Noboru Iguchi Movies

Twenty-six horror directors collaborate on an anthology film where each filmmaker directs a segment focusing on a death based on a letter in the alphabet. Among the directors involved are A Serbian Film's Srdjan Spasojevic, The House of the Devil's Ti West, and Black Death's Christopher Smith. Drafthouse Films and Timpson Films produce. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Talented young martial artist Megumi wrestles with the guilt of her bullied sister's suicide while joining her friends on a journey deep into the woods, where they encounter the nefarious Dr. Tanaka, who conducts gruesome experiments on the living dead. Later, as Dr. Tanaka attempts to make Megumi and friends his latest test subjects, the desperate young woman uses the dual power of karate and flatulence in order to defeat her demented captor. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A teenage girl takes on the powers that be who have plans for her and her friends in this over-the-top sci-fi action yarn from the filmmaking team of Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Tak Sakaguchi. Rin (Yumi Sugimoto) has always felt like an outcast among her classmates and peers, and as she's about to turn sixteen, she finds out why -- while her mother (Maiko Ito) is human, her dad (Kanji Tsuda) is a Hiruko, a race of mutant creatures whose bodies transform themselves in strange ways and can sprout weapons at will. Defense Minister Koshimizu (Naoto Takenaka) has launched a crusade to eliminate the Hirukos in the name of public safety, but Rin's father tells her of an underground Hiruko alliance who are fighting for their right to survive, and after the death of her parents, Rin makes her way to a training camp for young Hirukos. Rin, who now has long blades where her fingers used to be, teams up with fellow teenage warriors Rei (Yuko Takayama), Yoshie (Suzuka Morita), Sachie (Cay Izumi) and Chiako (Naoi Nagano), all of whom have unique bodily weapons of their own, as they set out to take down Koshimizu. Sento Shojo: Chi No Tekkamen Densetsu) (aka Mutant Girls Squad) received its North American premiere at the 2010 New York Asian Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Two beautiful sisters become mechanized killing machines in this over-the-top Japanese horror-comedy. Yoshie (Aya Kiguchi) is a lovely but shy girl who has spent all her life playing second fiddle to her big sister Kikue (Hitomi Hasebe). Kikue has become the most popular hostess at a local geisha house, while Yoshie is stuck doing the cleaning and suffering unflattering comparisons to her sister. Both Yoshie and Kikue fall under the sway of Hikaru Kageno (Saitoh Takumi), heir to a valuable metal foundry who has developed an insane but ingenious secret plan to turn geishas into high-tech robotic assassins in a bid to take over the world. The sisters leave a bloody trail in their wake as they do Kageno's bidding, but the long-simmering rivalry between the sisters comes to a boil when Yoshie refuses to kill a handful of senior citizens and turns on her master, as well as her sister who remains loyal to Kageno. RoboGeisha was directed by Noboru Iguchi, who previously pondered the plight of females turned into robots in 2008's The Mechanical Girl. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Machine Girl director Noboru Iguchi returns to the helm for this tale of a trash-talking, hard-fighting biker's son who's tough on the inside, despite the fact that he looks like a pop princess on the outside. Sukeban may look like your typical schoolgirl, but cross his path and he'll show you just how tough he can really be. Relentlessly teased by his classmates, short-fused Sukeban never hesitates to fight back. As a result, he's expelled from every school in the region. In a flash of genius, Sukeban's conflicted biker father makes the decision to dress his outwardly feminine son as a girl and enroll him at an all-girls high school. Immediately after arriving at his new school, the gender conflicted boy is forced to contend with such formidable gangs as the No Bra Club, the Pantyhose Club, and the dreaded Full Frontal League. An outrageous parody of the schoolgirl fetish sub-genre, Sukeban Boy pulls out all the stops to deliver a cinematic blast of weirdness the likes of which most viewers have never experienced. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi