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Noboru Iguchi is a director and screenwriter. He was born in 1969 and he began his career in the 1990s as a director of porno films. His “Kurushime-san” of 1997, which combined horror and black comedy, revealed his interest in extreme genre cinema. The titles of his next films confirmed this passion – his filmography contains “A Larva to Love”, “Cat-Eyed Boy”, the famous “The Machine Girl” about a girl with an arm replaced with a machine gun, “Zombie Ass” and “Karate-Robo Zaborgar”. Starting with “Flowers of Evil” his filmography started taking a more “serious” turn, although the extremity never abandoned a filmmaker that now counts more than 70 titles as a director.

On the occasion of the release of his two latest films, “Tales of Bliss and Heresy” and “Idol Never Dies”, we speak with him about his personal trauma, the messages he wanted to convey, idols, Bataille, and many other topics.

“Tales...

Combining the horrific with the grotesque and the sensual in order to both entertain and to present various comments in extreme fashion has always been one of the knacks of Japanese cinema, with filmmakers like Takashi Miike, Sion Sono and Tetsuya Mariko among others having thrived in this approach repeatedly. Noboru Iguchi proves that he is also a member of the “group”, with his latest work “Tales of Bliss and Heresy” an omnibus of three different parts.

“Tales of Bliss and Heresy” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative

The first one is titled “Painful Shadows” and focuses on the interactions between two office workers, a man and a woman, with the former being the higher up. His behavior, however, is creepy to say the least, since he peeks on his colleague, makes snide comments about her writing, and even teases her regarding food. It turns out, though,...

Syfy and Korean monsters, machine-gun-toting Japanese schoolgirls, and some re-releases are the topics of this week's horror titles.

While Dinoshark (directed by Kevin O'Neill and starring Eric Balfour, Iva Hasperger, Aaron Diaz, Humberto Busto, Roger Corman) and Mongolian Death Worm (directed by Steven R. Monroe and starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Victoria Pratt) were on cable TV only recently, they're already here on home video. On top of that Chawz, the "Jaws with a wild boar" offering from Korea, and the hilariously unbelievable Machine Girl are vying for your purse strings all way from the Far East.

For the classically inclined, re-releases of Roger Corman's The Terror with a young Jack Nicholson, The Dorm That Dripped Blood, El Topo, as well as Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13 will keep you company this week.

The Terror

Directed by Roger Corman

Starring Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff, Sandra Knight

In one of his first-ever roles,...

Director Atsuhiro Yamada has uploaded a trailer for his 2008 film Happy Ending, which will be getting its theatrical release at Shibuya Uplink X on June 26, 2010. Yamada was able to make this film through a scholarship he received for winning the Grand Prix of the 2007 Yamagata International Movie Festival with his independent short film "My First Kiss". Happy Ending has since been screened at the 2009 Austin Film Festival and the 2010 Oxford Film Festival, winning an audience award at the former.

Chances are if you've seen many Japanese movies over the past decade or so, you'll vaguely recognize the film's star, Nahana, as she tends to get lots of small but memorable roles. She was one of the rooftop girls in Sion Sono's "Suicide Club", she played the pair of legs featured in the Hagane segment of the 2006 horror anthology film "Unholy Women", and she fried Minase Yashiro's tempura-battered arm in...

“The Machine Girl” was always destined for cult fandom due to the simple fact that it revolves around a cute Japanese schoolgirl with a machinegun arm, who goes out for revenge against the bullies and yakuza who killed her brother. With an unbeatable premise such as this, the quality of the film itself is to an extent a moot point, though thankfully director Noboru Iguchi (“Sukeban Boy”) does put in some effort and the end result is a cut above most other low budget Japanese gore fests. Originally released in 2008, the film has unsurprisingly proved massively popular with fans of Asian exploitation cinema, and now finally arrives on region 2 DVD via Cine Asia Extreme. The plot follows a schoolgirl called Ami (Minase Yashiro), who takes care of her younger brother after their parents are framed for murder and commit suicide. Although Ami has sworn off violence, when a particularly nasty...

Trailer for The Machine Girl Written and directed by Noboru Iguchi (Sukeban Boy) and starring former Japanese porn star Asami (Sukeban Boy) alongside hot, up-and-coming newcomer Minase Yashiro.

Boasting more arterial spray than any gorehound could ever wish for, this fun celebration of gratuitous violence features everything from graphic, bloody dismemberment, decapitation, necrophilia and yakuza ninjas to chainsaw- and machine gun-wielding girls, a flying guillotine and – the showstopper of them all – a flesh ripping drill bra!

The Machine Girl is released on UK DVD and Blu-Ray 18th May 2009. The Us edition has been available since last year.

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tags: blu-ray, comedy, cult film, dvd, gore, horror, japanese film, region 2, trailer...

The Machine Girl, is the debut release from Cine Asia's new imprint, Cine Asia Extreme. This super gory and hilariously over-the-top Japanese exploitation splatterfest has had genre movie fans in an anticipatory frenzy ever since its amazing trailer debuted on the internet.

Written and directed by Noboru Iguchi (Sukeban Boy) and starring former Japanese porn star Asami (Sukeban Boy) alongside hot, up-and-coming newcomer Minase Yashiro, The The Machine Girl is the ‘grindhouse' movie Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof) and Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) can only dream of making. Boasting more arterial spray than any gorehound could ever wish for, this fun celebration of gratuitous violence features everything from graphic, bloody dismemberment, decapitation, necrophilia and yakuza ninjas to chainsaw- and machine gun-wielding girls, a flying guillotine and – the showstopper of them all – a flesh ripping drill bra!

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tags: blu-ray, comedy, cult film, dvd, gore, horror, japanese film...

Coming on DVD June 3 from Tokyo Shock is Machine Girl (trailer), the film that looks so insanely bloody I want it Now. Ami (Minase Yashiro, in her film debut) is a tough but otherwise average high school girl, trying to lead a normal life. Her world comes crashing down when her brother and his friend are killed by ruthless bullies. As Ami tracks down the ringleader, she is surprised to discover the bullies' association with a sinister ninja yakuza family. When she goes after her revenge, she soon finds herself in over her head and minus her left arm. Barely surviving, Ami escapes and seeks out shelter from two kindly garage mechanics. They take pity on her, fitting her with a high-powered machine gun where her arm used to be. She then teams up with the chainsaw-wielding mother (Asami) of her brother's slain friend and together they unleash an unholy,...