Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
- Original title
- 鉄男
- Directed by
- Shinya Tsukamoto
- Genre
- drama film, horror film, cyberpunk, science fiction film, biopunk, arthouse science fiction film
- Country
- Japan
- Runtime
- 1h 07m
- Rated
- NR
- Rating
- 7.0 of 10 from 711 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A salaryman finds metal sprouting from his body and becomes haunted by violent sexual visions. He connects with a hit-and-run victim who is also turning into a machine.
unsettlingfreneticsurrealvisceralclaustrophobicbody-horrorgrittydreamlikechaotic
What happens
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (鉄男, Tetsuo; 'iron man') is a 1989 Japanese science fiction horror film directed, written, produced, and edited by Shinya Tsukamoto. The film centers on an unnamed Japanese salaryman who wakes up to find pieces of metal sprouting from various parts of his body and becomes haunted by visions of metal-oriented sexual fantasies. As the man steadily becomes a hybrid of man and machine, he develops a connection with a victim from a hit-and-run accident, who is undergoing a similar transformation. The film was the first feature-length film by Tsukamoto after he spent his youth creating film shorts and entering Japanese experimental theatre. Through his theatre work, he met like-minded people to perform in plays and later short films such as Kei Fujiwara and Tomorowo Taguchi. Filming proved to be difficult, as much of the cast and crew abandoned the production and only Taguchi and Tsukamoto arrived on set to finish the film. After winning the Grand Prize at the Fantafestival in Italy, the film grew in popularity in Japan, becoming a top seller on home video for non-mainstream cinema. Outside Japan, critics compared the film to the work of directors Sam Raimi, David Cronenberg, and David Lynch, while still finding the film to be original and difficult to parse. Tsukamoto directed a sequel titled Tetsuo II: Body Hammer in 1992, and a third film Tetsuo: The Bullet Man in 2009. In 2012, Michael Brooke of Sight & Sound declared the film "remains one of the most pulverisingly effective sci-fi horror films of the past quarter of a century". In Japan, the film magazine Kinema Junpo included the film on their list of top 200 Japanese films in 2009. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
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Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.