30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 13- Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

For today's film, I had originally planned to watch the first ever Mexican werewolf film La Loba (She Wolf), but all of the versions I could find did not have English subtitles and I do not speak Spanish. So, I had to scramble for a replacement film for the 30 day movie challenge which the task was to watch a foreign film. So we packed our passports and we decided to travel to Japan through the Shudder app and we are checking out 1989's cyberpunk horror classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man which was written, directed, edited, art direction, and produced by Shinya Tsukamoto (Hiruko the Goblin). The film stars  Tomorô Taguchi (Iden & Tity) as a business man who accidentally kills The Metal Fetishist (played by Shinya Tsukamoto) with his car, but drives away in fear. The Metal Fetishist will however get his revenge on the business man as he begins to torture him by turning him slowly into a grotesque hybrid of flesh and rusty metal mixed together.This super bizarre film also stars Kei Fujiwara (The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo) as woman, Nobu Kanaoka (Tetsuo II: Body Hammer) as Woman in glasses, Naomasa Musaka (Shiro demo Kuro demo Nai Sekai de Panda wa Warau) as Doctor, and Renji Ishibashi (When My Mom Died, I Wanted to Eat Her Ashes) as Tramp. 

They mentioned that the film was weirder than Cronenberg who does body horror and weirder than David Lynch who has had some weird ass films I still don't understand like experimental body horror film Eraserhead. This film definitely reminds me a lot like Eraserhead and makes me think the director was obsessed with that film with all the weird mutations and the special effects that went into it. It took me a little while to figure out that someone was torturing the man by turning him into metal, I thought he was mutating into this metal being, but then it all made sense. At first, I was looking at the film like it was social commentary on Japanese life at the time which was work hard without playing hard almost like they work so much they are basically machines. You could still look at it that way, but when you see the accident scene play out a little more than you get the gist of the film and where they are heading. I am definitely sure this is a film that I probably wouldn't watch more than once, but I can definitely appreciate all the work that true auteur Shinya Tsukamoto put into the film because he obviously created a cult classic that is still revered today. The only thing that bothered me at time were the erratic camera shots that were just frantic and all over the place in the beginning of the film. Other than that, I loved the acting in the film so they'll get bonus points for that. So, I am going to go ahead and give this film an B for a final grade. You can check it out right now on Shudder.