TETSUO, THE IRON MAN (1989)

The story (and I'm totally guessing here) is a dude, the "Metal Fetishist" (according to the English credits), slices his leg wide the fuck open and crams in a metal rod.  After that, he runs out into the street and is hit by the car of "Man" and "Woman".  Man and Woman then dump him in the woods and romantically hump while the Metal Fetishist dies.  He doesn't take too kindly to this, so he, somehow, haunts the living fuck out of them by slowly turning them into metal and driving them completely insane.  Then things really get weird.

Anything you imagined while reading that description doesn't even capture 6.66% of the frantic madness that happens onscreen.  TETSUO, THE IRON MAN is a nutty as fuck film and I can't even imagine the hardship and torment the filmmakers went through making the movie.  That said, it was also a chore to sit through the entire thing.  Even at 67 minutes, I felt my handsome brain starting to melt out of my beautiful ears.

Surreal story, amazing visuals, interesting (but repetitive) industrial music, mechanical drill penis, awesome B & W photography, male rape, lots of screaming. TETSUO, THE IRON MAN might be kinda boring to sit through, but it's still worth watching for anybody interesting in experimental cinema.

[Update 06/05/2024: Just got lucky enough to watch TETSUO, THE IRON MAN in a proper movie theater and it was great. Especially the insane scenes in the Man and Woman's apartment. That said, I still agree that the ending drags on for too long.]

Part 2 - Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992)
Part 3 - Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009)

A SNAKE OF JUNE (2002)

"Am I in hell?"

Told with the sexual tension of a fistful of sun-dried aardvark shit being thrown against a wall, A SNAKE OF JUNE tells the surreal and blue-coloured story of a creepy dude (who might or might not have a robotic vacuum hose for a penis) who is stalking an unhappily married couple.  The wife is extremely sexually repressed (it's never explained why, but, I suspect, it has something to do with the fact that when she finally does have an orgasm...it sounded more like she was giving birth to a fully grown porcupine, than having pleasure.).  The husband is a weak-dick nerd who has no idea how to fuck properly.  It's sad.

Anyway, so this stalker dude blackmails the wife into doing solo sexual stuff in public and then kidnaps and beats the husband into finally being more manly...or something.  I don't know.  I watched the film twice and I felt like I was drifting in and out of consciousness both times.  Maybe it had something to do with all the sleeping pills I took, but who knows.  Anyway, ASOJ wasn't terrible, it just wasn't my cup of tea (at the time I watched it).  I normally like Shinya Tsukamoto more than this.  I kinda wish A SNAKE OF JUNE had been even weirder and more frantic.  Different casting of the married couple wouldn't have hurt things either.  They were both boring to look at.

Worth a viewing for fans of avant-garde cinema.