(upbeat music) Get three coffins ready, kid, because our latest podcast, Make My Day, is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier, that is, Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloweenies. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation and Prince's output is infinite, you've gotta ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Flashes, huh? What's your favorite scary movie? (laughing) - Not that one. (laughing) (upbeat music) - And welcome back to Horror Queers. We're talking wiener sex, we're talking flower tumors, and we're talking Japanese cyberpunk. And I'm Joe. - And I'm Trace and we're talking, I'm sorry, I had like two choices in case you took one, you didn't take either one. So I was like, what did I wanna pick? And I'm Trace and we're talking, you wanna taste of my sewage pipe? (laughing) - So I knew that you would want that one and I deliberately didn't pick it. - Okay, so my other choice though, was our love to destroy this whole fucking world, because good lord Joe, this movie is much clearer than I remember it being. - Right, yeah, it's definitely laced within there, but by the end of the film, this is a full on homosexual romance. - It's pretty explicit, like, you know, I was kind of like, oh, go me, oh, sorry, everyone, we were just, (laughing) we're just right into it. - We were just right into it. We were discussing Shinya Suka-modos, Tetsuo the Iron Man, a movie that, I mean, I think I kind of clued everyone in our outro last week, but this is a film school watch for me and I've not watched it since. - Right. - I would imagine the casual viewer will struggle with this film. - Oh, for sure, yeah. - But Joe, this was your first time watching it, no? - It was indeed, yes, and what better time to do it than its 35th anniversary trace? - Oh, that's why we have it on this kid. I mean, that's super gay, but-- (laughing) - Well, that and the fact that, yes, I'm gonna give a shout out to, I think OG listener Evan Benner, because he has been asking us to cover this forever. So I think I only even added it to the list at his urging. - Well, truth to that, 'cause I had seen this film, but be behind the curtain, everyone, there are so many movies that I have seen that Joe has not that I will just forget our queer in some shape where you're for him. So whenever we cover them and Joe's like, "Trace, how could you not tell me this was queer?" And I'm like, "I forgot." (laughing) - Well, I mean, that is a reasonable response, particularly when you tell me, "Oh, I watched this during film school." You're not watching this movie, you're looking for queerness, you're watching it because of whatever subject X, they were like, "Hey, pay attention to this." - Yeah, and I, yeah, 'cause I took a horror film class and I took an Asian horror film class. I feel like this is one of the first things we watched. No, actually, no, we went in chronological order in Asian horror, so it would have been like in the middle of the semester. But also like, I remember it so much from this movie specifically, the sensory things it evokes in audience members. But yeah, by the time it's gonna be injured, I was like, "Oh my God." It is so explicitly queer. I don't know how I didn't latch onto that when I was 20 watching this in class. (laughing) - It is pretty wild, but admittedly, and again, I'll come to your defense here. There's so much going on in this film. Like, you cued me that the sound design was something that is either challenging or it's just very confronting. You know, it's kind of pervasive. And it definitely is, but this movie, I'm going to sound hyperbolic, but it is an experience, right? Like, it's so immersive. And even though it's very short, it feels like you have gone on a whole fucking ride. - Yeah, well, and this is a movie that is an hour and seven minutes long. Would we call this art house? - Oh, I definitely think so. - Yeah, that's the eye. I mean, I guess like, what do we mean by art house? To me, it's like, it doesn't follow the rules of traditional cinema, either in storytelling or visuals or truthfully, this is the second time I'd seen this movie. I almost watched it again because I was kind of like, I don't know if I picked up on everything because I, again, like this movie just breaks all the rules for me. - See, I feel like you're not talking about art house anymore. I feel like you're talking about experimental. - Oh, you know what? That is exactly what I'm talking about. What would we mean by art house? - I think art house is more what we would traditionally call indie fair now, right? Where it may have a reasonable budget, but it's talking about subjects that might be a little bit more on the margin. They're probably not gonna release it to a wide audience because it has more of a niche appeal. But yeah, I do think that you're right that there's some edging into experimental where people may be trying some innovative or unorthodox film techniques. Like I would call Greg of Rocky independent cinema, but it's also experimental in a lot of ways. - Yeah, that's true, that's true. But I guess I would call some Greg of Rocky art house too. Yeah, okay, you know what? Whatever, labels are labels, it doesn't matter. - All this to say, this movie reminded me a fuckton of David Lynch's eraser head, which it is experimental, but it feels kind of like that student film by where you've had these ideas percolating within you for years, and you just finally get the opportunity to put them on film. - Yeah, and I feel like, so we'll go into the production soon 'cause I actually have a lot of information because I'm sure people are gonna wanna know like how the fuck this thing came to be. - Oh, yes. - Just generally, Joe, like did you like this movie? - Oh, that is a tricky question. I, okay, so I rated it four out of five because I do think what it's setting out to achieve, it does so incredibly well. I can't say that this is a pleasurable film to watch, but I also did find myself going back to it a lot over the last couple of days, thinking about key sequences I'm very interested to hear how it was made because it's obviously a low budget labor of love. So I think there's a lot to admire about this film, but when you told me last week, "Yeah, you know, I've seen it once, I'm gonna watch it for this." I don't know if I'll revisit it. I do also understand that 'cause this is not an easy film. - Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I actually gave this a three out of five, but it's a thing where it's like, I really admire this film. I love even reading the production. I was like, okay, this was an enormous labor of love for this man, but it falls squarely into the category of, it's not for me. - Sure, okay, so. - Recognize your limitations, that's fine. - Yeah, yeah, which I think also that may be why, 'cause I have heard this be compared to a racer head, like you just did. I think that's why I haven't actually watched my criteria and Blu-ray racer head, 'cause I'm just kinda like, I feel like it's not gonna be for me. (laughing) - Possibly, yeah. - Okay, okay, okay, okay, so everyone, I am pulling all of this from Tom Mes's biography of Shinyesukumoto in his book, Iron Man, The Cinema of Shinyesukumoto, which by the way, and there's a whole chapter on Tezuo, so I'm not gonna lie, some of this is just verbatim me plagiarizing this book. I edited like the things that I thought were kinda another, but it's a really good biography. - Okay, you know what, you've given him credit, folks, if you wanna learn more, now you know where to go and find it, but also, Trace is going to entertain us. I'm gonna try, but yes, so Tezuo, the Iron Man, was written and directed by Shinyesukumoto, and we're going all the way back to his high school years, Joe, so following his high school graduation in 1984, he entered into advertising agencies, which he hoped would give him access to professional film equipment. - Okay. - It took about 18 months before he was allowed to direct commercials, and in those 18 months, he was almost never at home. It was working as a corporate employee for long hours that proved to be a major influence on Tezuo, the Iron Man, unsurprisingly. - Okay. - He was able to return to doing theater work in 1985, because I love this, he was a theater kid in high school. He loved putting on plays. - Amazing. - His plays, though, retained the experimental style of his previous stage work from school, and also connected him with a woman named Kay Fujiwara, and Fujiwara's the woman who plays the girlfriend in Tezuo. - Right, okay. - So, by 1986, he had quit his job at the Eyed Production Advertising Company, with the intention of returning to filmmaking, and it was here that he made connections of the Japanese PIA, I'm just gonna call it PIA, that's maybe how it's like, 'cause it's like all caps, but anyway. - Okay. - The PIA Corporation, who published a cultural listings magazine that will come into play soon. So, his first work was "The Phantom of Regular Size," a short film made with members of his Kaiju Shiata group. Like, it's like a collective that he kind of created by himself, but with all these friends. And this short film was about a salaryman whose body eventually turns into scrap metal, and it was shot in less than a week. - Oh, okay. - So, all you burgeoning filmmakers out there, if you think you have it hard, which I mean, you do, don't get me wrong, but listen to this. Having already incurred his father's wrath by quitting the advertising job the previous year, Sukumoto's decision to pursue his filmmaking and like, start work on a feature was the last straw. His parents threw him out. They considered him a failure. So, he was kicked out of their house. - Wow. - With the small income he made from doing voiceover work on TV commercials, he rented a tiny room, the size of four and a half to Tommy Matt's, which is apparently about seven square meters. - Yeah. - Yes. So, despite this setback, he continued his chosen path and went to work on Tetsuo the Iron Man, the film that had been on his mind for years. I mean, clearly, right? He already made like basically a short film of it. - Mm-hmm. - So, Tetsuo was made with the same group of people who worked on "The Phantom of Regular Size" and with Kai Fujiwawa's apartment, again, serving as both the crew's base camp and the film's main location. So, the big difference, however, lay in his choice of format. So, he upgraded from the eight millimeter with which he had been using to work on the short films. He bumped it up to 16 millimeter because not only was it more suitable for theatrical projection, he noticed that the Pia magazine treated independent films shut on a millimeter very differently from proper theatrical releases. So, they weren't put into the regular cinema schedules, but all stuck together in an indie section in the back that, you know, not a lot of people were going to go that far and look at. - Right. So, he's got commercial aspirations for this. - Well, and that's the thing, you know? It's weird. I think he started that way. And with a lot of his short films, he also, like, the goal was, I have to get this in front of as many eyes as possible. But I think, I mean, again, Tetsuo to me is, it reads like a true passion project. And so, I think along the way, he stopped caring how many people saw it and was like, "I just gotta finish this thing," because, well, yeah. - The production for this film sounds like an absolute nightmare. - Oh, good. - He also decided to shoot it in black and white, which made sense to him because it's a film about metal. So, you know, why not have a metallic looking color? - Oh, and honestly, this film is gorgeous. - Yeah, and I think, actually, the sequel, Tetsuo to the body hammer, I think that might be in color. And then the third one, which is... - I didn't realize there was a third one. - Well, so the third one is like in 2009. So, this is '89, and then the second one is '92, and then the third one, which got really bad reviews, is Tetsuo the Bullet Man from 2009. - Hmm, well, that's disappointing. - Yeah, but I think that one's in English, though. - Oh, no, no, thank you. - Yeah, but, so, okay, at this time, he invested 200,000 yen, which is about 2,000 US dollars in a 16 millimeter camera and 10 reels of black and white film stock and began production in September of 1987. - Okay. - So, the film was expanded from the basic narrative of the Phantom of regular size, but the four main actors reprising their role. So, we have Tomororo Taguchi as the metamorphosing salaryman, Fujiwara returns as the girlfriend and victim. Nobu Kanaoka is the woman who attacks him in the subway station, in the train station, and Sukamoto himself as Yatsu, the metal fetishist. Although, I don't think he's ever named that film as Yatsu, that's what they call him. - Yeah, yeah, I saw him mostly credited as the fetishist. - Yeah, exactly. But in flashbacks that offer a glimpse of Yatsu's background, Sukamoto added two additional characters in the Doctor and the Tramp characters. - Okay. - So, yeah, they were not in the original short film. Okay, Joe, this man, this Iron Man, the concept for this was inspired, unsurprisingly, by H.R. Giger's design for the creature in Alien. - Okay. - But also, the final fusion of Man, Fly and Telepod in Cronenberg's The Fly. - Yes, this definitely feels like a mixture of David Lynch and David Cronenberg to me. So, I was actually really happy when I saw there was acknowledgement, oh yes, this is partially inspired by Cronenberg. - And it's interesting, I guess because of the way it looks, it just feels so much older than 1989. So, in my mind, I was like, well, clearly, this film predates all those things, and it doesn't, it was inspired by all these films. - I mean, the timing is very close. Like, late '80s is when we've gotten the bulk majority of Cronenberg's body