Body Horror, Technology, and You. Part II: Your Future Is Metal By Joey Povinelli
Some films are like a punch to the face. It’s a good feeling. Rarely does, a project come along that hits all over your body for the entire duration. This is frenzied filmmaking, held together through sustained energy. Tetsuo: The Iron Man is like driving through an hour-long carwash full of fists, an assault on the senses that doesn’t let up. This would be trying if the approach wasn’t so electric.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man uses every production component-from story to sound- to disorient its audience and heighten the extremity of change its two leads undergo.
The plot can be written on the back of a matchbox: a man (Shinya Tsukamoto) shoves a metal rod in his leg that gets infested by maggots. He then runs into the street where a Salaryman (Tomorowo Taguchi) and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara) promptly run him over. The victim and perpetrator are slowly overtaken by metal until they become one. Tetsuo is nonlinear; interrupted by dreams and fantasies, and associative cuts to objects from the production design.
Our tale is told in low contrast black and white, adding to the otherworldliness. Montage dominates, giving the film a dreamlike quality. When the inciting car accident happens, there’s a close-up of the headlight while a jazz track takes over the score. The artificial begins to seduce and take over.
Faces and metal. Metal and faces.
Tetsuo is occasionally interrupted by cuts to TV static or VHS-looking shots of the leads, giving us brief glimpses into another dimension's view of the same events. These techniques should create distance but Tetsuo is so visceral, you don't notice.
Following the discovery of a metal pimple, Salaryman’s feet sprout jets. He progresses through Tokyo in quick cuts. The stop motion functions as an innovative way to enhance the film's low production cost. Inanimate objects are also given new life: glasses crumple, pans fly off the shelves, metal hands meld to a water faucet, and wires curl into each other, a new type of maggot. The camera itself feels alive, moving like a snake on ambiguous metallic pieces- are they scrap or skin?- prodding and scanning each mutilated crevice. The stop motion acts are a sort of visual strobe light, a relentless intrusion on the viewers' flow of any given scene.
These effects also highlight its leads’ transformation. Skin peels off to reveal new metal scabs; when Salaryman tries to suppress popping-up new organs, they bubble under the skin in different areas. No matter what Salaryman does, he cannot hide the iron in his soul. The metal is rarely smooth, it has loose pieces or wires hanging. It is organic. The car crash victim is transformed with theatrical makeup that is somewhere between experimental theatre and glam rock.
There’s a definite Bride of Frankenstein vibe here.
This style isn’t without its precursors: Shinya Tsukamoto, Tetsuo’s director, cites David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner as central influences (with direct visual homage to Videodrome), though there are more diverse references at play. All I could think about was Nobuhiko Obayashi’s horror-comedy, fever dream, House (1977). Tsukamoto encountered House as a student, and in a talk with Japan Society, said, “I was impressed by the unprecedented degree of freedom.” Though their tones differ significantly, both works have a madcap, anything-goes energy that does not relent. You are in the hands of the creator, who’s driving a rollercoaster. All you can do is lean against the safety bars and hope for the best. Other elements mirror music videos (the rampant cutaways) and the picture ends with a Kaiju homage.
Score mirrors montage as well with looping that dominates. synths pulsate like dripping taps and machine sounds recur. Full of sharp, wet, percussion. When Salaryman itches his new metal appendage, the scratching sound loops and grates on the skin.
Salaryman is given no name, he is only identified as his job. A man who only works will become overtaken by it. The setting mirrors this sort of functionality, as exteriors were filmed in an iron factory, all nondescript and industrial. This harsh backdrop becomes reflected by bodily exterior.
Sex exists in this world as a primal and obscene act, typified when Salaryman’s girl devours a hotdog leading the film to erupt in an all-encompassing white light. A drill sprouts from his penis shortly after. There’s undeniable dread when these elements occur with sexual organs becoming instruments of violence, even in the consensual relationship portrayed at the film’s center. Salaryman’s victim is often credited as “Metal Fetishist,” and his excess causes physical transformation (although he clearly prefers this new body, unlike his perpetrator). The two leads eventually merge by penetration until they are born again through chrome.
The experience of watching Tetsuo is like walking through a haunted house, not through generating fear, but surprise. You never know what is a dream and what is reality, what extreme image you might see next, or if an intentionally choppy edit will throw your entire perception off.
This doesn’t seem to be getting any better…
For all of its experiments, Tetsuo doesn’t feel like it should play on a gallery wall: this is a midnight movie. A madhouse that happens to be told using mediums that overlap with fine art. The film even goes broad in its last third when it enters an almost comic-book-style showdown between Salaryman and victim.
Tetsuo is only 67 minutes. It could not run a second longer. Every moment is maximized for impact and just when you might adapt to the rhythms, it ends. As credits roll, you finally have time to catch your breath. You might not understand what hit you but it’s clear that was one hell of an experience.
Joey Povinelli is a writer known for his film and theatre work with jpeg Productions, including live talk show, The Martini Hour, and nationally screened horror short, “Interitus Adfectus.” He also writes about film and rock ‘n roll for a variety of publications. He is attracted to uncompromising emotions and gorgeous aesthetics.