Excuse me while I jab a magnificent fist into the air and strike this breathtaking pose. Indulge me, because being away for the past two weeks covering SFIFF had prevented me from noticing awesome news a-happenin'. And yes, this is awesome news indeed.
On Wednesday, Screen Daily broke the news that a third installment of Tetsuo: The Iron Man is in the works, currently called Tetsuo Project. Not only that, but apparently it's already finished shooting, and a cut is being rushed to Cannes for buyers. Yeah, like the festival wasn't already mindblowing enough. DAMMIT.
The pic above is a promotional image for the film, which shows its star Eric Bossick in his half-machine make-up.
I began my love affair with Shinya Tsukamoto in high school, when I first discovered the original Tetsuo on video. It was a mesmerizing work of art for the younger and more reckless me: there it was, the kind of surreal brilliance one would look for in an art film, but packaged in something dementedly monstrous and unbelievably cool. I couldn't get enough of Tsukamoto's work after that—Tetsuo II, Bullet Ballet, Tokyo Fist, A Snake of June, and so on, propelling him close to the top of my favorite directors list. Those films ignited my interest in cyberpunk films, allowing me to appreciate the works of other madmen like Shojin Fukui.
After the wonderful Vital (quite possibly his best film to date) and the maddening Haze, Tsukamoto went to work on two rather disappointingly conventional thrillers called Nightmare Detective, which I didn't really like. Then last year, he quietly shot a project with a Caucasian male in his first English-language film called The Bullet Man, which we know now is actually a dummy name for Tetsuo Project. Yep, this Tetsuo is set in Tokyo, but will be in English. Its release this year also marks the first film's 20th anniversary.
As much as I love the more mature and disquieting horror of something like Vital, the thought of Tsukamoto returning to his crazy nightmare style is unrivaled in its excitement. Hot damn, I feel like jamming an iron pipe in someone's leg wound.