horror. - Yeah, exactly. So, the contraption of this Iron Man suit was constructed of a combination of scrap metal and small parts from electronic appliances. - Okay, yeah. - This created its own set of problems, though, because they didn't say, hey, we're gonna use all these specific parts to build it. They just started sticking them on Taguchi. Adding bits and pieces until they felt that it looked right. So, this guy would just sit there while they worked on the makeup and costume, but at the end, the whole thing was so heavy 'cause it's all fucking like real metal. He couldn't get out of the chair. And, you know, they collected all of it, took it apart, and from all the parts, they composed the makeup, which was stuck directly on Taguchi's face with double-sided adhesive tape. - Oh, no. - Oh, Joe. So, to make the costume lighter, they would remove some bits, but in the end, all this took so long there was no time left to shoot any scenes. So, they have to pull it off his body again, and the tape they used to stick the metal was so difficult and painful to take off that they would, you know, like whenever in a movie, when someone has a broken finger and they were like talking to them to distract him and then they fix it, they pop it into place. Okay, this is what they would do with the tape. They would have someone talking to him to distract him while someone else would be on the other side like ripping tape off of his body. - Oh, God. (laughs) - By the end of the shoot, he said his skin was like sandpaper. - I can't really imagine, yeah. - I don't, like, ugh, ugh, ugh. They did eventually manage to refine the process of applying the effects, eventually turning it into a jumpsuit, which Toguchi would simply put on and take off like a costume. - Right, yes, as you would think. - Well, okay, so, but Suquimoto also found a more cinematic way to deal with the problem. So, he decided to do one, like, essentially a master shot of the very elaborate full shot of the Iron Man with all the makeup applied, and that would be, you know, oh, the audiences, that's our reference point, but then all future shots in the film, he would use less makeup and keep parts off-screen, knowing that we, as the viewer, would fill in the blanks because we've already seen the thing in its entirety. - Oh, that's just smart filmmaking. - Yup, yup, yup. Okay, so Joe, after four months of shooting, and no end in sight, by the way, Suquimoto began assembling his material into a first edit. Thanks to his former colleagues at eye production that he met through the ad agency, he had been able to have his film processed for free, though he did pay them back after, 'cause he didn't make his money back. - Okay. (laughs) - During the editing, though, he noticed that he was missing material, so he would go back to capture these additional shots, which only lengthened the production process further. Filming would take a total of about 18 months, continuing until the end of 1988. - Holy cow, I mean, yeah, I feel like this is where we start to creep into indie territory, where you hear of these people doing almost guerrilla warfare style shoots, where it's okay, everybody, we're back this weekend. Hope you haven't cut your hair. It is, I mean, well, that's why I'm in the heat, we care, but yes, your comparison stands. These shooting conditions sound-- - Not great. - I don't even know how I would keep going, which actually most people didn't. So all this time, the crew was living and working in Fujiwara's apartment, and inevitably-- - Oh, no, no, no, no. - No, and again, this woman just gave up her apartment for all this, so I was like, how, like, for 18 months, your apartment is no longer your own. So eventually, these conditions began to take their toll. Taguchi did his best to keep some distance in order to keep a good relationship with everybody, and so he was the only one not staying permanently at the Fujiwara residence, and, tellingly, he is the only one of Sukamoto's collaborators from the period to still be working on his films today. - Ooh, okay, well, that's the writing on the wall, isn't it? - Yeah, so like, every day he would go to the apartment and another crew member would have left. Like, one day he shows up, and the entire lighting crew had gone. So, Taguchi, the lead actor in the film, had to do the lighting for some of the scenes himself. - Yikes, okay. Everybody pick up something, we're shooting. - But basically, I mean, so toward the end, like, only the actors were around, nearly the entire crew had given up and left. Eventually, Sukamoto was the only one left, so he did all of the frame-by-frame animation himself because there was nobody around to help him anymore. - Yeah, ooh, that is really dedication, where you have to have the vision to keep going, because if not, it would have just been so easy to give up. - Well, 'cause you know these people weren't getting paid, so it's like you have to just really want to see this through, and only Sukamoto had that, like, actual drive, because it was his film. - Well, it's also potentially infringing on your livelihood, because it goes on for so long, you can't book other gigs, or you couldn't go on vacation. Like, I'm just imagining how much of a commitment this becomes in all facets of your life. - Well, okay, I wanna highlight Fujiwara, though, because honestly, she seems like the Dari and Nickelodey to his Dario Argento. - Yeah, as you were describing it, huh? This relationship does sound familiar. - So, okay, arguments between them were rife. She said that Sukamoto had a very remarkable talent, and that makes him operate at a certain level of energy, which means he would only take notice of another person's idea if it's expressed with that same kind of energy. - Oh, no, you've gotta match him on his level? - Yes, so that's what you're trying to do, but as a result, they had too many arguments, like, you know, she gave him her opinion many times, because she was serious when working with him, but she couldn't just sweet talk because that wasn't her attitude. So, you know, they eventually, like, this film ended their kind of working professional relationship together, but she, again, in her interview, she says, "I didn't mind that we got into arguments, "because at least I was expressing my opinion." - Right, I was just trying to be heard. - Exactly, so as you probably know, Joe, with two headstrong creative minds-- - Hey, what are you saying? (laughing) - I'm yellow-tacked. - And they both have clear ideas and had a best go about making the film, they butted heads a lot. However, they both note that while their collaboration may have been one of flaring tempers, it also shaped Tatsuo to a large extent. So, in the final credit to the film, Fujiwara is credited as assistant director, costume designer, and the second director of photography. Like, okay, he would trust her to work the camera from time to time, even though there were other crew members that had more knowledge of the camera, or that had studied camera and film and cinema. So, when he asked her opinion after a take, she wouldn't say a word because she was so tense, but at the same time, she did what she thought was best when she worked with the camera, you know? Whenever she felt that deviating from the storyboard would be better for the film and closer to Sakamoto's intentions, she would do that. But she was also like, why is he trusting me with this when there are other technically more qualified people to do it? - I mean, it sounds like because yeah, he actually really valued her as a collaborator. - Which was refreshing. - Uh huh, and she understood later that he entrusted her because she never did things irresponsibly. So, even though she didn't have the quote unquote skill or knowledge to do it, she would be responsible while doing it. - Right, well, there's plenty, I mean, this is an argument for how much you have to be trained versus how much can you learn from instinct or even just being on sets and so on. And it sounds like he understood that she was taking things seriously, had a similar shared vision and that he could entrust her to take on some of that responsibility. - And I mean, honestly, again, it was her apartment, so like, I'm just kind of like, you know. Like, she even said, you know, during the drill deck scene, which by the way, I can't wait, we didn't mention that in the opening in this episode. - Well, you gotta save some good stuff for later. - Well, whenever we screens it at my Asian horror film class, that was how people, 'cause you know what? We had film bros in my class that were like, oh, Tetsuo, drill deck, wow. (laughing) But he was like, hey, can I drill a hole in your doors during this scene? And she was like, yeah, sure. So her door to her apartment just had a big asshole drilled into it. - Oh, no. - But yeah, so their relationship was never the same after making the film and while they remain acquaintances, they'd never work together again. She actually went off and started her own company. She did direct two films herself, one called Organ, which seems almost like a sibling film to Tetsuo, in a way, that sounds very interesting. - I feel like I've heard of that movie before. - Yeah. So, okay, filming goes to the end of '88. So in December of '88, Sugimoto begins assembling a rough cut, coming with a version that was 77 minutes long. - Okay. - Ah, boy. So several months prior to that, at a point with the production ran out of money and being unable to continue shooting, Sugimoto had attempted to raise money by showing a trailer reel to a number of distribution companies. Sure. He was turned down numerous times until he knocked on the door of video distributor F2. And this distributor, they specialized in European and American independent films, like Jim Jarmouche and Lars Von Trier. - Okay, yeah. I mean, this is a little bit weirder, but that feels like it's a step in the right direction. - Exactly. So at F2, though, he ran into former Pia employee, Haromi Ahi-Hara. Now, this guy's boss, he knew him for his advertising work, which again, like, so thank God he spent 18 months working in an actual, like, white-collar job. - I wonder if his dad, because, you know, spoiler alert everybody, Tetsuo goes on to become this massive cultural milestone. So in the end, he will be able to hold that over his father's head, but I wonder if his dad says, yeah, but if you hadn't done all of that, you know, legitimate work, one unquote, at the advertising agency, then you maybe wouldn't have gotten so far. - Yeah, I don't know what the relationship with his parents is now. Like, you know, did they ever welcome back with open arms? I don't know. I don't know. - I mean, he won awards for this movie, so I fucking hope so. - Well, okay, so he finds this guy at the Pia Corporation and his boss was a man named Fumio Kurokawa, who was the former head of the Pia Corporation. So he already knew-- - Okay. - He didn't know Sugamoto, but he knew about him. So when he came to see him, because he'd use up all his money and lost half of his crew shooting Tetsuo, he had the fortune of doing so at a time when video companies were doing very well. You know, they had the money to release things like cult movies because of the home video boom. - Right, oh, that is good timing. - Mm-hmm, so with the help of F2, Sugamoto came out of contact with Japan Home Video, one of the numerous companies that came up in the late 1980s in that boom. And they were willing to invest a modest sum in the completion of the film. And this was fortunate because Sugamoto had no idea how to approach the sound design, admitting he needed a professional. So Japan Home Video said, "Yeah, sure, here's some money." The only thing we ask in return is that we get domestic video rights. - Ooh, I wonder how costly that's going to be. - Well, I mean, who knows. - I mean, at the end of the day, you need sound for this movie. This movie is all about the fucking sound. So you take that money and you run. - That's the animation, the editing. I mean, I don't know what's happening half the time in this movie. I have no shame in saying I had to look a lot of this up to be like, wait a minute. - Oh, God, yeah. - A first time watch, folks, if you've only watched this the one time and you're very confused, you're in good company. - I do love this though, because on the Wikipedia summary for the film, it's like right above it. It says like, "Note, Tetsuo the Iron Man "does not have a conventional narrative. "The Plots synopsis is adapted from a home video release "and a synopsis in Sight and Sound by Tony Raines "using notes from the director." - Mm-hmm, yeah. She confused him, she confused him. - Okay, so we have to think about the music and in keeping with the film's main theme, his idea for the soundtrack was to use a recurring pattern of metallic percussion sounds, but basically use metal only, metal objects to create the sound for this film, which kind of reminds me of Bear McCreary's score for the child's play remake, where they only use children's toy sounds. - All right, yeah, it's a bit of a novelty. I do feel like it's something that nowadays would be quite a bit more common. - Yeah, absolutely, well, so here's the thing. So he had the idea of using sound of a beating iron for Tetsuo's soundtrack, like sampling the noise and just using it as music, but he didn't know any musicians. So he was introduced to several and it led him to a tape that contained exactly the kind of metallic sound he envisioned. And this tape in question was of an industrial noise outfit called Zeitzlich Vergelter, led by a young musician named Chu Ishikawa, whose musical influence included German noise bands, British punk, and new wave groups like Joy Division. - Oh, okay, that's a nice eclectic mix. - Well, so this guy though, he wasn't a composer. He'd never made music for a film before. And he says, well, honestly, Sukamoto's