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Japanese controlled Manchuria, 1945: Doctor Ishii has just been made
commander of the Squadron 731, a top secret prison camp where the Japanese
want to develop a particularly nasty plague virus to turn the fortunes of
war around, and to this end, Ishii and his team conduct countless inhuman
human experiments on their Chinese prisoners, including deep-freezing one man's
hands and then breaking them off, cooking a woman's hand in water and then
tearing the flesh from her bones with her fully conscious, and exposing
another man to extreme low pressure - until his guts shoot out of his ass.
For no apparent reason, nasty Doctor Ishii also throws a cat into a room
full of rats and has her eaten up by the little critters. Ichikawa is a
member of Squadron 731's youth corps, and he seems to be a model recruit:
Instead of questioning the many inhuman experiments he follows his orders
to the letter, and he even believes that the torture of the war prisoners
serves a higher cause. Yes, he even believes the propaganda that the Chinese
are lesser people. Then though, his superior Lt Kawasaki asks him to bring
a friend of his to the camp, a mute Chinese boy, and too late does
Ichikawa realize that the boy will actually become part of an experiment -
and before he can prevent is, the youngster is actually taken apart. Now
Ichikawa wants revenge, and he and his fellow recruits, who have long
suffered under Kawasaki, gang up on the man and give him a sound beating
... Word reaches Ishii that with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Japan has lost the war and surrendered. He prepares for his and his men's
return to Japan, but not before the camp is erradicated, all documents are
burnt and all prisoners are shot, so none of his achievements can
be held against him by the occupying forces ... Exploitation at its
best - or worst: The detailed showing of Japanese war atrocities (real as
well as fictional) is the main attraction of Men Behind the Sun,
with the very feeble and directionless plot only playing second fiddle. And if that's not gruesome enough, there's also a real cat eaten by rats
and rats burned alive, just for additional shock effect. This all makes a very
meagre, even pointless film, but it's loved by gorehounds nevertheless for
its sheer outrageousness. Besides outrageousness though, the film has
little to offer, and unfortunately it's not even so bad it's good, it's
just a bland exercise in shocking the audience.
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