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)

LA GRANDE BOUFFE (1973)

"...or not to be."

Four wealthy male friends gather together (with some prostitutes and a teacher) in a large house to eat themselves to death...and yep, it's about as gross as you just imagined.  Once LA GRANDE BOUFFE gets going, it's almost non-stop debauchery, farting, shitting, gorging, vomiting, whoring, burping, fucking and death.  It's great.

In the wrong hands, a story idea like this could turn out to be a disaster, but luckily for us, it was written and directed by Marco Ferreri and has four of the best actors of all time in the lead roles: Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret and Ugo Tognazzi.  Andrea Ferreol is also very disturbing as the seemingly normal person, who get way too much pleasure out of actively cheering on these four men to commit a very slow and painful suicide.

According to the disc extras, LA GRANDE BOUFFE caused quite a stir at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and I can see why; it's a pretty messed up movie (especially back then), but as a commentary on consumerism, I think the film does a excellent job and I would absolutely love to see a modern day remake that is a 1,000 times more grotesque.

Double-feature with Pasolini's SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM for a truly fun evening.

[As a complete side note (that has nothing to do with the review): I'm curious as to what the legal ramifications would be for the character of Andrea after the film was over and the police became involved?  I have no idea if assisted suicide was legal in France in 1973, but even if so, you could argue that what she did went well beyond "assisting".]

NSFW images

Look at the use of mirrors in this shot.