character, like the way he spoke, his eyes, his whole personality, again, like kind of what Fuji Raro was saying about like just the kind of man he was in the energy he had, it appealed to him more than the film itself. So he was like, I just thought he'd be a really interesting guy to work with. So he said yes without even like knowing anything about the movie. - Yeah. - This guy's got great vibes. I'm gonna work with him. - And I keep thinking about him as like this like middle-aged man, but he's like, you know, in his mid 20s. - He's young, yeah. - So his directions proved puzzling to Ishikawa. You know, his only direction was to make music only using the sound of metal, which is obviously extremely difficult. Ishikawa was like, okay, like this is impossible. So he followed his own instincts and gradually figured that his directions probably weren't meant literally, but more so that he wanted music to sound like it was made with metal. - Ooh, risky, okay. - So that's what he did. And good Lord, the sound for this movie. (dramatic music) - I mean, I know you've described it as grating and challenging, and it is all of that stuff, but it bits the movie so perfectly. Like, I can't imagine this movie with a conventional score. - Well, apparently it's Kastugo Meadow also edited the film himself. He like, I said, he almost went crazy. Now, these are his words and again, this is dated, but he said, I was practically autistic by the time I finished editing because I could not stand listening to the sounds anymore. - Okay, we'll just chop off that first part because the sentiment is coming through, but yeah, that is not the way to say it anymore. - Not the way to say it, but I understand his point. He finished editing in early January of '89. So I mean, yeah, it took him a month to edit it, like that's fine, but that was almost a year and a half after the first day of shooting. And so he cut down his 77-minute cut by 10 minutes. - Mm-hmm. - And basically, the only thing that was trimmed, so he trims the love scene between Taguchi and Fujiwara. - Okay. - He trimmed the flashback to the doctor character because apparently in the original cut, a scene in which the doctor gets murdered by the metal fetishist. - Oh, okay. - So that was cut. He also deleted an interlude from the chase between Taguchi and Kanaoka, the woman who chases him in the subway station, but that's okay. - Yeah, that's also fine. - But here's the thing though, this sequence would have included a scene in which the woman does an elaborate tap dance, and I was like, okay, like, I would have watched that, but he cut it because the scene stood out too much. I think it was too singular like compared to the rest of the film. - Right, and that's still relatively early in the film, so you don't want to have something that takes people out of the film and feels like it's completely out of place. - I mean, I still, we'll talk about it. - Sure, I still don't know what we're doing in the scene, but. (laughs) - I can tell you, I think I figured it out by reading many other people's responses. - So now we're going into marketing. So while working on the poster, Sukomoto solicited film critic Yoichi Komatsuzawa, known for his knowledge of fantasy and horror films for promotional blurb. And after seeing the film, this guy obliged, but also made a proposal in return. He goes, hey, Sukomoto, I'll do this poster for you. If you give me permission to submit the film to the selection committee of the Fanta Festival in Rome, hmm, for which Komatsuzawa was working as the Asian film correspondent for the festival. - Okay. - So, Sukomoto agrees and the film was accepted, and he doesn't go though because he's like, - I'm poor, I'm young and poor. - So a few days into the festival, the festival jury, headed by trauma president Lloyd Kaufman, by the way. - Oh, interesting. - Actually would be a suitable acquisition for trauma. - I think so too. But nevertheless, the jury and Kaufman pronounced Tetsuo the best film of the festival. And the audience, which included filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, greeted the announcer with enthusiastic cheers, loudly chanting, Tetsuo Sukomoto as the prize was handed out to a representative for him on stage. - Amazing. - Now, here's what we get to some more like cultural significance here, Joe. And again, I debated including this, but I think it's actually really important. - I think so, especially for people who again may have only just experienced this. It's such a confronting film. I think it's important to put this into context so people understand how vital this film is. - Well, because I think too, and I wouldn't blame you if you thought this, but I feel like if your average person is watching this, they will end this bit. What the fuck did I just watch? How is this art, like what do people like about this? I can totally see someone walking in with that. So, I wouldn't go that far. But I can definitely get the like, what did I just watch? What does it mean? - I feel like my parents would not enjoy this movie. (both laughing) - Lead with that next time. Okay, so this is Mama Trace's reading of the film. - This is Trace's entire family's reading of the film. The award would be a turning point, not just for Sukomoto, but for Japanese cinema as a whole. And, again, this is all from Mess's book, but like to gauge some of the impact it had on the film community in Japan, it is important to realize that that moment in time, Japan's film industry was in perhaps its worst ever state. - Oh. - Of the six major studios that had dominated film production during the heyday of the '50s. You know, this is a Godzilla time. - Yeah. - And that was when the industry reached its peak production of over 500 films per year. - Oh, impressive. - Of those six studios, two by the late '80s had gone bankrupt. One was on the verge of doing so. And the remaining three had virtually suspended film production and were concentrating almost exclusively on distributing foreign films and films made by independent production companies. So, wow. - Audiences too had abandoned Japanese films in favor of watching TV dramas in the comfort of their own homes. - Oh, Tread a TV. - And here's the thing. They were only prepared to buy an expensive ticket to watch a film in a generally badly maintained cinema if it followed or was the Hollywood blockbuster model. - Right. - Okay. So they had drunk the Kool-Aid and they wanted to watch Hollywood schlock. - Yes. And Japanese films, they continued to gain prizes at like foreign film festivals, but they did nothing or very little to change the fortunes of the film industry back home. So basically, Japanese film in the '80s was a wasteland and the studio area was over. And even the Japanese new wave, the generation of filmmakers that came and the Japanese film business as it had previously existed had come to a complete and total end. - Hmm, interesting. 'Cause that actually sounds like the peril of a number of national cinemas, right? You get forced by this diet of no offense, American Hollywood films, you don't value the films that are made at home and they don't make any kind of an impact except on the festival circuit where other countries are saying, oh, these are really good movies. What do you mean nobody in your home country is watching them? - Isn't that the weird thing too? It's a yeah, like Japanese people who weren't watching Japanese movies. I didn't wanna do that. - I mean, Trace, you're talking to a person who lives in a country where we hate our own movie. - That is true. - People do not watch Canadian movies in Canada. (laughing) I mean, that is a very broad generalization. There's tons of people who do, but the reputation is, oh, why would I watch this one? I could watch an American film. - Exactly. So for an independent low budget Japanese film made by a young newcomer to win an award at a foreign film festival in this situation, it was-- - That's huge. - As a minor miracle. So even before Tetsuba, older directors would send their films to foreign festivals, but there was no real excitement from the audience for those films. - Hmm, I mean, that's the thing. This is such a button-pushing kind of movie. You are going to have a reaction to it so I can understand the sense of this is new, this is exciting, it's very different. And maybe that's what people were grabbing onto. - Well, and so it wasn't simply the fact of winning an award that made Tetsuba stand out. What the film did also was essentially create a following in particular overseas. He doesn't use the word cult film, but I would describe it as-- - Oh, 100%. - Yes. - And with his film, Suku Motofound and perhaps created an entirely new audience for Japanese films. And these were not the cinnophiles that had grown up with Akira Kurosawa or Yasuhiro Ozu or Kinchi Misoguchi. This was a new generation of fans who regarded Tetsuo not as a rupture with an established image of Japanese cinema, but as a film that fitted snugly into a pantheon of genre works that included, as we mentioned some of these, Blade Runner, The Terminator, Eraserhead, and then the works of Cronenberg same Raimi and Clive Barker. - I know that they named up Clive Barker too. - Well, this is proper body horror, baby. Like there's sexiness in the way that people are fetishizing metal. So to me, yeah, that fits. - Well, and Suku Motofound actually, he considers Blade Runner and video drum the parents of Tetsuo. And so I can see it. This ties into, I think this is maybe why I don't like love this movie as much because cyberpunk is not something I've ever particularly been interested in. - Rude. - I just don't care. - I mean, this is true, right? Like you famously are not a huge fan of Blade Runner, whereas I'm like, please kill me for that movie 'cause I love it sometimes. - I've never seen Blade Runner, I've never seen Blade Runner, or 2049, like I just like, I know. - I don't think I knew that and I'm not judging you. I'm just like, oh wow, I wish I could be in your shoes and experience those movies again for the first time. - And maybe I'll watch them 'cause are we getting a TV show of Blade Runner soon? - We are with Michelle Yo. - Oh, fuck God, I'll watch Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. (laughs) - Don't make it sound like a punishment tree. - I just like, I try not to have the mentality that I'm not going to like it when I walk into it 'cause I feel like that's going to make me not like it, so I'm just like, I'm trying to be optimistic, but. - Okay. - So, okay, but nevertheless, like this, again, outside of like creating this new audience, the pivotal element in the acceptance of Tetsuo abroad was cyberpunk. And so, generally, this word is derived from the title of a 1983 short story by American science fiction writer Bruce Bethke. And that story revolves around a small band of computer hackers in a future who use what to all intents and purposes are laptop computers and the internet, again, this is the 8th 1983. - This is, yeah, this is a future-focused people. - Yeah. - The internet was not a thing in 1983. - But they use it to manipulate official records, bank accounts in their own school grades, which again, I think it's gonna be a punk part comes from, you know? - Love it. - So, the term cyberpunk eventually came to designate a subgenre of science fiction, you know, both in literature and cinema that explored the role of the human body in a future urban world, increasingly dominated by technology. And this was, of course, a designation that Sukamoto was more than happy to accept. - Love it. This movie is a good fit for that, too. - So, to young foreign audiences reared on the American genre films and the cyberpunk phenomenon, Japan quickly became the new Promised Land, you know? In no small part, thanks to another Japanese film that was made and started finding its way abroad. - Wow, Akira, exactly, which, by the way, I feel like I watched these back, like they were a double feature two weeks in a row because I definitely had to watch Akira from my Asian horror film class, too. - Oh, wow. You ever have a couple of weeks there in film school? - I've got to re-watch Akira, too, because it was just one of those movies where I was like, I just don't think this is for me. - Oh. - And here's the thing, it may still not be for you because if this is not connecting with you, there is a lot of similar elements between the two. - Right. - But I am gonna make us cover that because I firmly believe that the character in that film, Tetsuo, as well as Kaneda, they love each other. - Absolutely, and so, like, you know, this is Katsuhiro Otomo's animated adaptation of his own manga, Akira, and, you know, while the manga of Akira existed prior to Tetsuo, but the film came out after Tetsuo, right. As you said, like, Akira features a character called Tetsuo, but Zuko Moto says that he was not influenced by the manga when he made the film, so. - It's a little suspect, I mean, I don't know for sure. It's just more, I wrote in my notes, okay, so the salaryman, Tetsuo, and then the answer is no. There is no character named Tetsuo in this film. I don't know what the title refers to if not Akira. - I mean, unless you wanna say the salaryman is Tetsuo, but yeah, I mean, again, given what happens to Tetsuo in Akira, it's kind of like, it seems like a one-to-one comparison to me, but maybe not. (laughs) - Who are we to say? But, I mean, so, because Joe, you may have more information about this than I do, but like, because with Tetsuo, with Akira, like, was there ever like a specific brand of like, Japanese cyberpunk outside of these? - Okay, so this is a leading question because yes, I am going to pull from a piece by Mark Player called Post-Human Nightmares, the world of Japanese cyberpunk cinema for the website Midnight Eye, but I'll just give you this blurb to help contextualize