Product Description

Fueled by cyberpunk sensuality and wrought iron perversion, "Iron Man" starts with a bizarre merging of flesh and metal and accelerates into a hyper-hallucinatory state where springs, wires and solder erupt fountain-like from a man's body.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33781 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-04-01
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 67 minutes

Amazon.com
Shinya Tsukamoto draws on the marriage of flesh and technology that inspires so much of David Cronenberg's work and then twists it into a manga-influenced cyberpunk vision. A man (Tomoroh Taguchi) awakens from a nightmare in which his body is helplessly fusing with the metal objects around him, only to find it happening to him in real life... or is it? Haunted by memories of a hit and run (eerily prophetic of Cronenberg's Crash), the man knows this ordeal could be a dream, a fantastic form of divine retribution, or perhaps technological mutation born of guilt and rage. Shot in bracing black and white on a small budget, Tsukamoto puts a demented conceptual twist on good old-fashioned stop-motion effects and simple wire work, giving his film the surreal quality of a waking dream with a psychosexual edge (resulting in the film's most disturbing scene). The story ultimately takes on an abstract quality enhanced by the grungy look and increasingly wild images as they take to the streets in a mad chase of technological speed demons. This first entry in his self-titled "Regular Sized Monster Series" is followed by a full-color sequel, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer, which trades the muddy experimental atmosphere for a big-budget sheen but can't top the cybershock to the system this movie packs. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

New Tartan DVD sounds great, looks terrible!
The rating is for the lousy transfer of the new Tartan DVD release. TETSUO is one of my top-ten favorite movies of all time. Purchasing this new release represented a quadruple-dip on this title. First was a bootleg vhs tape back in the early 90's followed by the official Fox-Lorber tape, then the first DVD. The main reason, other than my love for the movie, for buying again was for the new 5.1 sound mix because TETSUO has a great soundtrack. Tartan did a great job with the remix. I love it! It's really impressive in my home theater. But the image doesn't live up to the audio, especially projected on my big screen. It looks like they just did a cheap transfer of the PAL master (Tartan is a UK company, I believe) to NTSC because it's riddled with artifacts like ghosting during fast movements (there's a lot of that in this film) and the image is very soft and contrasty. The old Fox-Lorber DVD from '98 has more image detail, especially in shadows, and none of that ugly ghosting. I assumed that since it's 2005 now and most DVD companies have kept up with the state of the art, knowing that audiences are more discriminating about audio/video quality, Tartan would live up to our expectations. But, no.
I see that there are several sellers dumping their old discs here at Amazon. I recommend that you just pick up one of those rather than Tartan's shameless release...

c'mon (saa koi)
Testsuo: the iron man may be a difficult film for a lot of people. you will probably either love it or think in is trash. this film struck a deeply personaly chord within me, so it is difficult to write about it objectivly. as a teenager i dreamnt of a film shot in gritty black and white that would deal with terrifing and ghostly subjects. this film is it. tsukamoto is a genius for this film. the effects are low buget to the max, but when is the last time your nightmare had a big effects buget? the film actually follows a plot line somewhat resembling a Noh play, except very convoluted; the man runs the fetishist over with his car, and then has sex with his girlfriend in frount of the fetishist's broken body. because of this sexual arousal in the presense of machine induced death, the man is cursed with his sexual/physical merging with the machiene realm. the fetishist wants revenge. the visual effect of the film is beyond incredible, and the music is perfect. very few films incorporate music into the visuals as fundamentally as this one (bergman's Persona and otomo's AKIRA are also great examples). this film implanted itself into my brain like a shard of metal. keep an open mind when you watch this film, and don't jump to conclusions and judgements. if you can withstand the films attack, you will find it to be truly beautiful and rewarding.

A completely unique experience!
Tetsuo is not for anyone that's the least bit squeamish. For the rest of us, it is an absolute wild ride. The movie is black-and-white, hyperkinetic, and totally unique. The story makes only some sense, but it is the visuals and music that work here.

Shinyo Tsukamoto uses fast cuts, weird camera angles, and the black-and-white film to great advantage in Tetsuo. Every frame is overloaded with detail, and the metallization of people in the movie is more a weird combination of tubes, wires, and cables than anything else. Visually, this movie is unique, and Chu Ishikawa's soundtrack fits it perfectly. You will just sit there, and say something like: whoa, what the heck is going on!!

Tetsuo II is completely different; hard to believe Tsukamoto also directed it. It is worth seeing only to fill in some of the holes the first movie leaves in the story. But unfortunately, the hyperkinetics and great visuals are completely gone.

I did not give Tetsuo 5 stars because of an overly graphic section about midway through the movie; it is a humorous section initially (you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it), but Tsukamoto takes it too far. Otherwise, Tetsuo is a great movie.