Together, we can turn this f*cking world to rust! Strange, expressionistic, horrible and inspirational, the first and best of Shinya Tsukamotos Tetsuo trilogy is a black and white study in art-punk filmmaking, a horror movie for the post-industrial, pre-digital age. The machines that his protagonist is gradually transforming into are from the factory floor, all pistons, gears and moving parts not the sleeker, miniaturised borging out that true cyberpunk fiction would embrace. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling et al introduced characters achieving a transformation through a more mellow transfiguration, a smooth, fluid change of mental state, all diodes and nanotech. Tsukamotos Tetsuo is more concerned with an angry ripping to pieces of the old life, the old self, both metaphorically and physically (because Jesus Christ on a unicycle but some bad, nightmarish metamorphic voodoo happens in this film). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uROMTzJsfOI Characters become machines and fight one another in shrieking, chaotic tangles of crushed and mangled flesh and steel and yes, there are far more uncomfortable but similar scenes of a sexual nature. Like Tusk, the end result is brilliant, weird and idiosyncratic, but results in a film that you may only want to watch once, and possibly not even that
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