it. - Okay. - So, live action, Japanese cyberpunk is raw and primal by nature and characterized by attitude rather than high concept. It's a collision between flesh and metal. The subgenre is an explosion of sex, violence, concrete, and machinery, a small collection of pocket-sized universes that revel in post-human nightmares and teratological fetishes, powered by a boundryless sense of invasiveness and violation. Imagery is abject, perverse, and unpredictable, and like Cronenberg's work, bodily mutation through technological intervention is a major theme as are dehumanization, repression, and sexuality. - So, okay. That also just sounds like, well, I guess, 'cause cyberpunk doesn't necessarily have the body horn. So it sounds like Japanese cyberpunk like really, really includes body horn as like a main component. - Yeah, I mean, you'll often see things like body modifications in cyberpunk where people are using technology to augment their human capabilities, right? So they get, you know, surgery to remove one of their eyeballs so that they can have a scanner put in or they, you know, put in sensors under their skin so they can feel more things or jack into computers and that kind of stuff. So it's very much in there. I've gathered, it's the sexuality component that feels a little bit different. Like, sex is obviously everywhere, but I will personally admit that I've never really found cyberpunk super sexy or at least not in a lot of the texts that I've consumed. And then I think the other big piece is that idea of like concrete, like the Japanese cyberpunk stuff is much more about like downtown locations. So even if people have seen something like Ghost in the Shell where it feels like the city is the only location, like there is nothing beyond the downtown core. And we see something like that in Tetsuo, right? Where there is no suburbia, there is no outside of the metropolis. - Yeah, and so I realized as I'm talking about this, so I kept getting confused with steampunk, which is-- - Oh, yeah, totally different. - And I see, I do like steampunk aesthetics a lot more than I like cyberpunk aesthetics. So like, you know, like cyberpunk aesthetics, like where it's kind of like taken from a post-apocalyptic and dystopian setting with advanced technology. Like steampunk is like 19th century industrial aesthetic, but happens to be like a futuristic world still. - Yeah, usually steampunk is a little bit more fun. - Yes, exactly. I think that's why I like it. Like there's something very nihilistic about cyberpunk that I just, again, I get it, I just don't gel with it. - Yeah, I guess the other big thing that I would use to distinguish between Japanese cyberpunk and I'm not claiming to be an expert here is that in North American texts on cyberpunk, it's often individuals against the corporate world or like the man, the system and so on. So you get a lot of people who are trying to like go up against mega corporations that are controlling the world. Whereas in something like Tetsuo, in something like Akira, there's still that element of authority, but it doesn't feel like we're trying to stick it to the man. - Got it. Well, so with Tetsuo and Akira, like it kind of helped enforce the impression among foreign audiences, meaning us, that Japanese cinema was the heir apparent to the American genre cinema of the 80s, which is actually really interesting though, because I feel like that's also what happens when we enter that J-horror craze, right? - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - So a new cult following for sci-fi animation was quickly catered to by enterprise and distributors who released numerous titles in the wake of Tetsuo and Akira, forming the start of a renewed long-term foreign interest in Japanese film. - Amazing. - So Tetsuo went on an uninterrupted run around international film festivals that would continue for the next three years. And I know. - Whoa, holy shit. I mean, I mean, you're not showing this in American theaters, this is not getting a wide release, you know? - But I would have thought that we would have dropped this on VHS and tried to make a quick buck. - Well, that's the thing is like, by the time it gets a U.S. release, like Tetsuo 2 is being released in Japan. - Wild. - Okay. - So yeah, so it receives a theatrical release in England in 1991, followed by the U.S. in early '92. And then the row was paid for Japanese cinema to regain its permanent fixture on the international film circuit. And so it's the thing where it's like, again, like this isn't really like about the film itself proper, but more so like how important Tetsuo was to like, I mean, it was kind of like the scream, like reviving the horror genre, right? (laughing) - It revived the entire film industry of Japan. - Yeah, I just scream. - Okay, yeah, I'm gonna let that one slide. It's not a one-to-one comparison. It is not, but I love the enthusiasm. No, you know what? I think that probably worked for a ton of people. And honestly, I'm willing to bet if we had asked our listeners in advance of this episode dropping, like how many of you have heard of Tetsuo? How many of you have seen the film? The number is probably going to be very small, which like sure, this movie is turning 35. That's why we're doing this episode. But I'm willing to bet that there's a vast majority of people who have never even heard of the film. And it's not like it's an antique. It's not like it's a classic at the 40s or something. - Yeah, and that's what like, okay, this is kind of a tangent. But like, did you see that like anecdote from Fede Alvarez, we're dating this episode by the way, but there was an anecdote from Fede Alvarez where he said like, you know, people were, he was having 20 somethings come into audition for Alien Romulus and he would ask them, you know, what their favorite alien film was. And they said, oh, it's one of the first two, but it's Prometheus and meaning they didn't realize there were four other alien films, 60% of the kind of AVP made before Prometheus. They only knew Prometheus and Alien Covenant. And that really grinded my gears. But it's one of those things though, right? Where there's so much media to be consumed. And if you think about it, there's gonna be huge gaps in our media awareness just by virtue of when you're born. I mean, it's one of the reasons I like doing a podcast is because hopefully we expose people to a couple of different texts that they have maybe never heard of, right? Like it's why we program this film. We could have just done a really familiar Hollywood film and gotten way better download numbers. But we said, you know what, here's an exciting text that deserves the coverage. - Well, and again, like I caught myself 'cause it's like, well, I remember being in film school, I was just, I started at my sophomore year and again, going through all these films half of it. I'd never heard a Tetsuo when I watched this film in college. And so I was kind of like, oh yeah, what are these random films I've never heard of? They're like, my teachers are making me watch. But then there was like, but it's also because there were other kids in the class that did know these films. And so where I was in high school, I was the movie guy. And when I went to college, I was like, oh. - You're not the movie guy anymore. - I'm not the movie guy anymore. (laughing) - Now I felt that. I mean, I only started watching "Born Phones" the year before I went to college. My very first "Born" film that I remember vividly watching, or maybe it was just in theaters, was "Run Lola Run", which is like a 1999 film. - Yeah, oh, so I had to watch that in film school too. That was in my intro to media class because I think we were learning about different editing styles. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, fuck, I love that movie style. - I know, I actually haven't seen it since, and I love that movie so much. (laughing) - If you wanna talk about great soundtracks that match the film, there's one. And it's like a multiverse movie too. - Yeah, yeah, kind of. - Yeah, we wouldn't have called it that back then, but it's got to go. - Oh. - Anyway, okay, well luckily though, Succomoto had become an overnight sensation basically, especially with producers whose attitudes had completely changed. So many of the companies that he contacted when he was looking for funding for Tetsuo, they turned him down or they kept him at arm's length, but after the film won that prize in Rome, some of them went to him and goes, "Oh, you know, we were very seriously considering "supporting your film." - Oh shit, how about a big load of go fuck yourself? - And this is wild because Succomoto had at one point seriously considered burning the film's negatives due to all the troubles that plagued him and the film's production. So today he feels, you know, whatever hardships he and his crew endured were worth it. Tetsuo did mean a permanent rupture with most of the friends and creative collaborators with whom he had spent the better part of a decade making stage plays in short films, but he says he has no regrets. And I mean, again, like look at the career it gave him, so. - Well, yeah, I mean, the fact that it all paid off and he's able to look back on this in hindsight and say, "Not great, but also look at what it got me is fantastic." But yeah, I think of how many people had probably similar experiences to this trying to make that leap into features and burn the bridges, run out of money and don't end up with a completed film or it doesn't get distributed or nobody ever sees it. It doesn't win awards. - That's rough. Like again, filmmaking is just so hard and my hats off to people who make them. - And so like the reported or like most accurate budget I found is $100,000 for this movie, which even that though, I mean, like, oh my God, like some of the effects of this movie, like-- - They're great. - It's the animation too. Like the animation is again, creepy ass stop motion shit, but like, look. - I was gonna say I was thinking of you, that stop motion. - It didn't bother me as much because it's mostly just metal wires and shit and like it's not like people, but it's still like, I'm still like, okay, like I know what this is. (laughing) - You try to pull me and I don't like it. - I don't like it. Reviews, again, very positive. We're looking at an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 7.1 out of 10 and then our film bros of Letterbox have given it a 7.8 out of 10. - That's actually higher than I would have expected. - Well, because again, as you said, I don't know how many people on Letterbox have heard of this movie and if you have, you're probably like a cinephile. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, I guess that makes sense. - I told one of my really good friends, Matt, that we were covering this this week and he was like, oh my God, like I don't have a microphone, but if I did, I would like love to come on your podcast and talk about that amazing movie. - Wild, okay, yeah, so you either know about it and you haven't slotted out because it just doesn't sound like it's for you or you slotted out because you're a cinephile and this is your jam. - Yeah, I mean again, like I'm in the minority. I respect this movie, I like it as I said, but people love this movie, it's a hugely influential film and so I just, again, going back to my well of, not for me. - There you go. - All right, Joe, so what happens across the course of this hour and seven minutes? - Teresa, I ended up with a plot summary that's almost the exact same length as normal, so I don't know how this happened, but also I have no dialogue to gain or lose space from. - Okay, so honestly, even taking notes on this movie, I was like, it's not super conscious, it's like what I'm just typing what I'm seeing, but not making any sense of it. - Yeah, so we're gonna try to do a little bit of work on that and just because Evan was the one who did bring it to our attention, I'm going to give him credit, so I'm going to be drawing a little bit from his piece finding radical queer pride in Tetsuya, the Iron Man, and that's for horror press from just this year. - All right. - Okay, so here we go. So we begin with handheld camera and we are following Yatsu or The Fetishes, who is, as you mentioned, played by Sukamoto himself, and I will confess it took me the entire opening to discover that this is not the salaryman. - Me too. (laughing) - I had it in my notes, I was writing the salaryman because I saw that that was the credit listed on IMDB in Wikipedia, and then it was only after the movie finished. I was like, "Wait, no, that's not right." - And again, I just think the mere concept of this character, he's a character that likes putting metal in his body. Like, yeah, I get both things, that's any metal fetishes. And I think just watch this, you're like, "Why is he?" 