Shinya Tsukamoto's 1989 short feature TETSUO: THE IRON MAN borrows from Lynch's Eraserhead and Cronenberg's Videodrome—both films discussed in ETV's second season —and creates something entirely its own. Clocking in at a slender 67 minutes and blessedly shot in B&W to maximize gore while minimizing your hosts covering their eyes, Tetsuo is a cyberpunk-meets-splatterpunk anime come to life. Also discussed in this episode: Tsukamoto's encounters with Tarantino and Scorsese; comparisons to Evil Dead and Robert Mapplethorpe; a long digression on Japan's anxieties and its perpetually aging population; plus, could it possibly have influenced the Playstation 2 classic Katamari Damacy?
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