Organ - (1996)
Directed by Kei Fujiwara
Written by Kei Fujiwara
Starring Kenji Nasa, Tokao Komoto, Kei Fujiwara
& Kimihiko Hasegawa
There's no doubt about it,
Organ is one of the most confusing and bewildering films out there, and one with a lot of oozing pus, blood and goo swirling in the narrative tangle it weaves and knots. It owes something of a debt to David Cronenberg's body horror catalogue - at one moment even referencing
The Fly directly. If you keep up, there's logic to all of it, but you could very much be forgiven for losing yourself, then losing track of the plot, and finding out at various stages that you have absolutely no idea of what is going on. The choppy and uneven editing doesn't help matters much, and as much as writer/director Kei Fujiwara's film succeeds with atmosphere and horror, everything falls down in an awful manner in that 'coherent flow' department. There seems to have been a shortage of expertise working on this film, but surprisingly, it has it's dedicated fans - especially among those who really like J-horror.
The film starts out with a stakeout - Numata (Kenji Nasa) and Tosaka (Tokao Komoto) are keeping an eye on an area where bodies are being dropped off, collected and farmed for their organs. Soon enough, a live one (in a badly beaten up condition) shows up, is taken, and the two cops are on the trail. They discover a warehouse where surgeons are removing organs, but are discovered and brought undone - Tosaka disappears, and Numata flees, ending up off the case, an alcoholic, and basically living on the streets. Numata never gives up searching for Tosaka, and the missing partner is also being searched for by his twin brother. Everything leads to the Yakuza and a strange pair of characters - Yoko (played by director Kei Fujiwara) and Soeki (Kimihiko Hasegawa). Soeki is a research scientist, and also teaches - providing him with ample young ladies to brutally murder in Ripper fashion. Soeki also likes to do biological experiments - on himself, and Tosaka, whose limbs have been amputated, and body covered in sores. Soeki's sister, the aforementioned Yoko, is the muscle of the pair, and simply wishes Soeki would put an end to his murder hobby, for it attracts unwanted attention. Will Numata and Tosaka's brother find Tosaka and put an end to this reign of terror?
Well, not everything is as simple as that. There is a sub-plot concerning Numata's family, and at one stage Numata's wife appears to be raped by someone who is either Yakuza, a cop or both - which seems awfully disconnected from the story. Further confusing matters is the fact that Numata's wife is keeping someone captive in her bath tub - and I have no idea who it is. Numata's kids just want their dad to come home, and otherwise be left alone. In this film, being left alone is all someone could ever want. The bath-tub man is captured by Tosaka's twin brother, and for some reason Yoko is also after him - as is the Yakuza. The film is very short on explanations. It is so easy to get lost, and if you do you simply start getting the impression that the focus was strongly on horror effects, and much less on constructing a coherent story from start to finish for the audience. There's also another random guy who deals with the Yakuza, Yoko and Soeki and there is a lack of introduction or exposition, but he shows up at certain stages, including the end, and again - I have no idea who he is, or what his place is in the story. The confusion is
Organ's big drawback. At one stage taking notes, all I could do was draw a big - "WTF" to remind me of the mental agony.
Horror-wise, the film succeeds to a degree that keeps it from becoming an absolute waste of time - in fact, the horror and mirage-like moments of fantasy create an atmosphere that wouldn't be out of place in a classic film of it's genre. I was surprised to find an enthusiastic community of
Organ fans who love this film. Brian Thomas and his Psychotronic Film Society hold it in high regard, although admit to the confusion, and Patrick Galloway's Asia Shock spends an appreciable amount of analysis on it, with considerable relish. It's not the kind of film I'd waste a lot of money on, but I'd suggest that a J-Horror collection might be slightly deficiant without it. I thought the brown oozing from the tumor-like grotesque growths on Soeki was just the right kind of disgusting for a film like this, and in one fantasy a girl Soeki has just murdered slowly emerges from a cocoon in a fantasy of his, and the effects were nothing short of terrific (and practical, which I love) - in turn, this girl announces to us that she "has caterpillars" inside of her, reaches into her body, and starts removing long sausage-like slimy organs from it. If only it was more coherent - I'd be scoring it highly.
Organ began life as a stage-play - produced by our writer/director Kei Fujiwara for her Organ Vitale theater group. She'd had a break-out moment, starring in Shin'ya Tsukamoto's much-heralded
Tetsuo: The Iron Man and finding fame, seems to have branched off into many areas. The play actually found sustained success, and as such that is how it found it's way being written-up by Fujiwara in screenplay fashion. Perhaps this is where things went a little awry, and I suggest that this could have been worked on to really iron out any deficiencies. This film simply doesn't have to be as all-over-the-place as it is - I can appreciate confusion adding to an atmosphere of chaos and violence, but this doesn't really appear to be the intention, aside from occasional trippy hallucinatory moments. Everything else is working in it's favour, including the dissonant soundtrack which is an aural nightmare as much as what we
see in
Organ is a visual one. It's hard to credit specific individuals though, because the crew hasn't been very well translated into English in most places.
So, overall, you don't get the impression that
Organ is one of the most "finished" films out there - it feels like it was edited under pressure and in a hurry. Everything that happens is unexpected, which is sometimes good - but sometimes feels much more random than it really is. When characters intuit things, or imagine them, it further muddies that water. Even the notes I wrote while watching it are more disparate and strange than they usually are. "Butterflies. Cocoons. Sex. Vegetables.
Dr Who." I can't even make sense out of my own notes - synapses firing out of order as I was mystified, bemused and perplexed. I simply cannot deny though, that I also liked it, and if I was still a horror-loving kid I might have even loved it. It has that
Eraserhead feel to it - while at the same time being very much grounded and set in the real world. I think Tosaka is somehow being connected to plant life in Soeki's experiment - but aside from that, much of what happens in this film can happen in real life.
There are some interesting themes and ideas woven into the fabric of this film. One is ethics, and more specifically, Numata's penchant for sacrificing his partners to move investigations forward - which he admits at one stage is a very effective mode of police work. Another is the more commonly explored one of scientific ethics and experimentation which continues to this day - with a very interesting Frankenstein in his laboratory - one who has a lust for murder and mutilation. Included with all of this are flashbacks to the childhood of Yoko and Soeki, with the latter's mother attempting to castrate the boy when she goes into a psychotic rage (this is also how Yoko ends up losing her eye - fighting her mother off Soeki - so that she appears throughout with an eye patch.) A traumatic childhood has created a pair of monsters, and the inner psychological trauma eventually shows up in a physical manifestation of ugliness in Soeki, tumors which grow out of proportion as his mental states becomes more agitated.
What am I to do with a film which fails so badly in some areas, but excels so pleasingly in others? A blood-stained J-horror Cronenberg-inspired confusion - with atmosphere and fans who love it in an unironic way. A film you really shouldn't watch while eating dinner. A film that should always be labelled "For fans of the genre" and then further labelled "a certain kind of fan of the genre". As I stand in the stadium, fist out and quivering, trying to desperately decide if I'm to give a thumbs up or down - and the spectators are baying for blood - I'm swayed this way and that by it's good points and bad points. It's fans and detractors. Perhaps, it's an interesting failure which isn't a complete joy to watch - but one which has enjoyable aspects to it, and had great potential. The one thing I can say for sure is that I'm glad I was led down a path which had me watch it, and don't regret giving it my time. In 2005 Kei Fujiwara wrote and directed her only other film -
Ido, which is apparently very graphic and just as disappointing. I'm going to check it out.
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