'Cause we open him just opening up a vaginal-like wound on his leg to stick a metal pipe in it. - Yes, yeah, so he is surrounded by metallic equipment in paraphernalia, like a large portion of this film, yes, does take place in a very small space, which of course is actually the apartment that you were referencing. But we do see a lot of shots of almost like metal work, factories, dumps that are comprised almost entirely of metal equipment and so on. So this is where the fetishes is hanging out. And yeah, the movie opens no context, no idea who this character is. He wanders through this environment, opens up the leg and sticks a rebar in it. And he is screaming and eventually he notices that there's maggots in the wound. So time is also very fluid, very malleable in this world. - And I think that's also a struggle I have, those are like, wait, how much time has passed? There's no clear passage of time in this film. - No. - But we also, again, we're starting our kind of fetish with penetrating men. - Yes, yeah, so he is self-penetrating. It almost could be seen as a form of masturbation. But even before he sticks it in, he runs it through his teeth. So again, great sound effect, but it feels sexualized, right? - Yes, if you have not watched this movie, to really clarify the sound of this film. So it's not just the sound, it's not the normal sound of like a rungant bar going through his teeth, it's enhanced. It's inhuman, it's not normal, it's amplified by a thousand. - Yeah, it's got great reverb on it. So when you hear any of these metallic clangs, it just has a heavier weight to it. It just feels like you're constantly being bombarded with metallic industrial sounds throughout the entire film. - Yes, the entire fucking thing. - Yeah. - Which clearly bothered you more than I bothered. - But here's the thing though, it bothers me, but that is the point. This is an undeniably effective film. I think it's a literal assault on the senses. - Yeah, yeah, definitely the ears, a bare minimum. - Yeah. - Okay, so after he sees these maggots crawling around the room, the fetishist does have a freak out. So we see him running down the street, he is limping with the injured leg. So initially I thought, oh, this is a hallucination. Nope, he actually did this to himself, and now he's trying to more or less flee from his own injury, but he runs into the street and we see a car approaching and I love the way that this hit and run. Well, it's sort of a hit and run. It's like a hit and carry, but I love the way, I love the way that it's shot. Like we see the car approaching and then we spin as though we are the fetishes over the hood, we're seeing the headlights. Like it's just really creative because it's not a traditional point of view, but it kind of is. - Yeah, yeah, but even at this point, it was kind of like, wait a minute, like what's happening right now? - What's happening? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we do hear the sound of a crash and then we have a number of fade to blacks that are interspersed with machines, like just kind of static images of different machines, different metals and so on. And then we push in on the blinking face of the salaryman. This is Taguchi and he is shaking and contorting. This is intercut with images again, various factory machinery, and we get the title that is hissing like static on a television as it moves from right to left. - And again, because we have this shot, it's so fun, I wrote Tetsuo as the name of him, but that's clearly again, not his name. So the salaryman is like in a business suit, flailing around in like a factory. So he's not in the car, so he's moved location. So this is meant to be like what like-- - This is later, this is quite a bit later. Jesus fucking Christ. (laughs) - Yeah, and of course there's no hint that there has been a passage of time. We have to piece it together from the various bits of flashback that will accumulate over the course of the film. - Because I guess you could argue well the fade out, the fade to blacks indicates the passage of time, but again still, it's not clear until later. - No, and it's not done in the traditional fade to black, like we would normally see in a Hollywood film, which is what we're used to. - Okay, so yes, he is shaking and he is contorting. We see that his suit is bulging, like his form is changing underneath his clothes. So something is going on to this man that he doesn't have full control over and he begins to scream and then we cut and we see him shading in front of a mirror and then a metal shard explodes out of his cheek. - No, you're not describing this correctly though. This is a-- - I'm not describing it to your standards. - No, this is a metal pimple that he tries to pop. It's so funny they were watching this a week after we just talked about popping pimples in Planet Terror last week, but it just looks like a metal stud almost, but the way he touches it, he's trying to pop it like a pimple and boy oh boy does it pop and it is, it's blood, not pus thankfully, but like the sound again of the popping is just like, nope, didn't like it. - Yeah, yeah, it's quite dramatic. I think one of the things that's also really effective is that he looks scared, like he does not understand what is going on. So it's really easy to put ourselves into his position because we're confronted by all of this surreal, not quite dreamlike, but it's imagery that doesn't fully make sense to us, but then we see that, oh, our main character also doesn't really understand what's going on. - I couldn't even tell because he was sweating so much that I couldn't stop looking. This guy is constantly wet in this movie. It's ridiculous. - Yes. - Probably because they're in a very tight space and have movie lights on him. - Well, so I couldn't tell actually if it was like, clearly it's a conscious, like it's an intentional choice to have him be sweating this much, but like I was like, or was it, yeah, as you said, was it a result of, oh, we're in a tight space with a bunch of lights and it's really hot, so we're just gonna use that in the film, you know? - I mean, it could be both, but I definitely look at this as, it's a sickness. He has been infected with something, and here's my not-hot take. This is a possession movie. - I mean, yeah, it's just not a traditional possession movie because it's metal instead of like an actual like ghost demonic entity thing. - Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, shoot, yeah, or the fetishist is something of a ghost, right? 'Cause he can take control of other people's bodies. - Right, which again, I don't-- - It's not clear. - I truthfully did not get that until I was reading up on the film. - Mm-hmm, yeah, me too. - But then again, it makes sense when you watch it because a lot of what happens seems like happenstance. It's like, oh no, like, he's psychic. - Yeah, he's psychic. He has all sorts of extra sensory abilities, and he is on a revenge quest against this guy. - Yep, yep, yep. - Okay, so this salaryman, so he has just popped this pimple, he covers it up, and then we see him having a very bland, very repetitive conversation with a woman who will eventually be revealed to be his girlfriend, who was played by Fujiwara, and they're basically just saying, like, how was your day? No, how was your day? There you go, no you go. Like, this relationship is either very shallow or it's very bland, or they've been together for so long that they have nothing to say to each other. - Yeah, it doesn't seem like a very, I mean, he doesn't seem very interested in her. That's, again, where I think we'll bring Evan's piece into it a bit because, again, he kind of blows him in that words, like, oh, he doesn't seem to very have a lot of interest in the opposite sex. He continuously seems to have more interest in the male sex. - Right, yeah. It's interesting because as he's having this conversation with this woman, who we've not seen, we're only hearing her voice on the phone, he is jumping back to what we will eventually learn our flashbacks of them having sex in the woods. So initially, on her first time watching, I just thought, oh, he's having a pedantic conversation with a woman, he would either rather be fucking or he's thinking about fucking some other lady while he's on the phone with her. - But he's actually remembering that after they dumped the metal fetishist's body after hitting him with their car, they proceeded to fuck next to him. But again, during this scene, he's looking at the metal fetishist while he's fucking his girlfriend. - Yes. - Yes. Okay, but that's in the past and we're in the present. So we're having this boring conversation. And then she asks him if he's okay after this car accident. So technically we are linking things together. It's just that we as an audience don't understand how to do that just yet 'cause we don't have all the necessary details. - Exactly. - But yes, he is sweating profusely. Then we cut the action and he is presumably on his way to work. So he's riding the subway and then he ends up getting off and he sits next to this woman in glasses who was played by Kanoka. And initially, she seems like a normal lady. And then they're just sitting on this bench and then she looks down and she sees what appears to be a metal bird on the ground. And this is where I was just like, oh God, here we go. I'm so confused 'cause she looks at this bird and we see things from her point of view and inside the bird appears to be a small man. - Yeah, so watch this my second time in 15 years. I was just like, what is going, 'cause she seemingly gets infected by this bird yet. And so it's not just the salary man and the metal fetishes that get infected. Like there's something else going on in this voice. It's the fact that everyone, we're just focusing on these two particularly people who I guess, no, it is just the two of them. - Yeah, but like she gets infected by metal too. - Yes, because that's how the metal fetishes gets closer to the salary man. - Okay, but I will say, 'cause most people do classify this as a horror film. I do think this is the most traditionally like horror movie type scene in the film. - Right, yeah. So she's looking, she sees this man, she pokes at it with like a pen or something and this is seemingly where she gets possessed by the spirit that goes, the energy of the fetishes. Again, it's not super clear initially. Like she pokes it and then all of a sudden she's acting incredibly erratic. Think of the evil dead. - Yep, yep, yep. As you were saying that I was thinking, oh yeah, like evil dead. (laughing) - So after she pokes this metal bird, we sort of jump back to the salary man's position. He's looking at her and all of a sudden, the arm that she used to poke this bird has been transformed. So basically up to the elbow is now this metal appendage. - Yeah, and then we get like a chase scene basically. - Yeah, so she chases him down a flight of stairs through a tunnel. She ends up locking him in a bathroom stall. She climbs on top of it. So he tries to skirt around her and she ends up grabbing him, lifting him off the ground with just one arm. And then we seem to see the cybernetic arm going towards his open mouth. And then that's when we cut to black and he suddenly back at his house. - Well, okay, but it's not just that he's back to his house though. - So a recurring shot in this movie or series of shots is these really extended like fast motion tracking shots. - Yes, we're speeding up the film rates. - Yeah, so we're basically like instead of watching him walk we're in his POV and like super speed going home, which again, I don't think it's super clear at the first, but (laughs) - No, and this one's interesting because it feels like it's rewinding. So it's happening super quickly, but we're retracing our steps back. And again, it makes you wonder, okay, so was that a dream? Was it a hallucination? Did any of this actually happen? - So I thought what we were gonna get beginning is, okay, we're rewinding and then we're gonna see maybe this from like a different perspective or go to the metal fetishist side and see what he's doing. I mean, what do we see what he's doing? But again, like, 'cause the rules of what I know about cinema tells me that's what we're doing if we're moving backwards at a fast speed, you know? - And instead, no, we're just back at home. And he goes to shut the door and suddenly this woman in the glasses is there. She's still got the metal fucking arm. She's actually more covered in metal now. It looks like she's evolving or changing as we go. - And there's a great moment where she squeezes her breast and like, mud pops out of it? - Yeah, yeah, she does. And then he's, I put a tire iron in my notes, but he's got some kind of weapon that he's gonna try to use against her. She just rips it out of his hands. And basically, they're locked in an embrace. So he begins punching her in any way that he possibly can. And every time he hits her, we get this interior image of the fetishist getting rocked around, almost like how you would see baby cam inside or something. - Right, so it's basically because he's the one that's like inside of her. Like it's affecting him and his hold on this woman. - Correct, yes. So eventually we get a knockout blow. We knock this woman in the glass is unconscious. It's a very stylized, almost like prize fighting boxing moment. - Yeah, 'cause he like, 'cause when they're in that embrace, it's almost like he breaks her back but he squeezes her so hard that her back makes. - Yeah, yeah. So basically she's down for the camp. We won't see her again, but the damage has been done because the fetishist has gotten close enough to get to the salaryman. He is effectively infected. I mean, he technically already was. - But it's like speeding up the process or something? - Yeah. I think it's almost like checking on ya. Hey, how's that mutation going? Just wanted to stir things up a little. - 'Cause that's the thing. The relationship between the metal fetishist and the salaryman, it seems to be one of revenge. Hey, you hit me with your car, you dump my body. I'm coming to get you. - Yeah. - And that's where we are right now. And also I do love, 'cause the salaryman raises arm, he's got this metallic growth on his arm but it's also pulsating. So this is, we don't get a lot of actual shots of like flesh makeup effects mixed with the metal. It's mostly just the metal, but I thought this was really impressive because the flesh is pulsating with the metal all around it. - Mm-hmm, yeah. And again, this is very Conan Bergean. It's video drum, it's existance and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I actually really like this moment where we see the salaryman kind of moaning and contorting in the stairwell. It actually reminded me a little bit of the new Suspiria. - Oh, you know what, I would not be surprised if Guadagnino took some inspiration from this for the dancing even. - Yeah, yeah. Get three coffins ready, kid. Because our latest podcast, Make My Day, is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier that is Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloweenies. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation and Clint's output is infinite, you've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. (upbeat music) Okay, so as you said, the salaryman, he now has basically lost his right arm, but he also has lost an ankle. So the ankle is covered in metal and it fires like a rocket. So this ends up propelling him down the street. Again, we're doing super sped up motion, but the way that this is shot, I described it. I know that there's a technical term for it and I could not figure it out, but it's almost a montage of still images that have been put together. Which I know just sounds like how you project film. Well, it sounds like a flip book, but like, not the same image projecting movement. Yeah, yeah, I was thinking, you know, in old-timey movies are like the it movie where they've got the slideshow and they just speed it up faster and faster. I think it's called a rotoscope. People are yelling at us. Yeah, sorry filmmakers, listeners that are out there. We're describing it. Yeah, we're doing our best. We're doing the layman's version of this. It's definitely not rotoscope. Rotoscope is what they do in like a scanner darkly. Would you like trace over live action? Yeah, okay, it's not that. So it's not that. Yes, anyway. Okay, so yeah, so he is basically hoofing it down the street, but it seems to be against his will. Like, is he actually even controlling this? We don't know. No, no idea. Okay, so from this, we then cut back to the salaryman watching his girlfriend dancing. She's in a bikini. And then we will eventually come to discover that this is a nightmare, but we don't know it initially. Though you figure it out because she does seem to have a big metal proboscacy dildo thing. It's a big tube that comes out of her. I want to say stomach. It's not even coming out of her like crotch area, but we will not know it's a nightmare until after she actually rapes him. But yeah, so this proboscacy comes out, this like metal tube and she proceeds, the key gets on all fours and she proceeds to rape him annually. Hmm, yeah. So he ends up waking up from this. He was screaming. So this is not something that he was super into or it's something that he's not ready to accept about himself just yet. I was just dreaming about it. And then he's like, oh, that was a weird dream. Why was I thinking about getting sodomized? Exactly, yeah. So this is again, like we want to go into our queer read of this and like, you know, latching onto Evans read. I'm like, hey, this is kind of like a queer like empowerment journey. But like, you know, like self discovery, let's say, he's learning. Oh, this is something that I like, even though he wakes up and he's like, you know, this is very much a nightmare, not like a happy wet dream. Yeah, it's something that he's not ready to accept about himself yet. Yeah. Or you could also argue that it's someone was doing it to him that he doesn't have romantic feelings for. Well, actually that's the other thing too. Yeah, I guess like, why is it the girlfriend doing this damage? And let's maybe just, oh, she's the only romantic person in his life. And so like he's fantasizing about this. But yeah. But it also, I could be this as like, oh, he's maybe like afraid of women or something like that. Possibly. Mm-hmm. So he does wake up and he washes his head. And then this is when he checks on the status of his cheek. And it's not better because it just sprays blood against the mirror all over again. Gross. And he's sweating so much. Like the band you just covered in sweat. Yes, yes. So the girlfriend does ask him what's wrong. She wants us to know what's going on underneath the bandage. But when he looks at it, it is fully metal now. Oh, yeah. So his metelicization is progressing along nicely. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's right at this point maybe it's after their sex scene. But like, it's like basically his cheek is gone and it's replaced with metal scraps. Yeah, it's here. OK. So they do proceed to have sex. This to me was the most offensive sound effect part of the movie. Like the sounds of them having sex is so squishy and icky. Well, see, I didn't even mention that in my notes because I was preparing myself for the fork in a minute. But it's also the breathing. Because yes, this isn't a silent film. There is some dialogue and very minimal. But the breathing of these people actually is, I think, also very disruptive. Yeah, I mean, this is a very interesting sex scene because it looks like he's more aggressive than her. She's definitely an engaged participant. But in the way that they're fucking-- but she simultaneously looks like she is trying to get away from him. Like, she's retreating. She's seemingly climbing up the wall. But we're having a good time question mark. Yeah, I guess. Like, she does not see any bother. But to me, I feel like you would touch the thing on his face at some point. Like, you would feel this metal, but whatever it's fine. Logic doesn't matter here. So we take a breather because things aren't quite working. So we have a meal, some kind of noodle dish, as well, as hot dogs, very sexualized. I think it's eggs and sausage. It's breakfast. It could be eggs. I could have sworn I saw a mac and cheese kind of noodle. But whatever. I was thinking it was a cast iron skillet. So it was like, ah, it could be. But nevertheless, Joe, describe this to me. OK, so he's watching her eat. And initially, I thought, OK, so we're doing this sexualized thing because I just had sex, but it didn't quite go well. And she's eating this wiener, this hot dog or whatever. But everything she puts in her mouth sounds like she's eating metal. Because it's her teeth. It's meant to be the teeth scratching on the fork. Which, and even when she chews, I put in my notes, pew pewes. It's almost a pew pew. It sounds like gunshots. Yeah, a little bit. But yeah, the teeth on this fork. But he also seems-- He seems scared, but also kind of aroused 100%. I literally put they look exhausted, and he looks excited. When she's styled in a way too, I don't know if she has eyeshadow on, but she's also styled also to look like, I want to say, a silent film actress in the black and white era. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. She's got a great distinctive look to her. I was actually a huge fan of her performance. Yeah. Licking this wiener, though. Yes. Again, there's something about like tongues flicking that I'm just kind of like, I don't know if I like this very much. Yeah. It's just a weird look, but she is-- She's flating the sausage on the fork. Truly. Yeah. And it's having the desired effect, because he does get hard. Unfortunately, his dick is now a metal drill. Yep. This is all I knew about this movie going into is that this guy grows a drill dick, and it does not disappoint. No, it's not even a little metal drill dick. It is a big metal drill. But right before it happens, though, because she chomps down in this wiener after she's enough flating it. And then the light gets super, super, super, super bright and whites out the entire screen. And then when we come back from that, that's when we get the dick. I just love the effect. But it's also something of a surprise drill dick, right? Because, yeah, we come back from the white, and all of a sudden, it's tearing through the table. Oh, because it's running. Yeah. It's drilling. It's drilling, baby. So she is actually fine with all of this. She is kind of turned on by it. He flees to the bathroom and locks himself in. And she is frantic to get in there and get back to it. I think so. Like she really wants that drill dick. And you know, maybe that's because, as you said, their sex was kind of like before, kind of like, oh, it's kind of dispassionate kind of boring. Maybe this is just the spark she needs. Yeah. So she is excited by this. She ends up forcing her way in. But then when she sees that now half of his face is metal, she does scream. And then he seems to attack her. So like, we're really going back and forth between how much they're engaged or how much they're sexually excited by it. And then they're repulsed or they're, you know, embarrassed by it. And I love how quickly the moods are changing between the two of them. But when he moves to attack her, she ends up burning his face with this hot pan. And then she stabs him repeatedly in the side. So why do you think he attacks her? Is it because the metal is like overtaking his brain? And like, I guess also is the metal an extension of the metal fetishes? So does the metal fetishes have some kind of control over him already? I think so, because we've said this is a bit of a revenge tale and the girlfriend was in the car. Well, and I think it works either way though. So whether it's revenge or if it's like, hey, I love you. I need to get this girl out of the way. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we see that rebar is beginning to explode out of his back. And then he seems to try to incapacitate himself by sticking a fork into the power outlet. So he does briefly electrocute himself, but it doesn't stop him. So he ends up continuing to advance on her with his spinning penis drill asking her yes, if she wants a taste of his sewage pipe. So I read an interpreter, I think this is a mezzas article too, where I read mezzas book where he says that actually electricating himself strengthens his telepathic connection with the metal fetishes. So this is really when the metal fetishes like really takes over him in this moment. Like, and I don't know if it stops clearly, but like at this point, or at least it clues the fetishes in to where he is. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Because Evan suggests something a little bit later that because this is not the first or only time that he will try this attempt, but when he does it the next time, it actually makes him magnetic. And you're right, it does seem to draw the fetishes to him. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so he's planning on essentially raping his girlfriend with this drill dick. And so she protects herself. She tried stabbing him inside it, it didn't work. So she stabs him in the neck. And I love this, the score changes to a kind of romantic lullaby. Oh, no. And this will happen again later. And I love it later. I actually genuinely love it, but yeah, this is, again, just now what you expect, especially given all the score we score, quote unquote, we've had in this movie so far. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. It's very dramatic. It's very noticeable. And, you know, I think in part it's because, okay, so she's not fearful of him because she's back to being turned on. So this, this interplay between sex violence and machinery is really heightened. She ends up licking his face as she's stabbing him in the neck kind of slowly. Like she's working the knife in and out of his neck. Yeah. Like you would fuck. This is something super motoly. And one of his main goals with this was to do eroticism, like to him, this movie is very erotic. It is. Yeah. And this scene definitely occlusion into that. So is because she's on top of him. So she's the top right now, which I think is also why she's finding this sexy again. Mm hmm. Yeah. And if you do want to believe that he is either possessed by the fetishist or he is being influenced by him by virtue of electrocuting himself with the pork in the outlet, then it makes sense that we would, I mean, we're about to kill her, but also we see this image. It's almost like camcorder footage of them back to fucking in the woods. But we will eventually learn that that is from the perspective of the fetishist. Yeah. And this is this the first time we come back to them fucking in the woods or have we done this before? I think after the car accident, this is the first time. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. But yeah. But even so, we don't know this from the POV of the fetishist yet. No. No. Yeah. So we get that. And then yes, he does fuck her to death. The way that this is framed is beautiful. I'm not saying that facetiously. No. She's riding him. And it is a white sheet or a white wall directly behind her. And all of the sudden, we are just spraying this white surface with blood. Yeah. But it's black and white, right? So it's artsy. Well, and so that is another reason why outside of the metal, like the color of the metal and the black and white, but it was like, oh, like it'll be better for the sensor boards because it's hard to distinguish blood and black and white. Mm hmm. Yeah. She is being drilled to death sexually, and we do cut to inside the salaryman. We can see the fetishist yelling ecstatically, like, yeah, I got one of them done. Mm hmm. Okay. So she did. And the salaryman decides to take a bath as the camera roams omnisciently around the factory. It's so gross looking in here. It's very hot. It's very wet. When it's satian on all these metal surfaces, it kind of looks like a nest if we're being honest. Yeah. And when the salaryman gets in this water, like, it like steams and I couldn't, like, do you think the water is scalding hot or is his body, it's him? No, it's him. It's him. It's the metal. Okay. He's heating this water up as he gets in. Yeah. Okay. Which makes sense, right? That's why he's sweating so profusely. He's running hot. Yeah, exactly. So as the camera is sort of like roaming through this space, we do come to rest on a TV set and this is where we see the doctor who is played by Naomasa Musaka. And he notes that the fetishist has a piece of metal in his brain that should have killed him, but he would die if they tried to remove it. And we see this without context. So we don't actually know that the doctor is speaking to the fetishes. So this did not make any sense to me the first time. Just because he's watching it on a TV, and so it's just like, yeah, there's no context to see what is going on, but it's meant to be like a memory, I guess, that we're only watching on a TV because we're in this whole like, you know, metal taking over, machinery taking over human flesh, like thing. So his memory is in his brain, his memory is on a TV screen. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It makes perfect sense in hindsight, but when you're watching it in the moment, if you don't know that's what's going on, it's super confusing. I had no fucking clue what was going on. I only know this because I read the plot. So yeah, so this is backstory for our antagonist, right? So after the events of the car accident, he has a piece of metal lodged in his head, which maybe explains how he's able to do some of the things that he can do like telekinesis and that's what I took it as. I took it as yet. The metal from the car struck his brain and activated, you know, telekinesque powders, but that's also kind of why I feel like he starts to love the salary man because it's like, thank you for giving me this gift in a way. Right. And also we're connected, right? Like I'm doing all of this to you because we got into this together. Yeah. Okay. So we get some static and then we fade in on the salary man. He's now almost completely metal except for his eyes, his nose and his mouth. Yeah. It's gross. So this is when the fetishist calls because, you know, what do you do when you want to get in touch with the person you love, you bring him up on the telephone. So he claims to know all about the salary man's secret. And then this is when we revisit the car accident. So we get the full sort of story of what happened. The salary man and the woman were driving. This is when they hit the fetishist. They took the body, drove out to the woods, dumped him down a ravine and then got so turned on by the fact that they had committed vehicular manslaughter that they had to fuck right then in there. So I also read this somewhere too that apparently they were in the middle of a sex act in the car when they hit the metal fetishist. Yes. So Evan said that in his article and I didn't have time to go back and look, but it would explain why they were so distracted as to hit this man because he is moving, but he's not moving especially quickly because he's got that rebar in his leg. Oh, yeah. And you know, they have to finish what they started, which is why they fucking the woods. Well, I mean, I read this and I'm not going to lie, part of this is because I just rewatched Crash. Oh, yeah. So I was very much like, oh, we're doing metal and how it changes you and car accidents and sexy times because it very much seems like she's turned on by the idea that we nearly killed this man. Like, this is what it takes to get our sex life hot, normally very boring, not very good. But when we nearly murder a guy, I'm hot and bothered. Yeah, absolutely. I get that. Okay. So this is when the salaryman once again tries to electrocute himself, but this only speeds up his transformation. We get like new, weird appendages sprouting from his fingers, but also we get more sped up traveling through the streets and then we become magnetized. Yes. So we see the VCR get crushed. We see metal cups get crushed. Other objects seem to be attracted to the salaryman, including unfortunately, and folks, I apologize. I had this in my notes and I forgot to read it off the top. The cat does die. The cat. Yes. I said in my notes, the cat gets melded and then also with a fish. But here's the thing. I don't think this is very upsetting because it's like clear either this cat is just wearing like, you know, metal costumes or they like made like a metal cat creature. So like, we don't like see it. It's very much we cut from a live cat and then we cut to, oh, it's already melded up, but right. The sound it makes is not pleasant. No, no. And this is, you know, stop motion. So it's got that herky, jerky feel to it. But, I mean, every time we see a new form of the transformation or any time, just any time we see the suit, it's so great. Like visually, it's so exciting to look at, but you know, they didn't mention Stuart Gordon as an influence, but again, this reminded me of the cat reanimator. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, basically, cats should just not be around people who are in states of transformation. Basically. Yeah. So speaking of transformation as the cat is getting it, we're also seeing something happening with the girlfriend whose body has been left in the bath. So she's still holding the knife that she was stabbing him with and it's connected to one of the pipes and it starts to become metallic sized as well. So all of a sudden she is back. She's up flailing about. She's trying to stab him with this knife. And then this was probably my favorite visual of the entire film. It feels like flowers and tumors just erupt out of her. Yeah. And then all of a sudden she ends up covered in this mound and then the fetishous bursts out of this. Yes. Like she was a cocoon because this to me is like the sequel to the subway. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's where it's like, okay, so yeah, this is the fetish just again, like possessing, like using this body, this female body as a host to get to the salary man. In this case, he's really successful and a butts out of her. Yeah. So she's gone now, like that body is totally done and now it's going to be the fetishist pursuing the salary man for the rest of the film. Yeah. But I do love this moment, right? Like it's their first face-to-face meeting since the car accident. Yeah. So the fetishist introduces himself with a bouquet of flowers that he sticks in the salary man's mouth and then he leans in real close and promises to show him a new world. Yes. And is this when he gets a TV on his hand, Joe? It is. Yes. Okay. Yo, yo, go watch attention because I have to believe that Joseph Khan, like as, this is character named TV, Hannah, that movie took him from Tetsuo. Quite possibly. Yeah. But yeah, again, we're already romanticizing this here, right? Like he's giving him flowers. He's not. So whatever this revenge or hate that we thought we had for him, if he ever felt that, like that's not what we're getting in this scene. Yeah. It might have started that way, but it feels like it's shifting, like especially from this point out, it definitely seems like a romantic pursuit, you know, bridging on stalking. I'm not going to lie because it does feel like the salary man is not interested in just definitely trying to get away, but it's fascinating to watch the relationship change, despite the fact that there's very little dialogue and these two just seem to be battling whenever they get into close proximity. Yeah, which that's kind of the rest of the movie. It's kind of the rest of the movie. Yeah. But Trace, what do you think of this weird cutaway where after we say, okay, I'm going to show you a whole new world, we do cut to this desolate environment. And it's got small metallic orbs growing out of the ground, almost like flowers. I didn't even make that mark this in my notes. I think it was because here's a thing, though, because it's one of those things where there's so many images in this film. And it's by this point, I was kind of in that mode where I was like, wait, what is important, though? And I think you could argue that everything is important. Like every shot is here for a reason, but this is something that I didn't even make note of. Okay. I mean, I think you could treat this almost like another nightmare or a vision that the fetishist is giving the salaryman, but in this sequence, we do see the salaryman trapped in this plastic bag. He's being consumed by cords. There's a sped up dissolve where his face dissolves into a skull. Well, so then what do you make of this? I mean, he said, I'm going to show you a new world. If you read it, I think from the traditional perspective, this is, I'm going to fucking kill you. I'm going to put you in the ground. You're going to dissolve. That's going to be your new world. Your new state of existence is dead, motherfucker. Got it. Okay. But where the film goes, it's kind of like we're going to make a world together. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You could also look at this as this is the natural product that's going to happen after we fuse, we assimilate, and then we're going to destroy the world. So it could be like, you could read it as like he's projecting his vision for the future into the salaryman. Yes. Yeah. That's how I read it. Okay. Yeah. So we do get a bit more imagery of this car accident, and then the salaryman throws off this TV and makes a run for it. So we see them racing down the street at super speeds after each other. But the fetish just seems to have this ability to telekinetically attack or manipulate the environment around them every time he squeezes his left hand. Yeah. Yeah. So the salaryman's always been disadvantaged here. But yes. Yeah. This is just fight, fight, fight. Mm-hmm. So as this is happening, we get what some people say as a flashback. Again, this was another moment where I said, wait, we're introducing a new character. So we've got either the vagrant or the tramp or the tramp. Yes. Thank you. And some people read this character who was played by Renji Ishibashi as the fetishist father. So this is the backstory of where the sexual fetish might come from, because his father beats him with a pipe. Well, okay. But the way he produces the pipe, he opens up his pants and pulls it out as if it was his penis. Right. Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So again, this is childhood abuse, maybe sexual trauma. The film is not spilling it out. The first time I saw this, I thought, who is this? What is happening? Are we interrupting this chase sequence so that we can get this? That's because I didn't, I mean, honestly, do all the readings on this film, but I didn't come across reading it, read this as the father. So again, I just do this, yeah, like this is just a random, like, again, is tramp even like a PC term? No. Vagrant. I mean, he is credited as tramp. Yes. Wait a minute. This was 35 years ago. Typically now, we would say unhoused. Okay. So lady in the tramp, lady in the unhoused dog. Yeah, it doesn't have the same range for a child. Yeah. So this does seem to come out of nowhere unless, I mean, I almost do like it more if we read it as the father, but I don't, nothing in the film really clues us into that. So here's the thing. Whether this is actually a blood relation or just an incident from the past, like we will come to realize that this is some kind of flashback specific to the fetishist because when he finishes this, like basically the man hits him in slow motion and we cut to the opening of the film where we saw him sticking the rebar into his legs. So it's, you know, match on action, the two are in conversation with one another. And when the fetishist remembers this, this is when he falls and strikes his head and he briefly falls unconscious. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It doesn't last for long, though, because we wind up pursuing the celery man to an empty factory, I'm saying, we hear the sound of a bomb balling. And this is where the fetishist just goes to town with that telekinetic handclench thing. We're basically destroying everything in this environment. So the celery man is, he's basically cornered and everything is going off around him. We're starting small fires. All of the metal objects are getting like crushed, moved around and so on. And we should note that the celery man, he was previously almost entirely metal, but he is quite a bit larger now. So he's been growing, expanding, I think maybe collecting some of these other metal objects because he is magnetic. Yeah. So it seems like the fetishist is about to finish him off, but he is a little tired. He's grunting with exertion. It's almost like, oh, I've been trying to like pin you down and have my way with you and I'm very tired. And this is when his hand falls off and becomes a flame thrower, which cool, cool, looks very great. You know, we've not mentioned that this is also considered an example of Japanese extreme cinema. And I'm going to direct people to dispensers of horror, or I spit on your podcast with Kelly and Jess. We've had both of them on as guests before, but I feel like we're probably not doing justice to a number of different references and how other films have evoked these images. So do go and check out their work because they've got a ton on Japanese extreme cinema. Yeah. So it's nearly time to strike the killing blow, the fetishist prepares for this. But before he can do that, this is where the celery man impales him with an even larger than before metal drill day. I was going to say, so I wrote my notes, I was like, the drills come out and I don't know if they fuck, I think, like that's that's kind of what this is, right? I didn't read it as the fetishist has one. I just read it as like he was going to get in there and destroy the celery man, but I could be convinced otherwise because what he says, like it's weird. So he says, you know, you see all this rest of my body. My first metal implant was already rusty before my cells began to assimilate it, but your shaver was stainless steel, which why bring that up? But why? Well, that was the initial site of infection, right? When he was shaving. Yeah. But stainless steel, I guess, isn't the same thing as metal. So it seems to imply that like, oh, using a stainless steel on your metal. I don't know. But he says, I'll finish you. Fuck you. Don't you