Pinocchio 964 and Zulawski

Shozin Fukui worked in the crew for Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man, made a few shorts, and then directed his first feature film, Pinocchio 964.

The subgenre of Japanese Cyberpunk consists of five core films:

• Death Powder (Shigeru Izumiya - 1986)
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto - 1988)
• Pinocchio 964 (Fukui - 1991)
• Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (Tsukamoto - 1992)
• Rubber's Lover (Fukui - 1996)

Aside from the obvious similarities to Tetsuo (main character bodily transformation that is never explained, long sequences of transformed men running through the streets, monsterous happily-ever-after ending, etc.), Pinocchio's biggest influence seems to come from Polish director Andrzej Zulawski's films Possession and On The Silver Globe .

Pinocchio 964 is notorious for the same absurd level of vomit, blood, and unidentifiable bodily fluids as Possession, and Fukui has mentioned his interest in Possession in interviews.

Possession has a subway scene that Fukui copied very closely:

Possession fluids.

Turns into the Pinocchio 964 sequences:

Rolling around in vomit and I'm a train and nonsensical bodily fluids.

The initially transformed Pinocchio bears some resemblance to Possession's tentacle monster:

On The Silver Globe's influence is a little more subtle - mostly the style of camera work.

Tunnel sequence: Silver Globe versus Pinocchio

Running past the main character: Silver Globe versus Pinocchio

There is also the face covered in stuff look from On The Silver Globe:

To Pinocchio 964:

Which is not to say that Pinocchio 964 is a Zulawski (or Tsukamoto) ripoff - the vast majority of the film is highly original.

This pivotal scene, for example:

Pinocchio chaining scene.

Also interesting is that while Tetsuo influenced Pinocchio heavily, Pinocchio influenced Tetsuo II in turn (subway chase with child abduction, clear blue-sky shots, main character in manacles), which then influenced the Pinocchio 964 prequel, Rubber's Lover (head-mounted video device).

(Tetsuo's penis drill also transformed into Rubber's Lover's motorized ether injection device.)

Oddly, Tsukamoto progressed from b&w to color, while Fukui went from color to b&w. (For purely practical reasons - apparently the rubber suit looked stupid in color.)

Another possible influence is early Cronenberg - since Videodrome was such an obvious influence on Tetsuo, perhaps Crimes of the Future was another source of the nonsensical bodily excretions of Pinocchio? That's a long shot, but possible.