Customer Reviews

Organ

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This work belongs to a sort of movies questioning very much a reason for their appearance.

Was it a reflection of reality or simply an attempt to make some money with figures of producers' specific imagination?

Trying to save a brother-cop investigating illegal organ-harvesting, a brother-surgeon- criminally-harvesting-the-organs breaks through a circle of yakuza making good leaving on blood and death of others he is a significant part of.

A mix of blood, sex, pedophilia, surgery, might be appreciated for lovers of Visitor Q, Ichi the Killer, and alike arising from peeping at gore and perversion.

Organ (Kei Fujiwara, 1996)

I get the feeling, reading many reviews for Japanese extreme horror films, that a lot of people just don't get it. Yes, it's about the gore. But there's more to it than that. Just as Romero's Night of the Living Dead trilogy is as brilliant as it is because it's a satirical attack on American consumer culture, the best of Japanese extreme horror is as good as it is not because it's full of disgusting (and thoroughly cheesy) special effects, but because there's something underneath, holding them together.

Such is the case with Kei Fujiwara's extreme horror film Organ. Fujiwara, like Hideshi Hino before her, uses the disgust she creates as an allegory of the disintegration of the Japanese soul; Fujiwara is far more up front about it than Hino ever was (though Hino had his manga in which to really get into the degradation-of-the-soul angle, and could concentrate on more subtle approaches in the Guinea Pig films). In Organ, three police officers, two of them brothers, get involved in an investigation of the black-market trade in human organs in Japan. The operations is blown, and the messy ending to it has two of the officers suspended and one of them (Tosada, one of the brothers) missing and presumed dead. The two suspended officers, now deadly enemies, pursue the doctor at the head of the operation; both are convinced that Tosada is still alive and that the doctor is continuing his organ harvesting.

As with an increasing number of films both in the extreme horror genre and Japanese New Horror, Organ starts out with a major punch to the gut (the botched undercover operation), then slows down and allows the mystery to develop before picking up the pace with the gore factor again. (Guinea Pig fans will recognize a good deal of the effects used in the climax.) This has a tendency to turn the gorehounds off, and the gore has a tendency to turn the atmospheric-horror fans off. But at least nothing blind-sides you the way it does with Audition (still the only romantic comedy-extreme horror hybrid in existence, to my knowledge). You know what you're getting after ten seconds with Organ.

All of which would lead to Organ being pretty much a more-of-the-same film of not for the allegory therein (the doctor's diseased soul is physically represented in the diseases that ravage his body, for example) and the sucker-punch ending. It's one of those things where you have to rewind a tad and re-watch, because you can't believe a director would do something quite that nasty. (And no, we're not talking special effects here. This is an emotional jab, and quite an ugly one.) While it doesn't quite hold together in the way Dawn of the Dead or other brilliant allegorical films do, that's not necessarily surprising in the world of Japanese cinema; you expect a certain level of impressionism. There are times when Fujiwara does carry it a bit far, but a few moments of reflection after the film is over should enable the astute viewer to put it all together.

Fun stuff. Not for the weak of heart, or stomach. *** ½

I didn't have any problem with the gore or keeping up with the story, what I did have a problem with was caring what happened and staying awake. I was wide awake and ready for some insane INFECTION/BIO-ZOMBIE - style action, but within 20 minutes I was already losing interest.

I could go into the plot, but it's not important. My recommendation is to leave this gritty, slime-filled snoozer alone. If you haven't seen UZUMAKI then watch that instead. It might not be drenched in gore, but it's creepy and fun to watch.

Give it up for the J-horror! You know, the sick and twisted terror flicks from Japan that contain boatloads of gore, taboo breaking themes, and metaphysically weird characters. Oh yeah! There's nothing like spending a couple of hours with Takashi Miike's latest mindbender, for example. If you've already seen and been completely repulsed by "Visitor Q" and "Audition," you can cast your eyes around for other comparable J-horror masterpieces. I've seen quite a few of these Japanese horror films over the last couple of years, so I figured it was far past time to sit down with Kei Fujiwara's "Organ." Why not? "Organ" is a film I remember hearing good things about years and years ago, but never really got the chance to see until now. After viewing the film, I wish I could remember what I heard about it all those moons ago. I'm striving to remember whether I heard the words "incomprehensible," "inaccessible," "avant-garde," or any number of other terms that essentially translate into, "I don't understand what the heck this film is about." "Organ" must surely rank as one of the most obtuse films I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot. Those wacky Japanese are always up to something strange!

