Sunday July 20 screening: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) d. Shinya Tsukamoto

The debut film from Shinya Tsukamoto is a gloriously over-the-top, break-neck paced, gross-out horror/sci-fi dystopian nightmare. While Tetsuo: The Iron Man isn’t without precedent – the film has been compared to the David Lynch’s Eraserhead, the body horror of David Cronenberg, and the American cyber-punk aesthetic – its singular vision could have only come from the mind Tsukamoto, who wrote, directed and edited this film with a microscopic budget over 18 months and with an ever-shrinking cast and crew.

It's hard to put into words what the experience of watching Tetsuo is like, and only partially because the film’s plot can sometimes be hard to work out linearly. To summarize as best as possible: after being chased from a subway station by a woman with metallic arms, an unnamed man in Tokyo finds metal consuming his body in horrific ways.

Narrative is truly secondary to Tetsuo: The Iron Man, which instead tries to convey the alienation of urban life. Tsukamoto said his experience working non-stop as a corporate employee greatly influenced the mood of the film. Shot on 16mm and in black and white, Tetsuo’s aesthetic combines practical effects with stop-motion imagery, rendering Tokyo as un unfamiliar blur of industrial wastelands full of sprawling scrap metal and wires.

At an unrelenting, propulsive 67 minutes, Tetsuo packs a punch – a barrage of hallucinating imagery, an industrial soundtrack, and a truly uncompromised vision. While not for the faint of heart, Tetsuo is a must-watch for horror fans with a taste for the avant-garde.

If you like Tetsuo: The Iron Man, check out…

Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer (1992); Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009) 

d. Shinya Tsukamoto

Few films can compare with the singular vision of Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and that unfortunately includes it’s two sequels, both directed by Tsukamoto. Trying to reach a bigger audience, Body Hammer and The Bullet Man contain more plot than its predecessor along with bigger budgets and prove that sometimes less is more. Still, both films are worth checking out if for no other reason than to see a director expanding on the ideas, themes and aesthetics of their defining work.

Ichi the Killer (2001)

d. Takashi Miike

No director has quite matched the extremity of violence and gory imagery of Tetsuo like Tsukamoto’s protégé and fellow countryman, Takashi Miike – a notoriously prolific director of more than 100 films mostly in the extreme horror genre. Ichi the Killer (which features Tsukamto in an acting role) is Miike’s most over-the-top gross-out fest, a film whose violence borders on the ludicrous and relies just as much on humor as shock value.

Pi (1998)

d. Darren Aronofsky

While not nearly as edgy at Tetsuo, Darren Aronofsky’s debut feature is no doubt in debt to Tsukamoto’s work down to its low-budget, kitchen-sink aesthetic, black and white cinematography, sparse location shooting and frenetic editing style the American director called “hip hop montage.” The story of a genius mathematician who may have stumbled on the equation to unlock the mysteries of the universe, Pi in many ways is the mainstream, Americanized answer to Tetsuo, while still showcasing the exciting beginnings of a director mining his influences into a unique creation.