Hak taai yeung 731 a.k.a. Men Behind The Sun : Camp 731

Directed by Tun Fei Mou
cast: Hsu Gou, Tie Long Jin, Zhaohua Mei, Zhe Quan

This is considered by many to be one of the most disturbing films of all time. Salo and In a Glass Cage may have it beat but it's pretty damn close.

It's a big budget production of the real life Japanese squadron 731 who performed war time atrocities on the Chinese Citizens during World War 2. Not strictly a women in prison film, but there are enough heinous things done to women to warrant an entry. One ghastly experiment involving ice and fire will never leave your mind. The attempt being made by the filmmakers is to expose the concentration camp events performed by the Japanese in their race to gain more knowledge than their Nazi allies. I guess the Japanese felt that once the two countries controlled the world there would be an inevitable Nazi vs Jap showdown. The problem with this film is the atrocities on screen send things into an exploitation area similar to Herschell Gordon Lewis' 2,000 Maniacs defeating any moral message whatsoever!

The film is structured around a series of climatic gore sequences ranging from a man having his intestinal tract blown out his anus to hundreds of actual rats set on fire! Knowing how sensitive the Chinese government is about the war crimes that took place, I doubt that director Tun Fei Mou was attempting to make this an exploitation film, but like Deadato's Cannibal Holocaust (an attack on the filmmakers of Africa Blood and Guts), Men Behind the Sun's message is over shadowed by the graphic violence. To this day the United States and Japanese governments have not acknowledged the existence of camp 731.

Why? Well, Uncle Sam granted amnesty to the Japanese commanders and scientist in exchange for the data they acquired. I'm glad the filmmakers left out the experiment in which Camp 731 soldiers handed out Anthrax laced candy to Chinese children. The actual location of Camp 731 is now a war museum honoring the citizens who lost their lives.

There are many sequels (or remakes?) to Men Behind the Sun. Cut N paste maestro Godfrey Ho's sick Laboratory of the Devil (1991) and Man Behind The Sun 3 : Narrow Escape / Laboratory of the Devil 2 (1992). With Ho's name attached you can imagine how the series takes a full tilt gore soaked exploitation route. In 1995, Tun Fei Mou returned for Men Behind the Sun 4 which dealt with the Nanking massacre of 1937. Gorehounds will love all of these but the raincoat crowd should avoid them at all cost.