Boy, where to start with this bad boy! Hmmm. Well, let me outline what I THINK happened. The movie opens with a sting operation conducted by a couple of cops determined to close down a seedy black market organ harvesting scheme. These two cops, Numata and Tusaka, run into trouble when they realize the criminals led by Yoko (Kei Fujiwara) and her brother Jun have set them up take a rather bloody fall. Numata manages to escape, which essentially means he wakes up the next day in a stupor near the building housing the makeshift organ harvesting center, but his partner isn't with him. Jun whisked Tusaka away to his laboratory at the local university (Jun is apparently a science instructor) in order to carry out a bizarre experiment. What gives, you ask? It looks like Jun suffers from some icky disease that is slowly turning his body into a mess of oozing sores. In order to combat this affliction, he kills local schoolgirls and uses their blood to feed the hapless Tusaka. Or something along those lines. By the way, Tusaka sits in a cubbyhole minus his arms and legs while plant matter grows all over him. I told you "Organ" was weird, didn't I?

But that's not all, my fellow horror fans! You ain't seen nothin' yet! The movie shows us Numata joining forces with Tusaka's brother in order to get to the bottom of this massive weirdness. As their investigation unfolds, they discover that the Kaneshiro construction company has a hand in the organ scheme. I'm guessing the guys in this organization are yakuza thugs since they keep alluding to some sort of new drug that Yoko and Jun are working on. Perhaps it's the drug Jun needs from his sister to keep the oozing madness at bay. Anyway, we soon learn that Jun's mother mistreated her two children while they were quite young, gouging out Yoko's eye and doing something even nastier to Jun. What's this got to do with anything? Beats me, although I think Jun's condition is somehow related to his mother's insanity. Some guy named Hideo, who I think is Jun and Yoko's father, pops up from time to time as well. The whole thing wraps up with a massive bloodbath as the yakuza, tired of their dealings with this operation, set out to kill everyone involved. Too, Jun and Yoko go nuts and start killing off everyone within their reach. Prepare yourself for a rollercoaster ride the likes of which you've never seen!

It's useless to try and fashion sense out of nonsense, and "Organ" is utter nonsense as far as a linear plotline goes. This is a film that spends far more time establishing atmosphere and visceral images than worrying about such niceties as plot. I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what the movie means (see above) instead of doing what I should have done, i.e. just sitting back and absorbing the funky visuals. One of the more intriguing visuals concerns a young girl emerging from a cocoon during one of Jun's hallucinations. At least I think it's a hallucination. I started wondering if I was suffering from hallucinations while watching this film. This is weird, weird stuff. Fujiwara doesn't help matters with her wild editing techniques or odd camera angles that, although visually interesting, add further incomprehensibility to an already incomprehensible film. "Organ" is the sort of movie where you know there's a message buried under the oddness, but what that message is defies easy description. Perhaps it has something to do with domestic violence. Perhaps it has something to do with the breakdown of the emotional connections between people. Perhaps it is none of these things. Please watch the movie, if you dare, and report back here with your observations. I'd like to understand what I watched.

The only extra on Synapse's DVD of the film is a behind the scenes look at "Organ 2," which boasts a voiceover from director Kei Fujiwara that makes the sequel seem even odder than what we just watched. I liked "Organ" in some ways--a few of the visuals, the truly trippy synth score, the gore--but I felt that the whole suffered as a result of Fujiwara's insistence on eschewing plot and focusing on pure atmosphere. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for watching an avant-garde film when I popped this disc in the player. I'll give the movie three stars for atmosphere and some good gore scenes.

One of the most gruesome and horrifiying movies ever. Probably my favorite jappaneese horror, full of gore and mystery. The movie is verry confussing and lots of quick flashy sceens but you are still drawn in. Ive sceen anime that dosent even come close to some of the detailed gore and surealistic aproach. Beware though i watch a lot of horror and nothing really bothers me but i was eating when i was watching this and i have to confess the movie has a verry strong disease element to it and i couldnt eat and watch it was to gruesome. If you like tetsuo you will love this

its not going to be changing anybodys life, but there are worse ways to kill an hour and a half. a lot of similarities to cronenberg but not quite as well delivered

After all the hype, I was hoping for a hard-hitting horror film, but "ORGAN" is nothing but a comic book adventure. The effects are mostly of the "fantastic" variety (goo, slime, pus), etc. and there is nothing remotely realistic or disturbing about any of it. The most vile scene in the entire film is a shot of someone puking! Along with all the talking, bickering and fist-fights, there are countless nonsensical scenes including a woman emerging from a cocoon and an amputeed man who lives in a box with a plant....OK---next! The plot is ridiculous, there's bad dubbing (it's been looped in Japanese for some reason), it's talky and repetitive and there's absolutely no style or substance. At an interminable 105 minutes, it sorely needs an operation to have it's fat removed. Gore-hounds looking for a fix should really think twice before picking this one up! The Synapse DVD is a nice presentation and includes a "Behind the Scenes of 'Organ 2'"--(Please Spare Me! ) but, all in all, this is one organ I want amputated.