The Hot Spot Rating
Organ (1996)
Cast: Kei Fujiwara, Kimihiko Hasegawa, Yosiaki Maekawa, Kenji Nasa
Director: Kei Fujiwara
Nutshell: A truly grim Japanese shocker about the organ trade goes awry.
“A truly demented and hallucinatory descent into medical-industrial nightmare.” — cult horror retrospective
“One of the nastiest and most fascinating Japanese underground horror films of the 1990s.” — underground Asian cinema commentary
“ORGAN is less a movie than a prolonged fever dream soaked in rust, blood and industrial grime.” — cyberpunk horror write-up
“A grimy collision of body horror, police thriller and apocalyptic nightmare.” — Japanese cult cinema review
“Relentlessly oppressive, grotesque and hypnotic.” — horror zine commentary
“One of the great overlooked artifacts of Japanese splatter cyber-horror.” — cult horror commentary
“ORGAN feels spiritually connected to Tetsuo and early Tsukamoto, but even filthier.” — Japanese extreme cinema write-up
This grim Japanese shocker dealing with the dark world of human organ smuggling is difficult to gauge, not so much because it is in a foreign language but because of the style in which the film has been constructed. It managed to attain quite a reputation on the independent cinema network as shocking and genuinely repellent.
The movie is mayhem from beginning to end, made in a semi-Blair Witch style with jaggy moving cameras and amateur acting and effects. The plot is not easy to follow, involving a notorious gang that kidnaps people off the streets, hacks them up and then sells the parts for a nice profit. There is much knife-wielding, scalpel carving and gut-wrenching, enough to keep the most hardened splatter fan reasonably content. The director doesn’t shy away from shoving the gore right up the audience’s nose, like it or not.
The film has a meagre budget and an almost experimental feel – the filmmakers would no doubt like to use the term Avant Garde but perhaps that may be a bit too flattering. For those who are into their pigeon-holing, this film could be termed a Manga-inspired Post Punk Horror, which includes a streak of the most bitter black humour and a humungous amount of splatter and gore. The movie certainly has the power to shock and is quite reminiscent of Cronenberg at his most bizarre. Organ contains sequences which seem to be influenced by Shivers and appear to be a nod to Cronenberg, the master of urban horror.
Unfortunately, there is little or no element of suspense, and the film unfurls more like a bloody gang warfare movie than a horror suspense movie, but clearly, tension and suspense were not what the makers were aiming for. It is shock tactics and a shocking content matter which the filmmakers hope will carry the day, and it does to some extent, but when the movie needs to move up a gear, it merely lapses into shootout territory.
Strictly for genre addicts, gore hounds and curiosity hunters looking for something that is a little out of the ordinary. This movie will undoubtedly satisfy the last category. Sadly, after considerable hype and expectations, the film became a major disappointment.
