Synopsis
Your Kidney or Your Life!
A speeding ambulance abducts three beautiful young women to a sinister medical center where someone is making a killing selling healthy human organs on the black market.
B.O.R.N.
1989 Directed by Ross Hagen
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Alternative Titles
Merchants of Death, Mutazioni Genetiche, Body Organ Replacement Network, Mutazioni genetiche, Доноры
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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USAR
Releases by Country
USA
26 Oct 1989
- TheatricalR
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"The whole world is a stinkin' toilet waitin' to be flushed."
Women Film Editors #54: Diana Friedberg
Russ Tamblyn drives an ambulance around LA to snatch kids off the street and harvest their organs for the black market. Come on, you know you want to see that!
Director/screenwriter/star Ross Hagen is so flat as our hero that he might as well be cardboard underneath his cowboy hat, but on the other hand B.O.R.N. (aka Merchants of Death) gives you P.J. Soles in the oversized wig to end all wigs, part of Ron Howard's family (dad Rance and brother Clint), deranged surgeon William Smith (hearing him say "oh my God, this organ is infected with cirrhosis" and "shut uuuuup" in his…
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Russ Tamblyn thinks he's a Dick Tracy villain in this and it elevates the whole damn thing.
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I was expecting a run of the mill horror film, but got a wild ride of an action movie. The first scene got so weird, so fast that I was immediately all in. Written and directed by Ross Hagen, who also stars as a rancher who adopts a few troubled teen girls...who get kidnapped. One side of the story is the search for the missing girls. The other side is William Smith building a network of slimeballs to assist in black market organs, with the help of PJ Soles. Naturally, these stories intersect and there's a scrambling shootout, car stunts and an airborne stuntman on fire! The cast is b-movie royalty, with Hoke Howell (who also wrote the script with…
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Wildly stacked cast in this Ross Hagen project: Hagen himself, P.J. Soles, Hoke Howell, Russ Tamblyn (leaning in hard), Clint & Rance Howard, and more.
The one-sheet (for video stores I assume?) is moody and atmospheric, the videotape makes it look like a gnarly horror movie, but it's kind of neither - more like a thriller with some action beats in the final third.
Something about B.O.R.N. didn't grab me - it's not bad, I love the hook to the movie and it has some really good moments (it opens strong but takes a while to get really good tbh.)
Tamblyn is on something here because they are all-in, over-the-top wild, but that wasn't enough on its own for me? Definitely not the fiasco you'd expect from some of the 1 star reviews, that's for sure.
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watching this, squinting my weak blind eyes every time a new person appears, asking myself: ..is that... russ tamblyn (really committing to the role)?? is that.... clint howard (also really committing to the role, this 1 of sniffing and molesting unconscious women)?? is that .........rance howard (just being there)?? ..is that pj soles (in a crazy wig? is that natural 80s hair? hard to say, who can tell!)?? what the hell is going on here? there's so many people in this and theyre all going for it but its not "good" which is sad because illegal organ harvesting in the movies should be!! it's also not "bad" it's just boring and a testament as to why u cant rely on…
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this movie made me feel like a kid again!!!!!!!! you know when every movie for grownups looked grey and boring and felt 8000 hours long
tons of amazing ppl in this - hoke howell!! russ tamblyn!! - and it seems like they REALLY BELIEVED IN IT and its SO BORING and SUCKS SO BAD
also this is the 2nd movie off my halloween watchlist thats not really horror which i guess is my fault for assuming movies where clint howard and pj soles are harvesting organs would be but no
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An inspired miss that feels like it's on the verge of a paranoid cinematic revenge classic, only it meanders around a bit too much and ends up feeling like the cinematic equivalent of a warm flat beer. You can taste what it should've been, but it's not enjoyable anymore.
That said it's not a total bust. Ocassionally the cheapness manages to elevate the grit and horror of the organ harvesting cabal, but it also undercuts it. Rough around the edges here means single flubbed cuts stay in with ocassional cameos by the boom mic. The score also feels like stock music here and there, which will almost always result in a deducted point or two. -
Russ Tamblyn goes *FULL TAMBLYN* in his baddie portrayal which left me bummed he didn’t get more roles like this. It’s beautiful.
The plot is interesting enough about a underground organ harvesting outfit in LA, but the way Ross Hagen chose to tell it is hilariously dumb, definitely entertaining.
Also, enjoyed seeing the human bicep William Smith play a surgeon with Clint Howard as the creepy orderly.
But the real standout performance is from a baby doll that makes it’s way into nearly every scene.
The movie would have already been shwing for me, but then the last 15 minutes you get a bad ass chase scene with excellent stunt work, and then a guy kicking another dude’s ass with his belt buckle while the guy getting whipped tries not to cry. That really pushed it into Tarzan territory for me.
Master class of independent vanity project on a budget. Ross Hagen’s opus. -
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"The whole world is a stinkin' toilet waiting to be flushed."
When a sneering Russ Tamblyn slapped a little kid for calling him an asshole, I knew I was in for something special.
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No one's motivations made any sense, the plot seemed to be trying to be ultra-realistic, but it simultaneously didn't seem to be rooted in any reality whatsoever. The only character worth noting here is Ross Hagen's Buck Cassidy, but even he seems like a horrid caricature of the Western Worried Pa.
