aka: Men Behind The Sun, Squadron 731, Black Sun 731

A movie released in 1987 and directed by T.F. Mous. While it's commonly classfied as a Japanese horror / gore movie, it's actually an attempt to expose Japanese atrocities in China during World War II by Unit 731. It's hard to defend the film as such, when you consider some of the grotesque scenes. In fact, T.F. Mous initially intended this to be a documentary but it quickly got out of control.

The plot of the film is simple. It follows a small group of boys going through the camp for training. The camp is used to develop biological weapons which are then tested on Russian and Chinese prisoners. The outcome is disturbing. The boys eventually become desensitized to violence and learn to blindly hate the prisoners. Throughout the movie the viewer is subject to more and more gruesome scenes:

The autopsy of a young boy (which is a real corpse)

A man's entrails shooting from his anus when he is placed in a decompression chamber. (long thought to be a real corpse as well)

A very long scene in which a very real cat is placed into a pit with about forty real rats. (The cat was killed. T.F. Mous refuses to discuss this portion of the film)

All the incidents shown in the film happended in Unit 731 and many documents and interviews of people from Unit 731 support it. The film was only shown once in Japan. Immediatly after the screening Mous recieved numerous death threats and no cinema in Japan would touch the movie. Mous has also pointed out in interviews that America kept the atrocities commited in Unit 731 secret, and then used the "research" from there in the Korean War.

Easily one of the most disturbing movies of all time. Not because of the gore, but because it's not fantasy. It's a depiction of the effects war has on human morals and sensibility. Widely put down as being simply sensationalism, anyone actually seeing the movie for what it attempts to do will certainly feel it's powerful effects.

This movie is not that hard to find, and Japan Shock Video just released a good DVD version. Be careful when ordering, as this film is banned in many countries.