10 Best Body Horror Movies

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a scintillating ride into the mind of Shin’ya Tsukamoto which will leave you disoriented and reeling.

The plot is not something to get hung up on but the film opens with a man inserting a long steel bolt into his upper leg. He later notices maggots in the wound and runs panicking into the path of a car. The driver of the car is a young business man who quickly begins to transform into a metal-human hybrid via what we can assume is a vengeful curse from the man he ran down.

The film goes on to primarily portray this gradual transformation through stylised chase scenes and bizarre dream sequences. The choppy editing, tight run-time and score all add to the disjointed narrative.

Tetsuo is a masterful piece of visual work and its sequences of stop-motion animation are unbelievable. Tsukamoto films in black and white which gives a striking industrial feel similar to Lynch’s Eraserhead.

The nightmarish transformation echoes images and themes from the more extreme anime films, such as the previous year’s masterpiece, Akira, which were increasing in popularity at the turn of the decade. Tetsuo in turn went on to inspire Japanese and global cult film-making and allowed Tsukamoto to make two sequels.