mix of electronic, industrial metal/rock and sounds of metal being bashed, scratched and scraped together to futher enhance the chilling feel of the film. The main story on paper looks simple but in reality could be any more futher from the truth. The main theme is the fear of our humanity being lost to the technology and mechanisation. The film has a constant feel of pessimism and futility of humanity's struggle against the machine/technology and ultimatly must accept it. One example is when the driver and passenger/girlfriend are going to have sex, the driver finds his penis has turned into a large mining drill. They fight until the girlfriend accepts the fact of the drill penis and thinks she can handle it. (Spoiler alert) She doesn't. I found this film to have a subtle irony of where it was made as Japan is a cross between ancient tradition to heavily use of very new technology. The end of the film ends on a very chilling and very sad note.

    The film left me shocked, horrified, disgusted but somewhat intrigued. I'm not interested nor do I like horror films (like Saw, Halloween etc, I prefer to see what the mind can do in a thriller rather than slicing and dicing body parts and whole bodies) but this one is a slight exception. It left me a bit interested in the technical aspects of how the film was made and also in the themes the film portrayed; is humanity's quest for new technology mean we will ultimatly be replaced by machines? Will we cope with mechanisation of most work forces? Can we trust the metal in the technology that we created?

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Critic Reviews

Fernando F. Croce
September 25, 2009
Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

Sustained with satirical expressionism for indelible clamminess Full Review

Rob Gonsalves
May 5, 2008
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com

Unquestionably it's a feat of imagination and technique, but an hour of it is more than enough. Full Review

Pablo Villaca
June 16, 2006
Pablo Villaca, Cinema em Cena

Exercício surrealista histérico e obviamente ludita que, apesar de substituir as idéias pelo corte rápido, cria uma atmosfera de pesadelo sufocante.

Sean Axmaker
September 15, 2005
Sean Axmaker, St@tic Multimedia

Filled with wild stop motion effects and brilliant conceptual horrors, this is a horror film for the modern technological world. Full Review

Bill Gibron
August 30, 2005
Bill Gibron, DVDTalk.com

As a freak show..., Tetsuo certainly deserves its reputation. It contains memorable sequences of sickening imagination, and unique takes on tired sci-fi/ action ideas. Full Review

Luke Y. Thompson
July 11, 2005
Luke Y. Thompson, LYTRules.com

One of the first movies to give me a sense that there were no boundaries.

Keith Breese
March 31, 2005
Keith Breese, Filmcritic.com

surreally disjointed Full Review

Ed Gonzalez
August 27, 2001
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

Tetsuo and Fetishist's transformation into Iron Man becomes a response to the machinization of the individual in a systematically regimented Japan. Full Review

Stephen Holden
August 30, 2004
Stephen Holden, New York Times

Click to read the article Full Review

Richard Harrington
January 1, 2000
Richard Harrington, Washington Post

Click to read the article Full Review

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