Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Sometimes when you sit down to watch a film, you just want to be caressed with lovely music, pleasant scenery, good-looking actors and calming dialogue.

Other times you want to be pulverised with an iron hammer.

If that's your jam tonight, then sister, do I have a film for you! Director Shinya Tsukamoto's 1989 classic Tetsuo is one of the most amazing examples of low-budget avant-garde art I've ever seen. At a little over sixty minutes, we're barraged with a pounding soundtrack that sounds like a pipe frantically hitting an anvil. We're sprayed with blood, whipped with metal wiring and plunged into a maelstrom of metal fetishes and twisted sex. This film is definitely only for the open-minded! I'll give you a sketch of the plot as best as I can, but really it's loose structuring to drape the madness over.

A Japanese man slices his leg open and forces a metal bar into it. Suddenly realising he's in great pain, he runs madly down the street and is hit by the car of a nameless salaryman.

Sometime later, the salaryman is shaving and notices a metal bristle sticking out of his cheek. Attempting to remove it only causes a blood-spurting wound. Trying to go about his day, he's suddenly chased by an insane woman with a metal claw arm. He appears to kill the lunatic and escape. He then begins to grow other patches of rough-looking metal, and has a dream he's being sodomised by his girlfriend who wields a giant robotised dildo.

Waking up from the nightmare, he tries to have sex with his partner but his penis has turned into a giant power drill-bit. Hiding in horror, the salaryman goes through an even more drastic metamorphosis and emerges covered in metal tumours, bumps and wires. The woman fights back valiantly against the now-insane monster, but ultimately loses her life.

The "metal fetishist" from the first scenes has now recovered and confronts the monstrous salaryman in a showdown. The fetishist has his own metal controlling powers and super speed. Where will the final titanic clash lead when the fetishist begins to mutate into a metal monstrosity as well?

Phew! That's about the best summary I can come up with, but with Tetsuo the plot details aren't really that important. It's the non-stop visual and aural assault that matters. In stark black-and-white, Tsukamoto has fashioned a science-fiction horror art-piece for the ages. Obviously low-budget and hand-made, Tsukamoto uses liberal doses of stop-motion to fashion the mutations of metal and wire, as well as live subjects in jagged chase scenes. I've never seen so much exposed wire and metal in a film and it's kind of beautiful. Characters are constantly drenched in sweat and mist, or spurting black blood. It's body horror with a robotic bent.

The actors all play their parts broadly but what else could you do? Tomorowo Taguchi as 'The Salaryman', Kei Fujiwara as 'The Girlfriend' and director Tsukamoto as 'The Fetishist' are all wonderful in their bizarre roles. For me, Kei Fujiwara stood out the most with a brave performance drenched in sweat, desire and insanity. The dialogue is pretty minimal but keeps the proceedings moving just fine.

The film's score is a propulsive nightmare composed by Chu Ishikawa. If any music brought the sound of pounding metal to life, this would be it. Do not listen before bed!

The special effects are a textured wonder of spare parts, foil and wire. You'll never look at a coil of bare wire in the same way again. Tsukamoto's stop motion effects are the highlight of the film for me – we're not talking Harryhausen-type creatures here. It's everyday objects and even humans under the stop-motion camera, and it's incredibly distinctive.

In some ways, Tetsuo is an exhausting view, but ultimately exhilarating. It might be a stretch if the director had pushed things beyond the quick running time. Nonetheless, I feel this one is required viewing for adventurous filmgoers. In that sense, it gets my highest recommendation. I gather it was a troubled production with the crew repeatedly abandoning the shoot, leaving the actors to complete the behind the scenes work. If that's true, Tetsuo is even more of an achievement.

It's low-budget, black-and-white and short, but brace yourselves. This is a wild but rewarding ride!

Do have a pleasant evening.