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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126453 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-09-26
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

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

Customer Reviews

Horrific but oh so compelling
Japanese horror movies go so much further than their American counterparts -- not just in breaking obvious taboos of the screen, but in providing a story and an atmosphere that comments strongly on the contents. Case in point: "Organ".

This is one of those films that despite its repellent subject matter and ghastly imagery, is impossible to turn off. It intertwines two stories -- one about a yakuza body-parts ring and another about a police detective looking for his missing brother -- with startling results. Obviously, this is not for the weak of stomach or sensibility. But for those who can muster the courage (and who are smart enough not to eat before seeing it), "Organ" is just astonishing. It revolts, amazes, smashes taboos, and even manages to be thought-provoking all at the same time. Those of you who want to see how far you can take yourselves should consider this an indispensible addition to your collections.

Surreal Sickening Horror
David Cronenberg once said that he would like to see a "strain" of Cronenberg-like films. Well, it's here and it's mutating. Organ's combination of body horror, surrealness, and gore makes it the equivalent of a full blown color nightmare on film. I haven't seen anything that bothered me this much since....I can't even remember when. The film starts out with an abducted man being taken to a blackmarket organ shop. The strength of this scene really got to me. Vampires and zombies can be amusing no matter how gory the film but butcher shops like the one in Organ do exist and its depiction is hard to take. Kei Fujiwara then takes a direct plunge into the psycho-sexual-mutating world of a madman. Organ just gets gorier and more disturbing as it goes on. By the end I didn't know if I saw a film or a hallucination. The DVD looks and sounds very good despite the films minor budget. A 22 minute clip for Organ II is featured on the disc.

An interesting film
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.