Organ (1996)

Numata and his partner Tosaka go undercover to catch a ring of black market organ dealers. Things go wrong and Numata is forced to abandon Tosaka who is taken hostage by Jun, the doctor who performed the organ removals. Numata is thrown off the police force but continues to search for his partner even though he is believed to be dead. Shinji, Tosaka’s brother, is also unconvinced of his brother’s demise and searches on his own.

Meanwhile, Jun has returned to his day job of a science teacher in a high school. He has cut off all of Tosaka’s limbs and keeps him in a closet in his office. Yoko (Kei Fujiwara), Jun’s sister and leader of the organ stealing ring, brings her brother drugs to help him ease the pain of a horrible infection growing on his stomach. As Numata and Shinji get closer to finding Jun and Yoko, things begin to go wrong for everyone. The yakuza want control over the organ stealing ring and Yoko will fight to the death to protect her and her brother’s interests. Everything comes to a head when Shinji runs afoul with the yakuza and Yoko while Numata finds where Jun has been hiding.

This weird and often confusing film is bloodier, gorier, and funkier than even its title suggests. Kei Fujiwara (who played the woman in Tetsuo – The Iron Man) directs and stars in a film soaked with putrescence and populated with sleazy and violent characters. The dominant theme of Organ is the obsession and repulsion with the physical form and it is explored thoroughly. There’s even room for a not so subtle addiction motif.

The performances are mixed but most of the cast serves the weirdness of the film quite well. Some characters wander around like zombies while others are one-sided seedy caricatures. Fujiwara is great as the one-eyed, organ stealing, and yakuza slaying, Yoko, who unfortunately, doesn’t get nearly enough screentime. Unfortunately, the pace of Organ is frustratingly slow in places resting too much on its artsy laurels. Not that the film isn’t effectively moody or tense but the slow spots are many. It’s hard not to imagine how much this would benefit from tighter editing. Another problem is that the film introduces too many characters and it’s easy to get confused.

The effects are gruesome and squirm inducing. The rotting flesh and the pus should be enough to keep any gorehound happy throughout the running time. There are also some insanely bloody moments guaranteed to please. The scene where Yoko is blinded in one eye and Jun is nearly castrated by their psychotic mother is particularly brutal, especially since the characters are children when this takes place. Organ will not be every viewer’s cup of tea. Even fans of extreme Asian cinema may be put out by the slow pace and the artiness of the proceedings. However, this is a prime example of oozing, dripping, and pus-soaked Japanese horror with absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel.