To think that Japanese artistic craziness has limits is really a false belief. Stunningly fascinating, unconventionally disturbing and perfectly made; Tetsuo will either make you fall for it or evidently fall apart. When reviewing a gory film, I usually start off with warnings so let me put this out. Tetsuo – The Iron Man is certainly not your stereotypical kind of film: Surrealist: check; it will make you think more than once about its contents. Bizarre: double check; if you think you saw the entire cinema craziness –think again. Excessively violent: Triple check; this film belongs to my goriest films’ list and I sure as heck saw a wild bunch of those. It would be an extremely disturbing and trippy watch for gore-haters. Hidden message: full score check. It’s what makes this picture special in the first place. There was a pinpointed meaning behind the whole mess. Horror and Sci-Fi aren’t my thing. I don’t like the genres separately and I certainly don’t care for them combined. But I do have a special liking to the underground director Tsukamoto Shinya –a perfect crazily talented Japanese director to add to my favourite bunch. Horrifically graphic, the film never ceased the use of violence and gore to highlight its events and developments. Even the introduction was brought under the wing of visual grotesque. I wouldn’t deny that brutal violence, dismemberment and bloody chases are to my liking but that’s not the main reason I highly appreciated this. As I said, I am used to gore especially the Japanese type but they rarely have a meaning behind the acts of violence unlike Tetsuo. Tsukamoto used the incessant gore to imply its vision around deep fears of technology and how far its development can mess a man’s life. He spotlighted the transformation and the resistance in a grabbing visual ceremony of grotesque. Of course, this is an over-the-top pessimistic view of the relationship between humans and the increasing threats of technology. That aside, the surrealistic nature of the film will make you draw your own interpretations as long as you pay attention to the little details. The choice of the black and white was spot on. It only aggravated the impact of the picture without damaging the brutal gore. It added a striking darker tone to the already pitch black shadowy theme. Moreover, the leads’ acting was obviously matching the choice of colours giving it a monistic feel. However, Tsukamoto Shinya was undeniably the main performer of this picture. He was the one who wrote, directed, edited and even added his own special effects to the film. His camerawork, masterful close angles, engaging cinematography and hard-core choice of music were one of the finest I saw in gory films. Tetsuo is one of those surrealist crazily bizarre Japanese films. Its heavy load of gore and brutally graphic content is a great mean to ensure its purpose.