WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
A pretentious, foreign language film in monochrome with subtitles? Right up my street, surely? Sadly, no.
Less a film, more a series of disjointed random images, Tetsuo is Doctor Who's Cybermen for art students. Some of the images are striking, and stunningly filmed in black and white, but this is more the masturbatory offering of a directorial undergraduate than a film for public consumption.
Vague story seems to revolve around Tomoroh Taguchi feeling emasculated by his girlfriend and imagining that emasculation in terms of industrialisation. His girlfriend suggestively eats a sausage, but it does him no good all he can hear is a scraping metal sound whenever she takes a bite. He also has what appears to be a dream whereby she rapes him with a giant plug extension sprouting from her crotch now there's penis envy for you! Mind you, Taguchi certainly knows how to fight back he grows a drill for a John Thomas and tries to rape her to death, with a (translated) "You want a taste of my sewage pipe?" What a silver-tongued charmer.
Surprisingly, in the midst of all this full-on pseudo-sexual shenanigans, Tetsuo manages to be very, very boring, seeming much longer than its 63m runtime. The soundtrack is occasional pop and white noise, though largely industrial clatter. Sort of like that dance troupe who clank dustbin lids at Royal Variety Performances.
Eventually the TV set that Taguchi has in his mind drives him mad with visions of infidelity, and so he goes on a rampage against electrical appliances. The technology (Technology = bad!) is defeated by white liquid shooting from his pores (Sperm? Sperm = good!) However, it's not all over, worse luck, as an enemy attempts to destroy him in a plethora of stop-motion gunk.
Largely dialogue-free at the best of times, the film then undertakes a high-speed chase, sort of like Benny Hill, except their feet aren't moving. The two foes eventually join together to take over the world as one metallic, fused entity. A satire over fears of homosexuality? Or just a load of old pants? You decide. As far as I'm concerned Tetsuo is one of those films that is put together in such a wilfully obscure fashion so as to convince you its worthwhile. It isn't.
A pretentious, foreign language film in monochrome with subtitles? Right up my street, surely? Sadly, no.
Less a film, more a series of disjointed random images, Tetsuo is Doctor Who's Cybermen for art students. Some of the images are striking, and stunningly filmed in black and white, but this is more the masturbatory offering of a directorial undergraduate than a film for public consumption.
Vague story seems to revolve around Tomoroh Taguchi feeling emasculated by his girlfriend and imagining that emasculation in terms of industrialisation. His girlfriend suggestively eats a sausage, but it does him no good all he can hear is a scraping metal sound whenever she takes a bite. He also has what appears to be a dream whereby she rapes him with a giant plug extension sprouting from her crotch now there's penis envy for you! Mind you, Taguchi certainly knows how to fight back he grows a drill for a John Thomas and tries to rape her to death, with a (translated) "You want a taste of my sewage pipe?" What a silver-tongued charmer.
Surprisingly, in the midst of all this full-on pseudo-sexual shenanigans, Tetsuo manages to be very, very boring, seeming much longer than its 63m runtime. The soundtrack is occasional pop and white noise, though largely industrial clatter. Sort of like that dance troupe who clank dustbin lids at Royal Variety Performances.
Eventually the TV set that Taguchi has in his mind drives him mad with visions of infidelity, and so he goes on a rampage against electrical appliances. The technology (Technology = bad!) is defeated by white liquid shooting from his pores (Sperm? Sperm = good!) However, it's not all over, worse luck, as an enemy attempts to destroy him in a plethora of stop-motion gunk.
Largely dialogue-free at the best of times, the film then undertakes a high-speed chase, sort of like Benny Hill, except their feet aren't moving. The two foes eventually join together to take over the world as one metallic, fused entity. A satire over fears of homosexuality? Or just a load of old pants? You decide. As far as I'm concerned Tetsuo is one of those films that is put together in such a wilfully obscure fashion so as to convince you its worthwhile. It isn't.