The years haven't been kind to Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a very experimental Japanese import that was revolutionary for its time and often comes up in discussions of the most influential Asian films of all time. This movie now appears far too abrasive and jerky to be a creepily absorbing experience. It's pretty much all madness and very little, if any, method.

In what could be described as the film's "story," Tomorowo Taguchi stars as a salaryman, just one of the many office drones inhabiting his city. One day, an alarming transformation starts to occur within this Everyman. What begins with a tiny metal piece sticking out of his cheek turns into a full-fledged disease, warping his mind and turning his body moment by moment into a hulking mass of wires, coils, and rods. As the transformation continues to take its toll on his body and soul, the salaryman slowly pieces together the motivation behind this metallic invasion, which involves an encounter with a fetishist (writer/director Tsukamoto himself) whose work isn't finished quite yet.

With themes involving flesh and the collision between man and machine, one might think Tetsuo was the brainchild of a filmmaker like David Cronenberg. Perhaps Cronenberg would have been the right man to whip a story like Tetsuo's into shape, for as is, Tsukamoto's 67-minute festival of apocalyptic weirdness is as ambitious as can be but eventually allows its own style to overcome whatever message it has to convey. Tsukamoto launches an assault on the eyes and ears, filling his brisk running time with as much bizarre machinery imagery and screeching noises as he can.

What divides Tetsuo's fans and detractors is that where some see this approach as a jarring means of launching the viewer into the middle of the salaryman's horrible predicament, others view it as Tsukamoto irritating his audience to the point where they just want the film to end. I'm a member of the latter group, and that's a shame -- for I can see a mind-blowing and offbeat slice of social commentary about technology struggling to fight through layers and layers of over-stylized camera shots and editing techniques that only serve to distance us from the characters.

In the end, I wasn't as much concerned with the fates of the key players in Tetsuo as I was curious to see what would happen -- just like someone at a carnival waits to see what animal's head the geek will bite off next. 

Though this film features a number of moments where the explosively different and intense masterpiece it could have been show signs of life, Tetsuo: The Iron Man takes a different path. It turns out to be more pre-occupied with making the package look as weird as it can instead of  enhancing the contents inside.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Tartan Video; not rated by MPAA.)