Poster for Tetsuo: The Iron Man
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Year
1989
Country
Japan
Runtime
67 min
Director
Shinya Tsukamoto
Updated
9 Aug 2026
Obscurity
known (25/100)
Also known as
Tetsuo: The Ironman

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Sixty-seven minutes of industrial nightmare. Nothing else looks like it.

Sixty-seven minutes of industrial nightmare, and nothing else on this site looks like it. A Tokyo salaryman begins mutating into a mass of scrap metal, and Shinya Tsukamoto films the transformation as a black-and-white assault of stop-motion, strobe and shrieking noise. Narrative is almost beside the point.

It plays like a Cronenberg body-horror crossed with a Nine Inch Nails video made by hand, relentless and disorienting. Tsukamoto did nearly everything himself, and you can feel the obsession in every frame.

Not for everyone, and unforgettable for the people it is for.

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Filed alongside

Poster for Mystics in Balicult

Mystics in Bali

1981 · ID · 85m

The Indonesian one everybody means: a flying witch's head, viscera trailing, hunting in the dark.