is a 1989 Japanese tokusatsu cyberpunk body horror film written, produced, edited, and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. It is shot in the same low-budget, underground-production style as his first two films. The film established Tsukamoto internationally and created his worldwide cult following. It was followed by Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) and Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009). Plot A metal fetishist enters his Tokyo hideout, which is full of metal parts and photos of famous athletes. He cuts open his thigh and thrusts a large metal rod into the wound. Later, he unwraps the wound to discover it rotting and covered with maggots. Horrified, he runs outside into the street and gets hit by a car. A salaryman is tormented by visions of metal and industrial machinery. While shaving in his apartment, he notices a metal spike protruding from his cheek that spurts blood when he touches it. He speaks to his girlfriend on the phone, who says she cannot stop thinking about an unknown "incident". The salaryman is on his way to work. He goes to a train platform and sits next to a woman wearing glasses. She notices a mound of flesh and metal on the ground. She pokes it with a pen and is quickly overcome by it, turning her into a monster controlled by the fetishist. The salaryman flees in terror, briefly able to escape by stabbing the woman with a pen. She soon finds him but he is able to defeat her. After the fight, he realizes the flesh on his arm has turned into metal. The salaryman dreams of his girlfriend dancing erotically with a phallic hose before sodomizing him with it. When he wakes, the salaryman is horrified to see his metal transformation is accelerating. He and his girlfriend have sex. Afterwards, his girlfriend eats suggestively, each interaction with the food accompanied by metallic screeching sounds. Suddenly the salaryman's penis is transformed into a large metal drill. He loses control and attacks his girlfriend. After she briefly incapacitates him with a blow to the head from a frying pan, he regains his strength through electrocution by sticking a knife and fork into an electrical socket. Finally, she stabs him in the neck with a kitchen knife. Believing that she has killed him, she kills herself by impaling herself on his drill. The salaryman awakens and realizes what has happened, while elsewhere the fetishist