Product Details

• Actors: Kimihiko Hasegawa, Natsuyo Kanahama, Kenji Nasa, Ryu Okubo, Tojima Shozo
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Language: Japanese (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Image
• DVD Release Date: September 26, 2000
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305666385
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,973 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Organ" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The tradition of Japan's underground Grand Guignol psycho-drama continues in Organ, a grotesque, gooey thriller of human organ pirates, deviant sex killers, and festering biology experiments. Undercover cops infiltrate the dank, underground operating theater of a street gang selling black market organs, but before backup arrives one of them is literally dissected in front of the other. The surgical victim winds up a human guinea pig in the doctor's private greenhouse ("He looks like that guy in The Fly," offers one visitor). His partner keeps his skin intact but loses his mind and becomes obsessed with tracking down the ringleader of the operation, the ferocious, one-eyed Yoko (played by the director Kei Fujiwara, costar of the cyber-punk horror classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man).

That's the plot in a nutshell, but this hallucinatory film is almost incoherent, a grotesque stew of pus and blood and severed limbs. Like much of the new wave of Japanese horror, the violence is more conceptual than explicit, full of perverse imagery and deviant characters. Organ is messy in every sense of the word. It gets so knotted in excess that it often loses it's way in wandering story lines, horrifying flashbacks (it turns out that Yoko and the doctor are siblings with a terrible childhood secret), and wild dreams and fantasies. Perhaps that's the madness to Fujiwara's method: how can anyone keep their grip on reality in such a nightmarish world?

The DVD features the complete and uncut print of the film (which was censored in Japan) and a 20-minute featurette with scenes from a bigger budgeted sequel Organ 2 (which became a big hit in Japan), narrated in English by director Fujiwara. --Sean Axmaker

Product Description

Two horrific and blood-drenched stories intertwine in this graphically violent feature film from Kei Fujiwara (star of Tetsuo). A Tokyo police officer falls victim to a Yakuza body-parts selling syndicate. Numata, the officer^Rs brother, investigates and discovers the evil Yoko, leader of the syndicate. The alternate plotline involves Seaki, Yoko^Rs Biology teacher brother, as he conducts experiments on the reanimated, limbless body of the missing police officer...keeping him alive with the blood taken from high school virgin girls. This film caused a huge controversy in Japan when it was released theatrically, forcing the director to release it in a cut form even in the Japanese cinemas. This DVD release is the complete, uncut version of the film.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting film, June 29, 2000

By 

"francoesque" (Blackpool, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Organ (DVD)

A film I have been waiting to see since reading about it in Pete Tombs remarkable book "Mondo Macabro". Thanks to Synapse for releasing such an obscure film. The DVD presentation is okay, with good picture (for what was obviously a low budget enterprise) and sound. The film itself is a quite remarkable study of decay, both physical (a mad, mutating doctor who steals organs for the Yakuza) and mental (the cop reduced to a staggering, sake swilling wreck by his encounter with the doctor and his sister. Much has been made of the violence and use of puss, but watching the film is a rather tame experience. Either that, or I'm just a jaded viewer and people cutting into puss filled wounds with a scalpel is deeply affecting to some folks. Organ Vital, the film's producers, are a theatre company and it shows. The majority of the film places people in a room for an extended period of time and watches them interact. It's just that these are the kind of people who interact by beating, raping and murdering one another. Note, however, that everything in the film is dealt with in a rather restrained manner (certainly, the violence is remarkably low key). The main plus is the atmosphere and sense of dread in the film. Everyone seems tired and desperate and no one seems to act out of desire but rather need. The added intro to Organ 2 is okay, with images from the film (all very restrained and away from violence - as the director notes) with a voice over from the director as she discusses the plot and themes of the film. It certainly sounds interesting, with a more retro noir production design and nice colours - see "Zipang" for an exaple of how well the Japanese can do this kind of thing. In all, the film will appeal to Cronenberg fans and those interested in Japanese horror cinema (a remarkable sub genre which has been ignored for too long). Now, if Synapse will release "The Ring" and "Star of David" in a similar quality package I'd give Don May my first born.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars BLOOD AND PUS, November 8, 2005

By 

Anton Ilinski (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Organ (DVD)

I think Western and Oriental people have rather different mentalities to comprehend and like similar things. Because I didn't understand this "brilliant, awesome, ingenious and so on and so on..." flick. When you read the synopsis everything seems to be right and at its place. But then you start watching... Oh, those mentalities...
Try to recall "Visitor Q" and "Tetsuo: the Iron Man" if you watched them, then put them together and add a good amount of surrealism aside from "Tetsuo". And you'll get "Organ". Or maybe you have to do something more because it's by far more complicated than that. Speaking of "Tetsuo" - Kei Fujiwara, the director and actress in "Organ" had a part in that movie.
Well I don't know what to say maybe I'll have to watch it for the second time so everything becomes clear. Although I doubt it will. And for gore-hounds I can say "Organ" is pretty abominable at times, gruesome and morbid. Lots of blood, pus and other excretion. Not for the squeamish obviously.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Kidney pie? We had that *last* night!, March 30, 2005

By 

D. Mills "WatchThis" (Silly Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Organ (DVD)

What we have here is a goo and gore fest which looks like it might have been co-directed by David Cronenberg ("The Fly" is central to one of the film's wisecracks) and Jean Rollin, the French director who brought us that string of artsy sex-inflected vampire films.

This is body horror at its most virulent, with a distinctive Tokyo overtone. Kei Fujiwara (of Tetsuo fame) directed this offering, and plays the central role of Yoko, who along with her brother Jun, run a slice-and-dice shop supplying fresh organ meat to the black market. They share a dirty little secret from their younger days (shades of Tetsuo - Bodyhammer, no?), and roam with splitter-splatter vicariousness through downtown Tokyo. Add to it the fact that Jun teaches biology at a girls' school, and has a sealed-off laboratory, and you've got all the makings of human tekka-maki.

Every frame of this film portrays humankind at it most abject, gutter level. No one who comes in contact with Yoko or Jun - especially the cops - survives with sanity intact (if indeed they had any to begin with). It's an intense experience, like an amusement park ride, but is it art? Will you watch often? I doubt it.

The production values of this 1996 film are average, and the DVD serves up a "making of" featurette for "Organ Part II", should anyone want a second helping.