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Tetsuo - The Iron Man (Special Edition) Actors: Tomorowo Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara Director: Shinya Tsukamoto Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Closed-captioned Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 67 minutes Studio: Tartan Video Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2005-07-19 Buy from Amazon |
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From Amazon.com Shinya Tsukamoto draws on the marriage of flesh and technology that inspires so much of David Cronenberg's work and then twists it into a manga-influenced cyberpunk vision. A man (Tomoroh Taguchi) awakens from a nightmare in which his body is helplessly fusing with the metal objects around him, only to find it happening to him in real life... or is it? Haunted by memories of a hit and run (eerily prophetic of Cronenberg's Crash), the man knows this ordeal could be a dream, a fantastic form of divine retribution, or perhaps technological mutation born of guilt and rage. Shot in bracing black and white on a small budget, Tsukamoto puts a demented conceptual twist on good old-fashioned stop-motion effects and simple wire work, giving his film the surreal quality of a waking dream with a psychosexual edge (resulting in the film's most disturbing scene). The story ultimately takes on an abstract quality enhanced by the grungy look and increasingly wild images as they take to the streets in a mad chase of technological speed demons. This first entry in his self-titled "Regular Sized Monster Series" is followed by a full-color sequel, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer, which trades the muddy experimental atmosphere for a big-budget sheen but can't top the cybershock to the system this movie packs. --Sean Axmaker From Description Somewhere between nightmare and a techno-fetishist's ultimate fantasy, this extraordinary film from Shinya Tsukamoto caused a sensation when it was first released, and spawned a companion piece, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer. Concerning itself with a young man's gradual mutation into a metal-being, the film takes a surreal journey into a dark and disturbing world where D.I.Y. body transformations and post-human women with deadly robot arms form the fabric of a strange new reality. Likened to the work of Lynch and Cronenberg, Tetsuo molds explosive violence, bizarre sexual imagery and jet-black humor into a cinematic experience like you've never seen before. |
 "I've got you under my Skin"If you stop and think about it, we have a lot of little things to be thankful for. For instance, it's a good thing that: 1) Snow and rain isn't made of flesh-dissolving Acid; 2) Spiders don't routinely grow to be larger than a Shetland pony; 3) Flies don't spread Ebola Zaire or Black Plague; 4) Mosquitoes don't inject you full of bleach; 5) Nothing even approximating what befalls the hapless young Tokyo businessman hero of Tetsuo: The Iron Man can happen to you during the course of a typical business day. Breathe a deep sigh of relief, right now. "Tetsuo" is that rarest of cinematic treats: a film so closely approximating and approaching the realm of pure Nightmare that it is, perhaps, easier to appreciate than to enjoy. In that regard it shares much in common with other lapidary treats of pure warped weirdness, like Lynch's "Eraserhead" (which it most strongly suggests) and Elias Merhige's "Begotten". But what is "Tetsuo" about? We first glimpse the Metals Fetishist (played by director Shinya Tsukamoto)traipsing back to his lair in what appears to be a derelict warehouse, or junkyard. He produces what appears to be a gearshaft, slices open his leg, and begins to insert the shaft into the raw, gaping muscle; then he sews up the wound. Time passes, and then---surprise!---on taking off the bandages, our Fetishist discovers the wound to be gangrenous, rotten, infested with maggots. He freaks! He bolts into the street! He is infused with unearthly speed (or so he thinks)! He runs out into an intersection and gets nailed by a car and (after the cheesy musical interlude which made me vaguely queasy) gets liberally splattered all over the street. At that point the focus and physical moorings of the flick shifts dramatically: to the hapless businessman (played pitch-perfect by Tomorowo Taguchi), his mistress (Kei Fujiwara, uncomfortably hot in a role that should be anything but), and a bespectacled, doomed woman on the subway. Playing like a kind of misbegotten spawn of "Night of the Living Dead", "Metropolis", and "The Thing", the nightmarish, vertigo-inducing balance of "Tetsuo" is absorbed with the issue of the Man-Machine, the nexus between flesh and technology, as the apartment of our nebbishy protagonist becomes an abbatoir of diseased flesh and fecund metal. To say anything more would be unfair to the movie and its unwitting new viewers, but it is worth noting that Tsukamoto plots the infernal union of flesh and iron along two graphs: fecundity and speed. As the damned Fetishist at last understood, the steel quickly overwhelms the feeble flesh housing the brain's finer impulses, but---perhaps parasitically---provides the flesh with speed and strength and prodigiousness denied to the merely mortal. "Tetsuo", made in 1988 on a shoestring budget, is a movie that begs to be seen, but it isn't one that is necessarily enjoyable: I can appreciate what Tsukamoto was attempting, and the scale of the achievement---given the budgetary and technical limitations---is astounding. But be warned: as our own age lumbers into a world where flesh and machine truly synthesize, "Tetsuo" appears prophetic, and is certainly not for the squeamish. Here be nightmares. JSG  "World of Rust"Where do