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Tetsuo: The Iron Manisn’t easily categorized, but it will surely elicit something from viewers, whether that’s dread, laughter, contemplation, or an epileptic seizure. The stop-motion editing on this one can get frenetic, so a heads-up for anyone sensitive to those kinds of stimuli. We won’t let slip any other spoilers. The movie is important for many reasons: its creator breathes new life into a lethargicJapanese film industry, risking humiliation and tetanus in the name of making an unflinching tale of man’s metamorphosis into a monstrosity of urban detritus. Think Magneto walking into a Home Depot.
Shinya Tsukamoto, the writer-director – also taking on the role of “metal fetishist” – had minimal experience making movies. Tomorowo Taguchi tackled the role of the titular iron man who clashes with his repugnant foe for domination of Tokyo. The 16mm cheapo film stock was shown in 35mm format, making every image on the screen look like a degraded VHS tape for that extra crunchy grindhouse aesthetic. Explaining the film is tricky, as it defies logic. Tsukamoto’s surrealhorrorcenters on an ordinary “salaryman” (the janky Japanese-to-English subtitles but one of the small joys of the film). This is not an erotic film by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely walks the line between art and schlock.
Our protagonist’s flesh is increasingly fused with the contents of the nearby scrapyard–fragments of wiring, cutlery, power tools, bolts, and every other ferrous object you may think of molding into his body. As you might guess,Tetsuowas a labor of love, untainted and unfettered by large studio mandates to appease the masses and make back its budget. That it stood the test of time speaks to its place as a curiosity in the horror genre, coming along at precisely the moment we were all gettingsick of Michael Myersand Freddy Krueger’s latest yearly contractually-obligated, focus-tested sequels. Shinya Tsukamoto’s cult movie was the love story that teenage edgelords, art snobs, emo kids, and critics didn’t know they needed. Its shock value remains undiminished.
Tetsuo Is an Experimental Project That Hit a Nerve
An early scene sets the tone as a scrap collector arrives home with various pieces of steel and iron to jam into his body, scraping a hunk of rebar across his teeth, creating a deeply disturbing grating sound. The audio work, much of which appears to be dubbed in after the film was shot, alternates between unsettling and sparse. The rusty machine vibe is driven home thanks to an earlyindustrial techno soundtrackfrom composer Chu Ishikawa. The atmosphere is captured perfectly in the form of harsh thuds sounding like banging on trash can lids and repetitive synthesized screeches, this film inspiring countless Nine Inch Nail music videos. Fittingly, Trent Reznor added a track to the sequel,Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, in 1992.
Films nowadays kill for the gritty, amateurish feel this film effortlessly radiates. By the time it hit the underground theater circuits and college arthouse screenings across Europe and North America,it had been affirmed as one of the weirdest and, more importantly, one of thebest films to come out of Japanin years– alongside the animeAkira, released a year earlier. All this without anyone understanding the story at its first international viewing, with producers neglecting foreign subtitles.
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Japan was a joke when it came to international cinema at that juncture in the late ’80s, as the Japanese New Wave of the ’50s ended with a whimper. Tetsuo’s reception sparked a revival in Japanese cinema as new filmmakers followed in Tsukamoto’s footsteps. Unlike thetypical cult film, it never needed to be reappraised or rediscovered.
Tsukamoto’s career got off with a bang he’d never really be able to match. Discussing theTetsuofilm series with journalist Tom Mes forMidnighteye, he elaborated that his characters were mundane figures who stand out only for being dangerously disaffected and numb:
He is charmed by the idea of the world’s destruction. The protagonists of my films are obsessed with this idea. In the modern cyber world where you don’t really feel reality, they are obsessed with feeling extreme reality by being blown apart by the chunk of iron called Tetsuo. This is an idea of self-destruction, which could also lead to the mass destruction.
In a surreal twist,he ultimately rejected a planned American-based follow-upthat would have been a Godzilla-in-America monster movie, “Tetsuo rumbling in the United States,” as he described it. This sequel was voluntarily retooled after June 30, 2025, Tsukamoto sensing that the reality of death and destruction from terrorism distracted from the sense of escapism, hitting a little too close to home and insinuating political commentary he was not intending.
