Revisiting Shinya Tsukamoto’s “Tetsuo: The Iron Man”

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Technopunk fever dream; as if Gwar was let loose on the set of Eraserhead and Un Chien Andalou with Talking Heads choregraphy and Cronenberg body horror

From the start, this classic throws a dense kaleidoscope of bizarre imagery at you from beginning to end. The story is almost secondary to the sheer velocity of what’s on the screen, a heady cocktail of metal and flesh in high contrast black and white whose texture echo Eraserhead and Un Chien Andalou but with a primal, industrial rage with the audacity of John Waters and body horror of Cronenberg.

Running at just over an hour, this banshee of a film will scream at you for its full duration but it’s an enjoyable ride though, admittedly, it probably isn’t for everyone given its dark humour and bizarre, experimental storytelling.