Organ
Release Date - July 6, 1996
Directed by Kei Fujiwara
Starring - Kei Fujiwara, Kimihiko Hasegawa, Yosiaki Maekawa, and Kenji Nasa
When it comes to the subject of Japanese Horror (or simply J-Horror). a newcomer will hear many of the usual names when it comes to suggestions. Japanese gore or splatter horror is the same way. Any newbie to the genre will hear all too familiar names to the veteran fan. Films like Guinea Pig, Splatter: Naked Blood, Red Room, Muzan-E, Niku Daruma, and etc. One name that almost every fan of J-Gore knows is Organ. It's heralded as being one of the most graphic films of all time, and many reviewers will say that it isn't for the quaint of heart, or for those who have just eaten. It's safe to say that the film has a bit of hype around it, helped by being released as part of Synapse Films' Asian Cult Cinema Collection.
But is that hype for real? Is the film as disgusting as a lot of people make it out to be? Is it the controversial film that Synapse claims it is? And obviously, is it any good? Well, let us see.
"Freddy ain't got shit on me."
The film was written, produced, stars, and is directed by Kei Fujiwara. Fujiwara is best known for her role in Shinya Tsukamoto's cult hit Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Combined with the efforts of the Organ Vital Group, Fujiwara made the film in her first directing role. In her own words, the goal of the film was to describe the agony of somebody decaying from the inside. The film certainly does portray that goal very well. But everything else is lost because of it.
The film opens with two cops named Numata and Tosaka staking out a hospital. After a while, a man shows up and takes away a body that was laying outside of the hospital. After following the man, they come upon a hideout covered in plastic sheets. Inside, they discover what they were looking for, a ring of organ thieves. The two cops stand by and watch as the ringleader Saeki begins to perform the operation on a man to remove his organs. However, Tosaka gives their cover away when he demands that Saeki puts back in the man's organ because he is still alive. A gun battle ensues which results in Numata being knocked out, and Tosaka being taken away by the gang.
A fairly regular opening if I don't say so myself. Most cop or serial killer flicks open up in this exact same way. And from that point onward, they follow one continuing storyline. But this is Organ, so get ready for crazy ass storylines.
The first storyline involves Numata. After the failed bust, Numata became obsessed with the case to the point to where he was kicked off the force. When we the viewers meet him again, he's waking up from an apparent dream which revisits the failed bust. Ever since getting the axe from the force, he's been wandering around trying to find any lead on his missing partner, and the organ thieves he can.
This eventually ties in with storyline number two. Tosaka's brother is also a police officer, and has been trying to find the thieves himself. Like Numata, he goes around all of Japan trying to get information. At the same time, his wife is raped, and in a scene that is purely nihilistic, after being raped she stands up and pees on the mattress where she had been laying down. So between this and Numata's crazy ass, the brother has a lot to worry about.Storyline number three is probably the most interesting one, considering it's about our main character Saeki. In between stealing organs, Saeki works at an all girls school as a biology teacher. Saeki leads a somewhat normal life there, he holds private lessons for his students, and brushes off one of the fellow teacher/campus guard's insults at him that accuse him of being a pervert. So pretty much, a normal life in any all girls' school.
Well it turns out things aren't so normal. Saeki actually murders the students who utilize his private session service to conduct his own experiments. You see, Saeki likes performing experiment's on a person's body and organs, mainly trying to see if they can live without an organ or two. It's during this realization as the viewer that we find out what happened to Tosaka. Saeki has kept him in his lab within his school office, and has performed experiments on him. Those experiments seem to be working, as he's still alive, and covered with leaves.
But Saeki's story isn't quite done yet. Because well, Saeki apparently operated on himself at some point, and he's beginning to rot away. The reason he did it to himself is never made very clear. But it suggested that it was because of an event which happened to him and his sister when they were kids. Saeki's mom went a little crazy, and bit off Saeki's genitals and blinded his sister in one eye. Eventually, the two siblings kill their mother, and leave her out for display in a forest somewhere. Oh, and on top of all of this, Saeki starts to see women hatch from cocoons.
The fourth and final storyline that ties all of this nonsense together involves Yoko, Saeki's sister and co-head of the organ thief ring. Yoko and Saeki have been working for the yakuza, and the yakuza is pretty much starting to tire of their practices, as they believe they're getting too dangerous and unhinged (shocker right). There isn't really much to this storyline, but it helps combine everything for the finale.
