October Horror Challenge 2022 #5: "Tetsuo: The Iron Man"

This is one of those movies I've been hearing about for years that I finally decided to watch today. It's a dark little underground cyberpunk horror flick with severe arthouse leanings, so it was either going to be great or terrible, and I knew that going in but decided to give it a chance anyway. I've been hearing about this movie since I used to read my brother's Fangoria magazines back when I was a teenager (Fangoria is the main horror magazine, so it was how I read about horror movies back in the days before the internet).

The movie is about a "metal fetishist" who is driven insane by the maggots swirling in a wound he created by jamming a metal spike into his flesh. He runs out into the night and is hit by a car driven by a businessman and his girlfriend. They hope to dispose of the body and move on with their lives, but soon the businessman is haunted by strange visions. The visions get worse and worse until he discovers he is now haunted by a strange curse that transforms his flesh into iron.

That description makes the movie sound way more linear and straightforward than it is. The details are all out of order and the events of the film take place at different times, so I had to piece together the events to come up with that description for it to make any sense. Yep, this is one of those art films that doesn't make much sense, at least not for those of us that want our movies to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, in that order. If that's what you're looking for then this movie will probably piss you off, so you should probably avoid it if you know you want your movies to be straightforward.

The movie is basically a collection of artsy-fartsy black and white scenes pieced together and held with duct tape. It's black-and-white with subtitles, and as I mentioned earlier it doesn't make linear sense, so it has a lot of strikes against it for most regular moviegoers in terms of them enjoying the viewing experience. The movie is just plain weird and more of a hidgepodge of weird randomm scenes than an actual movie. I did kind of enjoy a lot of the scenes and the movie builds up a lot of atmosphere and a good sense of impending doom which hangs over the proceedings. It's gross and grungy and dirty, but it wasn't a bad way to kill 62 minutes, and with its short running timme it doesn't run the risk of overstaying its welcome. I dunno, I can dig it.