HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 30
4th of 6 Asian horror films

This has been one of those gap movies for me and maybe the ultimate gap movie because I've been really keen on the idea of watching Tetsuo: The Iron Man since it came out. I was 13 or 14 at the time and so I couldn't get in to the cinema to see it, and then it was the kind of movie my shitty local video store didn't stock for long, and then... well, clearly I have no excuse for the intervening thirty years other than shrugging and sticking my bottom lip out. [ ] Which I just did. You couldn't see it.

I have to say, the first half of this movie was leaving me a bit underwhelmed. It just seemed to be a guy careening about the place with pieces of metal glued to his head. The editing didn't really have that feeling of exciting collage that I had seen in Tsukamoto's later film A Snake in June. And to be honest, I didn't really have a fucking clue what was going on narratively, if anything.

And then, suddenly, about halfway through, a couple of things happened. Firstly, there's a bit of a reveal plotwise - not that this is really a very narratively driven film, but Tsukamoto just throws us a bone to explain what it is that we are seeing here regarding this salaryman dude and the other mad freak who keeps showing up randomly (played by Tsukamoto himself), and I for one appreciated it. It gave me something to hold on to.

And thank Christ I had something to hold onto, because the second thing that happens halfway through is that the film basically takes a sudden tilt downwards into an almost blindingly frenetic cacophony of insane imagery. Tsukamoto almost bends himself in two trying to coerce the medium of film itself into some kind of new form. The quick-cut editing is so rapid, the whole boundary between normal filming and stop motion animation become blurred. The sheer inventiveness on display is almost as eye-watering as the body horror concepts it's portraying.

Obviously, Tetsuo is not for everyone, but if you're curious about the formal possibilities of film and you find such intellectual musings enhanced by the occurrence of horrific shit rather than detracted from by it, this film is a must-see.

Says the guy who didn't watch it, like... forever. LOL.