Speaking of the finale, let's get to it. The grande finale pretty much combines all four stories into one insane bloody mess. I say bloody because it gets violent, quick. Tosaka's brother is pretty much close on the heels of the organ thieves, and walks into a bar. Well turns out that bar is filled with yakuza members, and thus members of the organ ring. They rough him up, but he eventually escapes and beats quite a few up. While this is going on, Yoko gets trapped in a tunnel with a yakuza member herself, and has to fight him off, which ends pretty violently.
Now back at the school, Saeki who is really starting to rot is taken into a classroom by the teacher that's been harassing him. She harasses him some more before opening up his shirt, seeing this big glob of flesh on his side. Intrigued by this, she pulls out a blade and cuts into it, releasing some puss. Apparently, this turns her on, and she requests that Saeki has sex with her. Well Numata gets to the school, and comes to a window in which he gets to see Saeki and the teacher have gross, pus and blood covered sex.
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| "Ohhhh Saeki, please, release your fluid on me, it makes me so horny." |
After they finish having sex, Saeki starts to relax a little bit. But Numata busts in and starts attacking him. This carries on for a bit until Yoko shows up, as well as man Numata had been staying with. Things get even more out of hand which ends up killing both Numata, and the old man. Yoko in the end takes Saeki away, and the movie ends with Saeki sitting in a new office. A woman brings him some food, and the two chat, the camera zooming in on a slightly cracked door, with green light flooding out.
Fujiwara definitely capture the decaying aspect well, because this film just decays the longer it carries on. It is so mind fucking crazy that it definitely requires a second or third watching, as well as looking up the film's story online to fully grasp what it's all about. Even with that knowledge, it's still a head scratching film.
The story itself is pretty interesting, but it's just muddled with so much extra crap that it gets tedious, and dare I say boring. By the end of the film, you're relieved that it's over because it feels like an eternity.
Organ in itself is a pretty downbeat film, meant to make the viewer feel, weird. The environment where the story takes place is depressing, the characters themselves are depressing both in appearance and in how they act, and yeah, it's just depressing. But this is what the movie was trying to achieve, so you have to give it a few points for that.But it loses points for how disgusting it is. The effects are top notch, I'll give it that. But they'll leave you sitting there feeling dirt and grossed out. It's not like a "what the fuck did I just watch" gross out like you'd get from the early Guinea Pig movies, but more a "God, that, did that just really happen?" type of gross out.
But...the movie does have it's good parts. For one, the visuals are really good. For Fujiwara's first directing duty, the film looks really good. The visuals are dynamic, and the way it's all edited gives the film it's odd feel. This is also helped and enhanced by the industrial soundtrack. These two things combined make the film a weird experience when being watched, and gives the movie it's atmosphere. I will admit though, at times it did give me a bit of headache, and the insane editing doesn't help the story a whole lot. And the acting is decent.
But my biggest gripe of the film, the thing that makes this movie bad for me is...there's not enough fucking organ harvesting! When I first read about this movie, it sounded damn interesting. A movie completely about people who take out organs? Sign me up. Not to mention Saeki's appearance on the DVD cover and in the early moments of the film. That poncho and mask just makes my horror mind happy. But you only get to seem him dressed like that in two scenes, the two scenes when you get to see organs being taken out. I know I sound like a sicko, but that's what a lot of information promised that I'd see. So obviously, I'm disappointed.
All in all, Organ is a very mixed bag. It's good in the fact that it captures the original goal of the film so well. That grossness, frantic editing, and depression feel makes the movie what it is supposed to be according to Kei Fujiwara. The music is good, and the effects are excellent as far I'm concerned. But these things are also the movie's downfall. The frantic editing will confuse most viewers, the disgusting feel will indeed gross viewers out who aren't used to this type of stuff in film, and the downbeat feel makes the film all around unpleasant viewing.
It's in the end up to the viewer to decide whether the film is a work of J-Gore excellence, or a piece of shit. It's fully a movie that's open to one's own opinion. Mine? It's decent for what it is. As J-Gore, it's pretty good. Is it the insane controversial movie that it's hyped up to be? Well, yes and no. It's definitely gory in a body transformation way, but when compared to other films within the genre, it's not as controversial or crazy. Once again, it varies person to person. It has it's pros, but they are outweighed by the cons. So for me at least, it's more bad then good. But hey, it isn't the worst $2.00 I ever spent.
Strangely enough though, there was apparently a sequel, called Organ 2. 20 minutes of footage were released, and are included on the Synapse DVD with Kei Fujiwara giving a completely English commentary over the footage. However, the film was never released for unknown reasons. Judging from the footage available, Organ 2 seems to have nothing to do with the first film. If Organ is completely out there, I don't think I even want to know how out there Organ 2 is.
C +
*Images courtesy of Google and Youtube*
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