Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Sexuality so bizarre and repulsive that you'll feel sickened by it. Disturbing imagery with sexually connotative implications infest this extreme vision written, edited, starring, and directed by Japan's Shinya Tsukamoto. Tetsuo: The Iron Man is the kind of macabre film that would make author JG Ballard puke.

WARNING: In attempting to paint a picture of what watching this film is like, the following review may get nasty at times. No matter how gross you think this epinion is, it doesn't come close to the movie's indecency. Be forewarned...

Visually linking sexuality with grisly mutation and mangled machinery is impossible for anyone to do tastefully, so Tsukamoto went a different route - explicit tastelessness. You'll see a mentally unstable man shove a rusty metal rod into a vulva-like wound in his leg (ala Max's stomach vagina in Cronenberg's Videodrome). You'll see a mutant woman with a metal hose growing out of her crotch attack the bottom of a screaming man. You'll see a man with an industrial-size drill for a penis accidentally murder a woman during intercourse - her flesh flinging off the drill bit as its spin slows to a halt.

This film is an extremely visual experience - dialog is limited to a few lines here and there. Using low definition black and white, Tsukamoto presents us with a weird experience akin to abstract Korean films of past years. I don't know if any of you recall the Korean Abstract Slashers that infiltrated American film festivals a few years back - if its director and cast were not Japanese, Tetsuo: The Iron Man would fit squarely into that genre. Tsukamoto had obviously taken notes on Korean film, merging their breed of abstract cinema and absolute cinema with American cartoons, the Japanese concept of fantasy-science fiction, and the Canadian mastery of bizarre socially-conscious horror.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is about the merger of flesh and metal. The plot is paper-thin, as it's meant to be viewed like a moving painting, not examined like a novel. Following an auto accident, both the victim and the driver gradually morph into a fusion of man and iron. The film takes us through these changes, from beginning, to the final manifestation when the two metal-men become lovers and their iron bodies intertwine into the shape of a twenty-foot erect phallus. Clive Barker would be proud.

The psychological flavor of this film is confusing and maddening. You'll laugh while simultaneously being shocked and sickened by the force of the ghastly imagery. The humor of a drill-penis is cut short by the horror of seeing what it can do to a woman. Think of the terror that Cronenberg's Dead Ringers' "gynecologist's instruments for operating on mutant women" brought us and prolong that absurd feeling to ninety-minutes worth of insanity. The Looney Tunes' sound effects heighten the freakishness to explosive levels. Even sex between normal people is maddened by circumstance, vis-a-vis a man and his girlfriend getting aroused because a dying man is "watching them;" unseen cartoon characters laughing in the background. Rest assured, you won't be able to close your shocked open mouth.

Tsukamoto utilizes stop-motion effects that harshly brutalize our eyes, hypnotizing us yet at the same time dehumanizing the characters. We are forced from image to image at a rapid speed, so swiftly paced that even live action seems like stop-motion. The makeup effects of this film standout in a big way: exhaust pipes sticking out of a human torso, metal wires connecting an eye to a cheek, a gruesome abrasion tearing apart a face. Tetsuo: The Iron Man's makeup effects combined with stop-motion effects make it one of the best special effects films ever. If it's not real, don't make it seem real. That's the trouble with CGI nowadays - computer effects never look real, yet they are meant to. I'd take Tsukamoto's abstract and crude stop-motion and old school makeup over The Matrix or Titanic or The Phantom Menace any day.

All in all, Tetsuo: The Iron Man is an insane, nihilistic, and zany ride. You will be shocked, disgusted, and sickened above all else - if this doesn't sound like a good time, then don't watch it. For me, anytime a fictional movie can inspire such open-mouthed madness for ninety-minutes straight (when it's trying to), then that is cinematic success.

This trashy film can make an atheist say, "oh my God!"

NOTE: If you have children please do not let them see this film. Tetsuo: The Iron Man is just as, if not more disturbing than a shockumentary.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age