Tetsuo: The Iron Man (鉄男, Tetsuo, 'iron man') is a 1989 Japanese tokusatsu cyberpunk body horror film written, produced, edited, and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. It is shot in the same low-budget, underground-production style as his first two films. The film established Tsukamoto internationally and created his worldwide cult following. It was followed by Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) and Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009).
Plot[]
A metal fetishist enters his Tokyo hideout, which is full of metal parts and photos of famous athletes. He cuts open his thigh and thrusts a large metal rod into the wound. Later, he unwraps the wound to discover it rotting and covered with maggots. Horrified, he runs outside into the street and gets hit by a car.
A salaryman is tormented by visions of metal and industrial machinery. While shaving in his apartment, he notices a metal spike protruding from his cheek that spurts blood when he touches it. He speaks to his girlfriend on the phone, who says she cannot stop thinking about an unknown "incident".
The salaryman is on his way to work. He goes to a train platform and sits next to a woman wearing glasses. She notices a mound of flesh and metal on the ground. She pokes it with a pen and is quickly overcome by it, turning her into a monster controlled by the fetishist. The salaryman flees in terror, briefly able to escape by stabbing the woman with a pen. She soon finds him but he is able to defeat her. After the fight, he realizes the flesh on his arm has turned into metal.
The salaryman dreams of his girlfriend dancing erotically with a phallic hose before sodomizing him with it. When he wakes, the salaryman is horrified to see his metal transformation is accelerating. He and his girlfriend then have sex. Afterwards, his girlfriend eats suggestively, each interaction with the food accompanied by metallic screeching sounds. Suddenly, the salaryman's penis is transformed into a large metal drill. He loses control and then attacks his girlfriend. After she briefly incapacitates him with a blow to the head from a frying pan, he regains his strength through electrocution by sticking a knife and fork into an electrical socket. Finally, she stabs him in the neck with a kitchen knife. Believing that she had killed him, she kills herself by impaling herself on his drill. The salaryman awakens and realizes what has happened, while elsewhere the fetishist laughs maniacally.
A flashback shows a doctor talking to a younger version of the fetishist, who came to him with a piece of metal in his head. The doctor says that he's amazed he's still alive and that it's impossible for him to remove the metal from his head, ultimately advising him to think of it as jewelry.
The salaryman's transformation into "the Iron Man" is complete. He receives a phone call from the fetishist, who tells the Iron Man that he is coming for him. It is revealed that the salaryman and his girlfriend were the ones that struck the fetishist with their car, disposed his body in the woods and then had sex up against a nearby tree. Upon realizing this, the Iron Man electrocutes himself again.
The fetishist makes his way to the Iron Man's apartment, destroying all metal in his wake and turning his cats into metal. He possesses the body of the dead girlfriend and attacks the Iron Man, eventually emerging in his true form. The fetishist easily overpowers the Iron Man and shows him a post-apocalyptic vision of the "New World" – the Earth consumed by metal. A fight ensues and the fetishist chases the Iron Man across the city, before being briefly incapacitated by a vision from childhood where he is repeatedly beaten by a man with the metal rod that became embedded in his head.
The Iron Man escapes to an old factory, but the fetishist appears and attacks him. The Iron Man uses his powers to manipulate the metal around him and overpower the fetishist. This results in the two men merging into a single phallic mass of metal. They then vow to turn the Earth into a planet made entirely out of metal as they rocket around the city.