A tidy salary man in spectacles is sat waiting to meet his train at the station. There's a big plaster on his face, covering over a cut he made after finding a weird metal shard growing out of his cheek. He's really not having a good time for several reasons that soon become clear. Just as things seem to be normal a fellow commuter appears, but she's apparently lost her mind. The woman's arm has grown into a writhing mass of rusted scrap metal and junk, and she chases him through the station. After a bizarre confrontation in the depths of the building he manages to escape. But later that day his own body starts to turn into a similarly grotesque collection of tubes and wires. Why? Well why not I guess. Afterwards the really weird stuff begins.
Tetsuo, sometimes released with the subtitle of its English translation The Iron Man is a dark and sinister nightmare shot in gritty black and white. It's full of strange imagery, crazy music, and ear piercing industrial sounds. It's also a lot of fun despite some outlandish and disturbing sequences of sex, violence and metamorphosis. As an example of the Japanese take on the cyberpunk genre it has a lot of unique and entertaining ideas. But purely as a movie the whole thing is very engaging. There's a frenetic style to everything with a lot of crazy camera work, and several dream like chase scenes full of stop motion effects. The use of high contrast monochrome photography is really effective and it's full of interesting angles and grainy, dirty textures.
There's a hazy urban atmosphere surrounding everything that is reminiscent of Eraserhead, while some of the set pieces are similar to Videodrome. Although I have no idea if these films directly influenced the film makers here. The characters are all erratic and hyperactive in different ways, and they're all constantly sweating and grimacing. It all builds to create a kind of hallucinatory mood. The story concerns a hit and run accident in which the protagonist was the driver. He's simply credited as 'Man' and soon goes through a disturbing series of events involving his girlfriend. These scenes are being influenced by the other male lead, again credited in simple terms just as 'Metal Fetishist'. Maybe it's all a manifestation of his guilt after the crash, or perhaps in some cases it's a dream.
Perhaps it's all a baroque social commentary on the world becoming overly industrialised. It's never particularly clear. The man speaks on the phone but is only able to say hello over and over again in a lengthy and possibly comical scene. Technology is pushing people apart and damaging their lives, in some cases literally. The are no attempts to offer a real logical explanation and it's probably all the more interesting as a result. It's more of a visual experience than an actual story. But there's plenty to think about during a post viewing discussion. If the audience isn't sitting in silent shock that is. It's a pretty brief film, so if there are any major flaws it's that by the end the director has exhausted the novelty of certain elements.
The time lapse style chases used here and in the prototype short A Phantom of Regular Size do wear thin after a while. Although they don't reuse the short's dinner table scene in which the fetishist and the man sit down for a meal in between all of the chaos. Which is kind of a missed opportunity. However the main feature occasionally starts to feel drawn out, particularly once the strange events become less random and it builds towards a big metal melding finale. At least everything feels pretty energetic throughout the rest of the story. There's a palpable sense of enthusiasm from those behind and in front of the camera. Towards the end it gets a bit too much and there isn't enough focus, but then again I suppose that's much like the first two acts.
The follow up movies fare less well unfortunately. There are are two spiritual sequels and both basically retread all the same ideas, but without a lot of the interesting and dynamic parts of the original. Both try and explain the transformation scenes but the weak pseudo science fiction back stories drain away all intrigue. Neither of them has that stark visual aesthetic or any of the great camera work. Part two, Body Hammer has some interesting imagery and a couple of neat horror moments. But ultimately it fails to recapture the same rebellious punk energy. The colour photography results in all the make-up and body horror effects feeling a lot less visceral, and more like obvious appliances.
Maybe it's because it all feels so conventional, even in spite of some outrageous moments. The story of a man with hidden powers that trigger when he gets angry is all too familiar. It feels like an adult rated superhero origin story, complete with amnesia and long lost siblings. The childhood trauma flashbacks add to this mundane tone. It's still entertaining and it includes some unique moments. The opening titles are great and so is the score, despite it sounding like video-game at times. The lack of grit is obvious but the colours do pop in a lot of the set pieces. There's more work-out imagery and more great costume and transformation designs. But it's a lesser sequel that lacks the nightmarish edge that made the original feel so much like a fever dream instead of a standard movie plot.
Part three, The Bullet Man basically does all this over again but retreads the second instalment, instead of going back to look at what made the original so interesting. As a result this just makes matters worse, and it also includes lots of bad modern effects and an English script. None of the cast are really up to the challenge of performing it convincingly. Both sequels seem more interested in simply having action scenes involving strange gun arms and other body weapons. The results start to become more run of the mill instead of being a purely unique experiences. The idea of diminishing returns is true even in this outrageous world. The style could have been used to make any kind of surreal nightmare vision come to life. But you can find that by watching Shinya Tsukamoto's other films instead.
In terms of the genre as a whole in this period there are other examples out there. The idea of man and machine coming to together to destroy the natural world appears in a lot of different guises. Most notably in Akira, in which a character (called Tetsuo) becomes an uncontrollable mass of tissue and metal. Films like the vomit drenched 964 Pinocchio also echo some of these themes. It faded as the 1990s went on but later resurfaced in a suitably mutated form as 'splatterpunk' body horror in features like Meatball Machine and Tokyo Gore Police. However there's still a hint of this style to be found in Electric Dragon 80.000V which channels some of the visuals found in Tetsuo with an emphasis on two rival characters battling in an industrial landscape.
Tetsuo: The Ironman 4/5
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer 3/5
Tetsuo: The Bullet Man 2/5
