Rubber's Lover

Rubber's Lover is cult filmmaker Shozin Fukui's 1996 follow-up to 964 Pinocchio. Like its predecessor, it is an underground cyberpunk horror, with tense atmosphere, alarming visuals and graphic violence. Often interpreted as a semi-prequel to 964 Pinocchio, Rubber's Lover details a clandestine group of scientists who conduct psychic experiments on human guinea pigs they take from the streets. Using brain-altering drugs, sensory deprivation and computer interfaces, they subject their patients to gruesome scientific tortures that often end in brutal death. After continued failure, they pursue one last project - which yields dangerous results. Rubber's Lover can best be defined as Japanese cyberpunk and industrial noir, in the same vein as Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Filmed in stark black and white, located in a setting of grim urban steel, steeped in machine aesthetic, driven by a kinetic style and empowered by a grinding metallic soundtrack, it draws on nightmarish horror and generates heavy fetishcore themes.