Trash Tuesday: Robo Geisha

Noboru Iguchi’s Robo Geisha is the kind of film that exists to prove that cinema can be whatever the hell you want it to be. A geisha gets her limbs amputated and replaced with machine guns, swords, and flamethrowers, and the movie treats this as a logical plot development rather than the premise for a joke. The action sequences are genuinely skilled—practical effects, creative camera work—applied to the most deranged concept imaginable. It’s not ironic; Iguchi is dead serious about the absurdity. You watch it and realize that sometimes the difference between a masterpiece and garbage is just whether the person making it cares about the work. He clearly did, even if the work is a woman who ejaculates acid and explodes. There’s something honest about that.