Men Behind the Sun

Director: Tun Fei Mou
Year Released: 1987
Rating: 1.5

Had Mou actually tried to played the material 'straight' - it's about the buried experimental camps during WW2 run not by the Germans, but by the Japanese using Chinese soldiers as guinea pigs - and not tried to make one of the most controversial and graphic film he could, there's a wealth of interesting material in the concept. But since he did not choose that route, we're stuck with a notorious cult oddity, worshipped by gorehounds for its intensity. Since I've been watching movies like this since I was a kid, it barely had an effect on me (Jackson's Dead/Alive is far worse) - what is actually on screen is mostly (I'd say mainly) dry, poorly-written conversation among Japanese soldiers and officers about how to use chemical/biological weapons to gain the upper hand in the war, and very little (roughly 6-7 scenes) of graphic brutality to spice things up (details can be found elsewhere; I'm not going through them). Rumors abound as to whether or not 'real corpses' were used (the 'special effects' are admittedly impressive), but this sounds like Internet newsgroup and chat room gossip and little else (or simply the director adding to the 'mystery'). The bottom line, I think, comes from some anonymous poster (I'm paraphrasing): 'If you remove a few scenes, what you're left with is material suitable for the History Channel.'