Hacker Cinema
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
鉄男
1989 · Film · 67 min
Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
A "metal fetishist", driven mad by the maggots wriggling in the wound he's made to embed metal into his flesh, runs out into the night and is accidentally run down by a Japanese businessman and his girlfriend. The pair dispose of the corpse in hopes of quietly moving on with their lives. However, the businessman soon finds that he is now plagued by a vicious curse that transforms his flesh into iron.
3 positive5 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
> Tetsuo: The Iron Man
It's not actually framed as cyberpunk: Shinya Tsukamoto positionned it as "human size kaiju".
On the perception...I think its fans are mostly outside of Japan, and it was basically reversed imported. Tsukamoto sent it to foreign film festivals first, and only brought it to domestic theaters after it won at the Rome festival. Even now in interviews it's only brought back as it's directorial debut, and a stepping stone for getting money for bigger movies.
I have the feeling the whole notion of mixing human and technology just doesn't resonate as much in a country that is way more technology friendly and doesn't see robots as much as a threat than in the west.
PS: the "action hero" genre is basically humans transforming into machines, that speaks to the wide acceptance of the concept.
TV series:
- Dark Angel. I somehow missed this during it's original broadcast run, and only just now went back and watched it. I don't think it's streaming anywhere legit, so I went the bittorrent route. I really enjoyed it. Season One is definitely stronger than Season Two, but it kept me pretty engaged for the entire series.
- Max Headroom. I'd seen the entire series before, but I went back for a re-watch. I love this show.
- Person of Interest. Same deal, I'd seen the entire run previously, but did a complete re-watch.
Movies:
I don't think I watched any contemporary movies this year. I mostly watched old cyberpunk movies and "cyberpunk adjacent" sci-fi. Not sure anything I watched was exactly great but a couple stood out as interesting at least (in various ways)
- 964 Pinocchio
- Tetsuo: The Iron Man
- New Rose Hotel
Also saw an interesting psychological horror / thriller titled "Open 24 Hours" that wasn't bad. And a movie titled "Synchronic" that was pretty good.
Informative / educational videos:
- N.J. Wildberger's "History of Mathematics" series
This brought memories back for me, years ago there was a small VHS store that stocked a lot of these. Looking at there catalog is like a trip down memory lane. List of there titles I saw many years ago. (Pretty much all great movies) A Tale of Two Sisters Audition Battle Royale 1 + 2 Chaos Dead Or Alive 1 + 2 Gozu Happiness of the Katakuris, The Hard Boiled Infernal Affairs: The Trilogy Lady Vengeance Oldboy R-Point Ring Trilogy Save the Green Planet Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Tetsuo: The Iron Man Visitor Q
> That'd make a hell of a fiction story, but it's completely divorced from reality.
If I'm magnetic, does that mean I'm a cyborg?
I was thinking more of "Tetsuo: The Iron Man".
Grandparent poster is likely going to think it's a documentary.
> I have never seen anything like it for past 20 years...
If you like this movie's stylistics, I'd recommend you to give Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) a chance!
Both are filmed black and white, both have amazing soundtracks and have industrial and cyberpunk culture influences. The camera work and the cinematography on the tetsuo is beyond epic
...is unmatched by what's seen here in the U.S. Is it because the movie industry there is more permissive towards such genere?
Can you elaborate on this? On the face of your comment, I think you might just be unaware of a lot of films that have been made in the US. The article mentioned the American David Lynch's Eraserhead as an influence of these works. David Cronenberg is also undoubtedly a huge influence here as well (I know he's Canadian, but he largely works in the American movie industry).
It's not like Tetsuo: The Iron Man was a huge financial or mainstream success. Most of these movies were mostly relegated to the grindhouse, and American has more than its share of grindhouse film makers (ala John Waters). Also consider that The Fly was as big a financial success as Akira.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't think Japanese artists & audiences are very different from their American counterparts in this regard. It is not distinctly Japanese or American to dream up horrific stuff, but rather, it's human to hold up a mirror to an, at times, horrific existence.
Wikipedia calls it “cyberpunk body horror”
> Tetsuo: The Iron Man (鉄男, Tetsuo) is a 1989 Japanese cyberpunk body horror film.
One of the films mentioned (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) is available to watch for free on archive.org. Probably not safe to watch at work.
https://archive.org/details/TetsuoTheIronMan