Tetsuo (Tomorô Taguchi) turns into the titular iron man via a series of bloody tableaux morts scenarios sensuously intercut with images of Metal Fetishist (Tsukamoto) trapped inside the confines of a demolished automobile. (Tetsuo’s narrative details are iffy but Tsukamoto seems to suggest that Tetsuo and his girlfriend were responsible for the death of Metal Fetishist.) Tetsuo grapples with his burgeoning metal self as he and his girlfriend contemplate the psycho-sexual ramifications of his new male unit (his penis is visualized as a colossal swirling power-drill). Tsukamoto’s pseudo-animatronic running scenarios evoke an industrial flux between humanity and its surroundings while Tetsuo and Fetishist’s homoerotic transformation into Iron Man becomes a response to the machinization of the individual in a systematically regimented Japan. Shinya Tsukamoto’s fetishistic Tetsuo: The Iron Man is certainly worthy of Cronenberg.
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