Tuesday, October 8, 2024

31 Days of Halloween: Tetsuo: The Iron Man - A Surreal Dive into Industrial Body Horror

Tetsuo: The Iron Man - Shinya Tsukamoto - 1989

 


★★★★-Day 8 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Body horror night. Went all out with this bizarre Japanese flick with this weird communicable cyborg thing going on. Imagery is beautiful, the “iron man” has this this industrial, modern art thing happening that I dig. Also, what’s a Japanese movie without a lot of phallic imagery? It’s like going to Tokyo on a rare Godzilla-free day. 

 

Not a lot to follow plot-wise. You are just in this world and going with it. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. It is funny/fun in a slapstick sort of way. I imagine director Shinya Tsukamoto gets a lot of Cronenberg and Lynch comparisons, but I also get a whiff of Sam Raimi.

 

Overall, well-acted, ugly beautiful, superbly stylish, and extremely interesting, though it kind of feels like a joke that you don’t quite get. Regardless, I can 100% say it is not like anything I’ve ever seen before. 

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