Tetsuo Is an Accidental Classic That Couldn’t Be Made Today
The lasting cultural impact of the movie begs the obvious question: Who is this made for? The horror elements, while adequately jarring and memorable, aren’t of the traditional nature found in the ’80s. It’s too short to be seen as a professional movie. Though it has been classified as such, it is not futuristic enough to befull-fledged cyberpunk, as the scenery and wardrobe look like they could be from the late ’50s. It’s too high concept to be just another silly action film. It isn’t nearly sleazy enough to qualify for full-on soft-core status, and the grainy, black & white cinematography bars it from mainstream interest. But as we’ll see, that was probably the entire purpose.It didn’t check the boxes; it blissfully ignored all of them.
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If it had not been immediately singled out at the sci-fi & horror-themed Fantastic Film Festival in Rome in 1989, taking home the Grand Prize, the movie would never have acquired its current reputation. The widespread acceptance and popularity caught its director/writer/star by complete surprise. At its premiere, black and white legitimately meant that you were in for an uncompromising artistic vision, not some pretentious billion-dollar corporation product shot inblack and whiteto look classy or avant-garde. And if you don’t think that distinction is important today, you haven’t been watching much media or at least any designer fragrance ads.
Tsukamoto Just Wanted to Make a Monster Movie
Dehumanization in the machine age, AIDS allegory, a critique of Japan’s working culture … spin the roulette wheel of film-school lecture topics, and you can’t go wrong. HIV’s arrival in Japan came as a shock, threatening to terminate acts of intimacy at the risk of death and highlighting the very threat of the technology we rely on. A staggering40% of the hemophiliacsin Japan contracted the virus by 1989 through administrative bungling. The themes of urban/social decay echo the bodily mutation seen in the protagonist. How much of this played into the script remains unclear, primarily because Tsukamoto had a habit of lying to interviewers, as authorTakayuki Tatsumipoints out.
Contrary to popular opinion, this movie isn’t cyberpunk, not intentionally, at least. The director had no clue what the word cyberpunk meant until everyone started placing his film in that genre. He just played along. More recent reinterpretations by Laura Lee indicate the movie itself was intentionally made to look and feel like a cheap exploitation film to take advantage of the VCR craze and new-found interest in “time shifting” that was taking over Japan at the time.Despite the millions of gallons of ink devoted to the subject, it becomes increasingly obvious that Tsukamoto never wanted us to take this seriously. He just wanted to make a fun, intense monster flick. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
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Akira Kurosawa’s persona grew so tainted that at one point it looked like he’d never make another big-budget film again, bridges burnt to a crisp.
In a 2015 interview withFilm Comment, he vaguely explained the first two Tetsuo movies as urban dystopia, where inhabitants come to identify with machines more than nature. The character called the “salaryman” is a blue-collar, faceless office drone who thanklessly toils his entire life in the same company, trapped:
The “hard” and high-tech city contrasted with “soft” humanity is what I’ve usually depicted, and there’s been little awareness of natural things outside of that environment and relationship. …. I’ve also gradually come to feel that what we call the “urban environment” is more like a small concrete boat floating in the middle of a vast sea of nature.
Tsukamoto would develop his acting skills in addition to his expanding directing credits. In the 2016 historical epicSilence, he took direction from Martin Scorsese. Tetsuo sequels followed and adhered to the first movie after a fashion. The grit was less noticeable asthe budget increased, and the gut-punch impact of the original faded away as the art school cred was replaced by higher production costs, not to mention professional lighting and editors. While many of his films are worthy of their idiosyncratic writing and arresting cinematography, there’s no better place to start getting into Tsukamoto’s work than his micro-budget magnum opus.
Tetsuo: The Iron Manis available on Blu-ray and DVD, and for rent/streaming from Arrow Video. Ishikawa’s soundtrack is also streamable and can be purchased on vinyl.