I begin? I have heard about Tetsuo: The Ironman for a number of years, but because I am not a fan of science fiction, I put off watching the film. However, after watching Tsukamoto's Bullet Ballet and A Snake of June I became interested in watching the film that put him on the map. I must say that my first viewing of the film, during which I continuously dozed off, did not leave me with an overwhelming urge to watch the film again. Yet, I figured that there must be a reason why fans and a few critics, including Tom Mes, thought that the film was quite a piece of work. Therefore I decided to watch the film again. I enjoyed the film more the second time around, but I still do not know why the film is so popular. Filmed during the late 1980s, Tetsuo: The Ironman stars Taguchi Tomorowo stars as a character simply known as the "Salaryman" who one day along with his girlfriend crash into a pedestrian in a hit and run accident and afterwards dump the man's body in the woods. Also, for some reason or another, the couple decides to have sex before the man who has yet to die. However, unfortunately for the couple, the man was no ordinary man. Referred to as "the Fetishist" in the subbed DVD, the man inserts metal objects into his body fusing rusted metal with his own flesh. Although the Salaryman and his girlfriend try to get on with their lives after the accident, things begin to go astray when the Salaryman notices a metal prong protruding from his cheek. Shot completely in black and white, the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie is quite stimulating because of its fast-paced action sequences, strangeness, and pulsating background music of Ishikawa Chu. However, for me anyway, the film grows a bit dull after thirty minutes because while visually stimulating, I would of liked the film to have more of a story.  "New Tartan DVD sounds great, looks terrible!"The rating is for the lousy transfer of the new Tartan DVD release. TETSUO is one of my top-ten favorite movies of all time. Purchasing this new release represented a quadruple-dip on this title. First was a bootleg vhs tape back in the early 90's followed by the official Fox-Lorber tape, then the first DVD. The main reason, other than my love for the movie, for buying again was for the new 5.1 sound mix because TETSUO has a great soundtrack. Tartan did a great job with the remix. I love it! It's really impressive in my home theater. But the image doesn't live up to the audio, especially projected on my big screen. It looks like they just did a cheap transfer of the PAL master (Tartan is a UK company, I believe) to NTSC because it's riddled with artifacts like ghosting during fast movements (there's a lot of that in this film) and the image is very soft and contrasty. The old Fox-Lorber DVD from '98 has more image detail, especially in shadows, and none of that ugly ghosting. I assumed that since it's 2005 now and most DVD companies have kept up with the state of the art, knowing that audiences are more discriminating about audio/video quality, Tartan would live up to our expectations. But, no. I see that there are several sellers dumping their old discs here at Amazon. I recommend that you just pick up one of those rather than Tartan's shameless release... "Great Asian Film.""Tetsuo: The Iron Man" is one hell of a strange film. Produced in 1988 in Japan, The film is directed and constructed from the imagination of Shinya Tsukamoto the director of such bizarre films such as "A Snake of June" and "Vital". Tetsuo: The Iron Man" can best be described as a Japanese film that would best resemble the work of David Lynch's film "Eraserhead". Although the stories are completely different from another "Tetsuo" is shot much like "Eraserhead" and is shot on a very similar if not the same kind of black and white film stock. To compare "Tetsuo" anymore to "Eraserhead" however would be wrong, as both stories are a lot different from one another. I found "Tetsuo" not to be as shocking as "Eraserhead" however it does have plenty of gore and weirdness to go around. Oh and it is in fact a shocking film, but not as effective on the human psyche as "Eraserhead" is. "Tetsuo" does in fact have some very strange and bizarre sexual content such as a penis turning into a "killer drill penis" and a strange sex scene involving some other weird stuff, as well as plenty of other sexual references. The overall style and the uncomfortable feeling I got from watching this film is what appealed to me. It's at times a hard film to follow, but overall the plot is pretty simple. There is a lot of detail in the film however that must be pay attention too in order to really appreciate the artistic merit of the picture. The acting in the film is very good, and thank god that actors did pull off their roles well as the film probably would of suffered if they didn't. I also have plenty of praise for director Shinya Tsukamoto, whom managed to pull off this bizarre story and help his actors and crew get though it. Effects wise, this film mush have been a bitch to shoot, I mean were talking a lot of stop motion photography, wrapping people up in all kind of metal and throwing tons of make-up and prosthetics on, it must of been a real pain in the ass to pull off. But in the end they did it and the great special effects are what make this film. Overall I really enjoyed "Tetsuo: The Iron Man". I can't recommend this film to everyone, however if you into David Lynch films or David Cronenberg films, you'll probably enjoy this flick. It's a must for all Asian Horror Fans to add this DVD to their collection. "Cyberpunk Industial Madness"This movie floored me..Disgustingly sureal & morbid. Nothing short of a mind bomb waiting to penitrate you brian.. Watch with Caution..you will be violated |
