Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Did You Know?

• Tsukamoto stated the film is about 'the process in which human beings become Iron; that is, it's some kind of human condition.'
• Jay McRoy declared Tetsuo: The Iron Man 'one of the most influential Japanese horror films ever produced'.
• An attempt to make a third Tetsuo film with American collaborators, including Quentin Tarantino, was discussed in the early 1990s but was never made.

Plot

A young man, credited as the 'metal fetishist', inserts scrap metal into a self-inflicted wound on his thigh and is later hit by a car. The driver, a salaryman, finds a metallic thorn protruding from his cheek while shaving. He is attacked by a woman with metallic tentacles and discovers metallic scabs on his skin. At home, he dreams of being sodomized by organic metal machinery.

When he attempts sex with his girlfriend, his penis becomes a metallic drill; he locks himself away, but she approaches him. He attacks her, and when he tries to sexually assault her with the drill, she stabs him in the neck, causing him to fall unconscious. He later wakes to find she has impaled herself on the drill. The metal fetishist recalls memories of the accident and a doctor who found metal in his brain.

He develops telekinetic powers and contacts the salaryman and his girlfriend, promising a 'new world of metal'. The salaryman flees, and a tramp beats the fetishist. The two eventually meet, their bodies now more metal than flesh. The fetishist, overcome with rust, merges with the salaryman into a giant metallic monster.

They take to the streets, the salaryman seeking vengeance and the fetishist pleasure, convinced they can mutate the world into metal.

Production

As a child, Tsukamoto read Shōnen Tanteidan and other books by Edogawa Ranpo, finding interest in their 'dark edges'. He was also a fan of kaiju series like Gamera, Godzilla, and Ultra Q, noting Ultra Q's surreal flavor led him to surrealism in high school. His father brought home an 8mm camera, which Tsukamoto inherited, and he began making amateur monster movies with his brother in 1974. In high school, he saw Bitterness of Youth by Tatsumi Kumashiro, American films, and works by Akira Kurosawa, from whom he learned to manipulate light on film. Tsukamoto became frustrated with film work in the late 1970s and focused on stage work while entering university. Through his theatre work, he met Kei Fujiwara and Tomorowo Taguchi.

Release

Tsukamoto premiered Tetsuo: The Iron Man at Nakano Musashino Hall, a theatre with a capacity of 80 people, equipped for 16mm film, with late-night screenings in July. He described it as 'the smallest theatre in Tokyo'. The film was distributed by Kaijyu Theatre in Japan on July 1, 1989. Film critic Yoichi Komatsuzawa proposed submitting the film to the Fantafestival in Rome, where it won Best Film in June.

Japanese critic Ken Okubo noted the award was a great surprise in Tokyo. Following the award, the film screened in Tokyo for three months at late shows around 9pm. According to Chikako Shimoaka of The Japan Times, over 10,000 copies were sold on home video by 1992. Mark Thompson commented that, like Akira Kurosawa or Shonen Knife, an artist without a domestic audience found fans abroad and returned a folk hero.

The film broke box office and records for non-mainstream cinema in Japan. It was distributed in the United States by Original Cinema in early 1992 and in England in September 1991. Fox Lorber released it on home video in 1993. Image Entertainment and Tartan Video later released DVDs. Arrow Video released the Solid Metal Nightmares set on Blu-ray on May 26, 2020.

Reception

Contemporary critics noted the film's originality and 'gleefully extremist' style, as Tony Rayns wrote in Sight & Sound. Dan Persons in Cinefantastique said it 'catches a lost spirit of pure, kinetic filmmaking'. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post called it '67 of the most relentlessly intense minutes in recent film history' with a 'nightmarish hyper-reality'. Rayns and Kevin Thomas of Los Angeles Times compared it to the works of Sam Raimi, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Kenneth Anger, with Thomas adding Tsukamoto is 'finally not like anybody else'.

Rayns noted 'few token gestures towards storytelling'. Stephen Holden of The New York Times felt the film would have limited appeal. Retrospectively, Michael Brooke of Sight & Sound noted the low budget 'works brilliantly' and declared the film 'remains one of the most pulverisingly effective sci-fi horror films of the past quarter of a century'. James Marriott in The Definitive Guide to Horror Movies found it wearying on repeated watches. In 2009, Kinema Junpo placed it at number 97 on their list of top 200 Japanese films.