The best Ben Hiura’s movies

A guilt-haunted samurai warrior attempts to stop a massacre taking place.

A pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin.

A comet crashes into a Japanese forest and a group of mighty ninjas must fight a group of killer Aliens before they reach their village and kill everyone.

In 1604, Miyamoto Musashi attacked the Yoshioka family at their dojo and defeated master Seijūrō and his younger brother Denshichirō in two duels. To save their reputation, the Yoshioka family decides to fight back with all 100 family members and hire an additional 300 samurai. Now Musashi sets out to defeat all 400 enemies in his most famous battle.

Ryuzo and his 7 former henchmen are all retired yakuza, but they now live as regular old men. One day, Ryuzo becomes the victim of a phishing fraud. He calls his 7 men together to reform their society.

In an unknown place and unknown time, a lone Samurai known only as Grave thirsts for the ultimate battle.

Charged with insubordination for punching a superior, Sergeant Kosugi is shipped to China in the last desperate days of the Second World War. His commander, Captain Sakuma, is vicious and dictatorial. Sakuma places Kosugi in charge of training for combat what once was the military band. Kosugi must somehow prepare his inept soldiers for the rigors of combat.

In a small backwater in Northern Japan, self-assured Shigeru and shy Shinji are best friends since childhood. Shigeru, an aspiring hobby painter, adores the seemingly unapproachable flutist Haruyo Kikuchi from afar, and secretly paints her portrait for a national contest. His friend Shinji has a crush on Hitomi, the daughter of the local grocery shop, who, for her part, likes Shigeru since he once cared for her in a critical situation, while they were kids. When Shigeru learns that his shy friend doesn't dare to talk to Hitomi, he decides to help him, asking Hitomi to go out with Shinji. But when Hitomi admits her love for him, Shigeru's youthful hormones are beginning to run wild, with a disastrous outcome.

At the end of WWII, Japanese doctor Akagi searches for the cure for hepatitis in the prisoner-of-war camp.

Utamaro was an artist who lived in Edo (which was later to become modern-day Tokyo) in the late 18th century. This film, which has a complex and wide-ranging storyline, recreates the world of that time, as it appeared in Utamaro's paintings.

A nerdy young college instructor named Shinji Kikyo returns home one day to find himself the target of a mad assassin. Surviving somewhat miraculously, he fends off other assassins and with the help of reporter Keiko Tsurumaki and car mechanic Bill Otomo, eventually discovering that a "population control" association is really an assassination squad led by Shogo Mizorogi, who has been training patients of a mental asylum to become killers.

Yasuaki Kurata plays a masked ring brawler who is out for revenge against an evil, megalomaniac entrepreneur played by Japan's most reliable bad guy of the '70's, Masashi Ishibashi.

A taut, economical policier-cum-gang-hostage thriller.