Desu pawuda

This film is hyped as being in the same sub-genus of film as Tsukamoto's 'Tetsuo' or Shozin Fukui's '964 Pinocchio.' It is, however not as focussed or crafted as either of those films. Still, it warrants a degree of attention.

The story, as I understand it: Three conspirators steal a secret android. In their warehouse hideout, the android secretes a reality-altering substance, which casts them into a frightening nether-world of interconnected subjectivity.

Meanwhile, in the real world, workers enter the warehouse, only to find that the occupants within have mutated into a huge, protoplasmic organism.

Some aspects of this film are more successful than others. The protoplasm being is great, it reminds me of some kind of Kroft-type Saturday morning special effect creature gone really, really wrong. On the other hand an extended montage of stills to ironically loungy music badly overstays it's welcome.

Still, it all seems in good fun; during one of the hallucination sequences, the scientist who designed the android is revealed in a bizarre music video sequence---as a singer for an 80s hair-band.

A humanoid female is kept tied up in a decrepit basement and several unknown groups of people seem to be interested in this creature.When the creature blows dust on some intruders,it sends them off to another world and gives them deep understanding of...something or another to do with rising above the limitations of flesh.These various parties fight it out amongst themselves,some turning out to be more than human."Death Powder" is an total hallucinogenic mindtrip.It's filled with scenes of horror and gore and several moments of a wall-to-wall surrealism.It's really hard to objectively summarize its plot,it's so strange and trippy.If you enjoyed "Tetsuo" or "964 Pinocchio" give "Death Powder" a look.

Shigeru Izumiya's underground classic Desu Pawuda aka Death Powder (Japan, 1986) is definitely among the weirdest, most bizarre films I've ever seen. It reminds me of David Lynch' Eraserhead, Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo and some other extremely memorable and unique exercises in cinematic magic and limits beyond imagination. Death Powder has very little to do with plot or story, and what's there is extremely hard to follow and seems not to make any sense. One character says at one point to another: "Try to pretend that you're understanding what it's all about. Like life itself, this makes no sense." That line really tells something what to expect from this low budget gem from Japan, the land of many great film makers.

There are three mercenaries/soldiers who go to some mysterious storehouse in which even more mysterious figure is lying on a bed without any mattress. Suddenly, the figure blows some dust/powder on one of the soldiers and then the nightmare begins. It soon turns out, that one of the soldiers (played by the director Izumiya himself) has already been "infected" by this powder and now the question is what will happen to these two hapless victims, the other being a female by the way. The newly "infected" mercenary starts to have severe hallucinations into some netherworld, a universe unknown to us and a place never depicted on film before, and soon it is revealed that the powder has still many more victims to "dust".

At this point I want to say that the plot is extremely hard to follow and I had to watch the film twice in order to be able to write about it. The story and plot are not the things this film has to offer and thus the audience for this kind of film becomes even smaller. The film is also extremely slow moving and has many "dead" moments (the film runs mere 62 minutes, though) so don't watch this when you're tired since this film requires your full attention. These are not necessarily bad things if one can enjoy and appreciate this kind of different and very personal and independent cinema. If you thought Tetsuo was way too irritating and hard to understand in its madness, then forget Death Powder right now because this is perhaps even more bizarre experience.

The message is the same as in Tetsuo: The fear of technology and to what extents it will grow. The camera angles at the beginning where we are in the city among other people are very weird and twisted and they depict the same fears and menaces as Tetsuo does. "Only you can save the world from itself" says one voice during the nightmarish hallucination segments to one character. Besides these themes, Death Powder is one incredible exercise in low budget film making and ultra menacing and mind altering imagery to haunt the viewer days to come, and nights, in my case!

I had very weird dreams (or nightmares, more correctly) after watching Death Powder for the first time last night. I saw dreams I hadn't ever seen, as I hadn't seen a film like this earlier either. This film drills into one's mind and stays there like an acid trip. The imagery at the end is extremely horrible as we "see" what's behind that door.. The effects and make ups are of course cheap, but very greatly created and look as effective as possible for a production like this. Some of the segments are very gruesome and surreal so again this cannot be recommended for any other than a jaded Asian/underground cinema lover. The soundtrack consists of different sounds, whispers, echos, rock, pop and so on, so the atmosphere created by sounds is also very impressive. Still, I don't love this quite as much as I love the definite underground "cyberpunk cinema" classic Tetsuo from the great film maker Shinya Tsukamoto. Death Powder (coloured) has similar elements and same menacing and crazy atmosphere, but lacks the strongest visions of Tsukamoto and is never as striking, explosive and nightmarish as Tetsuo (black and white). Death Powder has also elements from films like Videodrome and other Cronenberg films but they are handled here with the personal touch of Izumiya, not in a rip off way.

Death Powder is highly recommended for all those interested in underground and hyper bizarre cinema experiences and it would be great if this had some official VHS/DVD release with English subs at some point. Hopefully some underground distributor pays some attention on this gem in the future. 8/10

This is probably the most nonsensical whacked out flick you'll ever watch. A Japanese cyberpunk horror that that inspired ones like Rubber's Lover (1996) and 964 Pinocchio (1991). Most of the time you'll just be scratching your head wondering what the hell is going on. The powder involved in the film mutates and eventually explodes your head. I watched a VHS tape of this that had some mileage and of course some dialogue wasn't subtitled but no matter here people. One part just shows stills for five minutes.

Most of the effects were the ones they used in 80's music videos but effective enough. I think it would be dangerous to watch this on acid.

Watching this 1986 oddity I can't life of me understand what it is about. There are some reviewers here that give away small hints but I don't know if I understand.

There are lot of stuff here that's reminiscent of Lynch, and Cronenberg etc but director Shigeru Izumiya defies even their style, content, by doing even more surreal choices when it comes to direction, script etc.

Personally I haven't seen such a weird film in a long time, the latest being Fellini - Satyricon (1969. But Fellini - Satyricon (1969)had at least some narrative, this doesn't even try.

In many ways this films feels and looks a videoart exhibit were viewers are supposed to feel, respond to it on a subconscious level.

I'm not sure if that was the directors intent but that is the look and style of this film.

Shigeru Izumiya has according IMDb not directed a another film. Which is too bad because his use of bodyhorror, surrealism etc could have made into one of the most interesting personal filmmakers I've seen.

Future viewers may not like this but it is well worth a look.