understand your future is metal. So again, this is like he wants to kill him. He just wants to further assimilate him. Yes. Yeah. I guess I'm using kill in the incorrect sense. It should be, I want to kill off who you were, like I didn't want you to be human anymore. That makes sense. Yeah. So he's definitely wanting to assimilate with the celery man and the celery man responds in kind using this metal dick. And it's kind of fascinating because it does seem like the fetishist doesn't initially want this because as he becomes assimilated and is drawn into the celery man, like we are quite literally sucking this character into another character. Yeah. It's all tentacle II. Mm hmm. Yeah. But the celery man encourages him to stop resisting. So this is like a bit of a coerce sex scene. And I'm saying that, you know, I'm sure a bunch of people are groaning and rolling their eyes and saying, oh, they see soaks everywhere. No, no, no, this is like gooey cum like material coming out of this perboscis. Yeah. That's the thing. It's very gooey. And then their heads start to extend out of their ankles. Yes. It looks very much, it reminded me of like the Freddy snake from night when I was three, but it's like, yes, that's literally what I was thinking of. It's all very phallic, like everything about this is super phallic. And again, like you have two men that are basically merging their bodies and, but okay, but what seals the deal, Joe, is the score that happens after this scene. Oh, you mean the jazz? Yes. That's back. Yeah. It's like the super romantic music before they merge into one giant metallic power rangers monster. Yeah. Yeah. We, we spend, you know, two to three minutes watching these basically long as fuck penis heads, roaming around, dodging each other, mixing together, men being consumed by each other, giz coming out, and it's all to the tune of this soft, horny jazz. It's so gay. And I think that's why though, when I, when I read the, you know, remove that tap dance scene from earlier, I was like, but I feel like it would have music similar to something like this. But maybe that's the it though. Look, if you have the music in that scene, it removes the significance of it in this scene. Well, unless we look at it as a shift, right? If you look at this as either a bisexual coming out film or a realization that you are queer or gay, you know, you may have had feelings or you may have thought you had feelings and then you realize, no, when I meet this one person, I feel differently. This feels special. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I take your point that, you know, maybe you don't want to confuse the audience by saying, oh, well, you already heard that music. So like, I see this music as being the same as the earlier sex scene. So when he was having sex with the girlfriend and it wasn't particularly great, but it was still sex, this is the same music that we were hearing. So this is another sex scene. Yeah, 100% apps. Oh, and you know what? Maybe that's it too. Because the tap dance wouldn't be a sex scene. So I'm so focused on the fucking tap scene that I want to see. I love that you're fixated on it. I just love a musical number. Sure. Yeah. So just in case, again, you thought that we were reaching with this, as we're hearing this jazz music, we do see an image of them naked and human. So they are fusing together, but it's more organic. It's almost like, hey, underneath all of this machinery, this is what we're doing, reforming this very human connection. But like they're staring into each other's faces upside down and it looks very intimate. Yeah. So this almost is like, again, like the telekinetic connection between them. So it's almost like their minds together. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the end result of this is that we totally fucking destroy this building. So the next scene that we see is an overhead shot of just the rubble. Yeah. And they're just like this big fucking thing on wheels. Yeah. We should note that they have merged to become almost like a two-story tall mass with the salary man on the bottom, the fetishist on the top, and they discuss how they're going to consume metal. They agree that their love, they literally say that our love can consume the world. We should note that as this gets said, we see white fluid leaking out of the salary man's mind. I wonder if our second, my set title was our love can destroy this whole fucking world. Get them. And then they just go off and like destroy it. So I wonder if there's any difference in subtitles, but that's really interesting. No, I think I probably just wrote it down wrong because yours sounds correct. Yeah. Well, nevertheless, love was in both of them. Yeah. And again, that's the thing where I was like, okay, it's explicit by this point. Yes. Oh, 100%. I don't know how you could read this as anything. I mean, sure, you could look at it and say, oh, it's monstrous. It's perverted, you know, they're talking about destroying the world. That's not a good thing. But you know what? We've talked a lot about queer rage. We've talked a lot about how sometimes love is messy and fucked up. And I don't know, I don't, I read this as a strangely romantic finish to this film because yeah, you're right. We just speed off to destinations unknown. And I mean, I feel like all body horror has kind of an element of queerness to it because body horror is literally querying the human body. Oh, for sure. The minute you start collapsing those kinds of boundaries where people are merging together, yeah, even if you don't want to read it as sexual, it's definitely queer because it's not normal. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Fuck all you fuckers who use queer as a slur because now we can use all these reads because of it. Thank you for bequeathing us this gift, but yeah, this is wild. They just go off. Yeah. And that's kind of the end of the movie, right? It's the end of the movie. I mean, they go off down this like super speedy, yeah, it's almost a montage of them traveling through all these different roads, but it goes on forever. It's just like, is something else going to happen? No, it's over. Okay. It's pure chaos. I mean, like most of this movie is pure chaos, but like this ending just enhances it to 11. Yeah. Yeah. It was a very bombastic, very satisfying end to this film though. Yeah, but I will say I am kind of glad it's just an hour and seven minutes because I don't know how much of this I could have taken like at a longer bit. I agree. Yeah. People in oral stimulus was a lot. I actually had a bit of a headache afterwards because it's so intense. Well, and so did you look at the plot of the second movie? I have not. I have no idea what the other films are about. Yeah. So Tetsuo 2, so it's interesting. So it's a bigger budget obviously because he had what he could do. He had success. So he got money. But so it's kind of similar with he has mostly the same cast, but the story is not a direct continuation of Tetsuo, so it's like it's still a standalone sequel. But again, it's about a Japanese salary man played by Tomoro Toguchi, finds body transforming into a weapon through sheer rage after his son is kidnapped by a gang of violent thugs. Huh. Okay. And again, Yatsu with a metal fetishist is still in the movie, but it's not like has nothing to do with this film. Interesting. I guess you want to capitalize on the name recognition and you're using the same ideas. So it kind of makes sense, but you want to start back from zero. It almost sounds like a remake of sorts. Like it's like, Hey, let me take again, I'm dealing with the same themes, the same ideas. I'm changing the plot, but I got my same cast, but the general idea is the same. So it's like, Hey, I have more money now. Let me just do that. Right. You know what? We did it with the short and then we did it with the first film and now we're just going to do it with the second film with more money again. Yeah. And so, um, and again, even Tetsuo, the bullet man, the 2009 one, it follows a man who transforms into a rageful metallic being after his son is killed in a car crash. So it's like, hmm, maybe by the end, that one wasn't over. So he said maybe by that point, they were like, dude, like, it's just, I mean, how many times are you going to remake this? But yeah, so, uh, yeah, I mean, that's Tetsuo, the Iron Man Joe final thoughts on this. This was a wild ride, you know, it's been a long time coming. So I'm happy that we finally covered it. And it's, yeah, we've said it's a wild, intense, sometimes overwhelming, often very confusing film. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of folks really struggled to watch this or get some of these readings out of it, but I do hope that people took a chance on it because I'm ultimately very glad that I finally watched this because it did feel like a gap in my film knowledge. You know, now I can, I can consider myself a bit more of a cinephile because I've seen this, but I'm happy to have seen it because I thought that this was quite the experience. Yeah. No, I mean, this is a sensory overloading as we are saying, especially for an auditory one. I'm glad to revisit it. Like, you know, with 15 years distance with, um, I would argue maybe a better, uh, an ex, I don't, I don't, we had to have written a paper on this movie. I don't know what I did. Hmm. But I, I don't think my 20 year old self was fully prepared to like really absorb this movie. Yeah. But yeah, I'm glad I got to revisit it. Um, and feel like I was in film school again, just school, because I, you know, whenever I go back and read these academic articles too, it's always like, Oh, like I do miss doing things like that. I do like reading academic articles. I just don't do it as much anymore. Mm hmm. Well, the podcast is a good excuse to bone up on the research skills, but yeah. Well, okay, everyone, thank you for coming on this ride with us. Uh, but before we announce that we're covering next week, if you want to get in touch with us, you can reach us on Twitter and Instagram at horrorqueers. Shoot us an email at horrorqueers@gmail.com. Find us on Letterbox. Keep track of all the films we've covered. If you want to chat with other listeners, join our Facebook horror queers group. If you have a moment, please rate and review us on Apple podcast or Spotify. And if you want even more content, please support the show and us by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash horrorqueers. If you subscribe today, you will get 316 hours of Patreon content, including this month's new episodes on Hannibal season one, episode seven, a quiet place, day one, Maxis is the scene and I just realized, by the way, like the three X's and Maxine, it's like, Oh, it's triple X, but it's also like the third X movie. Mm hmm. Yeah, I get it. You're like, I know. It's okay. You got there in the end, and that's great. Good long legs and a tie in with long legs. We've got a brand new audio commentary on David Fincher's 1995 classic, seven. Yeah, I'm interested to revisit it. It's been a long time. I am too. But Joe, mm hmm, we did a one hour movie this week and we've got a three hour movie next week. What are we covering? It's another anniversary, but we're going to jump ahead a decade and it's funny. I initially was going to make the joke, Oh, and we're firmly in sconce within Hollywood, but this is a man who marches to the beat of his own drum. So I'm not going to pretend that Stanley Kubrick was part of the Hollywood system. But yeah, we're going to look back on 25 years of eyes wide shut. This will be a first time watch for me. So I'm actually. Oh, shit. I know. My husband actually really likes this movie a lot too. I love this one. It's one of those I've been mean to cross off, but I've been like, ah, just so fucking long. I'm out in the mood for it. And it didn't have a good reception. I feel like for being Kubrick's last film, so I'm interested to dive into that. And again, like see what I feel about this movie. Yeah, I have some big thoughts as to why this was not well received. And I feel like you will cover it in your production history. I'm sure I will. But everyone until next week, we can cross out Tetsuo the Iron Man. Indeed, and cross out horror queers. Get three coffins ready, kid, because our latest podcast, Make My Day, is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier that is Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books, and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloween's. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation and Prince output is infinite. You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. [MUSIC]
Strap in for an aural assault because we're checking out Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) for its 35th anniversary. C/W: the cat dies.
This 67 minute black and white, nearly dialogue-free film is a wild and intense experience. It's also surprisingly queer! From a sexually dissatisfied hetero couple to men checking each other out during sex to M/M assimilation to jizzy fluids, it's not a reach to say the salary man and the metal fetishist are into each other.
And that's without even getting into the metal dick drill of it all!
References:
> Evan Benner. "Finding Radical Queer Pride in ‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man’ (1989)." Horror Press
> Tom Mes. "Metallic K.O. - Tetsuo: The Iron Man" Iron Man. The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto. Fab Press Publications
> Mark Player. "Post-Human Nightmares – The World of Japanese Cyberpunk Cinema." Midnight Eye
Questions? Comments? Snark? Connect with the boys on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Letterboxd, Facebook, or join the Facebook Group to get in touch with other listeners
> Trace: @tracedthurman
> Joe: @bstolemyremote
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