The best Hiroshi Abe’s comedy movies

Zen, an autistic teenage girl with powerful martial arts skills, gets money to pay for her sick mother Zin's treatment by seeking out all the people who owe Zin money and making them pay.

Two teenage best pals attracted to the same boy end up scrambling his life after he walks into a door and is knocked unconscious.

The story follows a Roman architect named Lucius, who is having trouble coming up with ideas. One day, he discovers a hidden tunnel underneath a spa that leads him to a modern Japanese bath house. Inspired by the innovations found there, he creates his own spa, Roma Thermae, bringing in the modern ideas to his time.

A man continually trying and failing to get his wife to stay dead; a self-absorbed ad agency creative director who comes up with one unworkably inane idea after another; a British hitman who only wants to know everyone's function in life; and an unfortunate office worker and father whose brain is left scrambled after a stage hypnotist is murdered in mid-performance.

When a private eye, a jilted bride and a mysterious stranger join forces to track down an elusive mobster, there's more than trouble in the air.

Ueda employes Yamada to go a mysterious island in search of a girl (played by Maki Horikita) that disappeared 10 years ago. They discover the island is run by Kobako Sachiko, who can appear and disappear via boxes, among other strange powers.

In ancient Rome, bathhouse architect Lucius (Hiroshi Abe) becomes famous with designing the original "thermae" (bathhouse). He receives an order to build a thermae in the colosseum to help gladiators recover from their wounds, but faces difficulties. Thus, Lucius travels again to modern day Japan through the time slip. He meets Manami (Aya Ueto) again, who is now a reporter for a magazine which covers bathroom. With the help of the flat face Japanese tribe, Lucius again designs a new thermae. Meanwhile, Emperor Hadrian (Masachika Ichimura) wants to keep the peace with the thermae, but the Senate wants to extend the land by using force. Emperor Hadrian and the Senate now have a confrontation and Rome becomes divided.

Constantly on the run from a vicious loan shark, two small-time con artists, Take and Tetsu, plan their biggest and most complex con yet in order to get revenge and retire from a life of crime. However, things get complicated when they cross paths with Mahiro, a young woman that Take inadvertently orphaned during a job gone awry years ago. Seeing Mahiro down on her luck, Take tries to relieve his guilt by taking her on as a partner, while hiding his true identity. But as his plan unfolds, Take discovers that he isn't the only one with a secret.

Defence lawyer Emi is assigned to a particularly unusual case: a man is suspected of murdering his wealthy wife, and his only alibi is a 421-year old ghost, Rokubei. At first Emi is hesitant, but when she pursues her lead she is visited by the ghost herself. And so the fun begins in the courtroom when Prosecutor Osano starts to cross examine…

Trade company employee Shinichi recommends to Naoko and Jiro to go to a beautiful place abroad. There, Naoko and Jiro meets tribal shaman and sees through her tricks. The shaman has refused to leave her place.

Hironoshin is a samurai of the Echigo-Nagaoka clan. One day, Hironoshin attends a party at a mansion in Edo where his lord, Tadakiyo is invited to recite poems. Hironoshin is asked to give his opinion and foolishly comments that the piece was plagiarized. Infuriated, Tadakiyo orders Hironoshin to live his life without honor as a ‘cat flea picker', which is in fact a pseudonym for a male prostitute. The honest and straight-shooting Hironoshin convinces himself that he has no other options, and resigns himself to live as a sex worker. Hironoshin becomes an apprentice to a flea-picker boss who encourages him, convinced that Hironoshin is exacting revenge in the guise of a prostitute.

Director Yukihiko Tsutsumi wrings laughs out of an unlikely topic -- domestic violence -- in this dark comedy about noodle-shop waitress Yukie Morita (Miki Nakatani), who puts up with the fiery temper, gambling and cruelty of her shiftless, ex-gangster boyfriend (Hiroshi Abe). But as flashbacks reveal, there's a reason behind Yukie's unconditional love for her man. Yûko Natori and Mayumi Sada also star.

Benio, a peppy tomboy, is surprised to learn that she has been secretly betrothed by her grandfather to a young officer named Shinobu Ijuin. Because of his family’s noble status, Benio must first undergo rigorous training to learn how to be a proper bride and wife before she can marry. However, because of her vivacious personality, this proves to me more challenging than anyone imagined.

Toho university hospital has established an outstanding coronary surgery team under the leadership of a up and coming, star, U.S. trained surgeon that specializes in the highly risky "Batista" procedure to shrink the size of enlarged hearts. Normally this procedure has only a 60% success rate, but "Team Batista" has achieved a run of 26 straight successes....when suddenly 3 patients in a row die on the operating table. Very disturbed, the lead surgeon requests an independent investigation. The hospital turns to Dr. Taguchi who is a specialist in psychosomatic disorders who is shocked to at the assignment because she knows nothing in particular about surgery. Assured, however, that this very lack of insider specialized knowledge is in fact the "objectivity" required, she diligently begins to investigate in her own polite, but persistent manner.

After her brother is accused of murdering four people, his sister, desperate to prove his innocence, goes to a psychic for help. The price they ask, however, is far more than she expected, and the answers they give her are nothing she could ever have imagined. And what is the FBI doing investgating a murder in Japan?

Disaster befalls a village's inhabitants every 300 years. A popular self-styled magician named Naoko (Yukie Nakama) is summoned as a deity to rid the people of their anxiety. But there are many would-be deities there, each posing as a god. When a series of bizarre incidents occur, Naoko is cornered with a genius physicist (Hiroshi Abe) and Detective Yabe (Katsuhisa Namase). Do deities actually exist, or are they charlatans?