5. Men Behind The Sun (1988)
This film is so sublimely depressing and grim that it makes my cold little black heart positively sing with joy. All joking aside, anyone who chooses to watch this movie will not fail to be sickened by its cruelty and barbarism. Men Behind The Sun, a 1988 production, is a highly graphic film about Japanese atrocities committed against Chinese POWs in Unit 731. I can only take this film as a massive smear against the Japanese by Chinese director Mou Tun-fei as they are depicted as so relentlessly evil and their experiments on the POWs are so demented. Perhaps it is historically accurate, but I do not think the making of this film did much to help Sino-Japanese relations - I even think I read somewhere once that the Chinese government partially funded the movie. Two fingers up to Japan. Anyway, in this movie, we get to sample such delights as a young boy having his organs harvested for research (and reportedly a real corpse was used for this scene from the local hospital), disembowelment through air pressure, a woman having the flesh of her arms ripped off, crucifixion, rats eating a cat (for real), rats set on fire and numerous other degradations and abominations. The camp is led by General Shiro Ishii, a man so nefarious, he wants to revive the bubonic plague to be used as a bioweapon in the war (if he was around today, he would probably be Resident Evil's Albert Wesker prancing around with the G Virus/T Virus whatever the heck it has mutated into now). Apparently the sick experiments are to help him in his mission. Although the Japanese soldiers grow increasingly indignant about Ishii's vile behaviour, the General surprisingly doesn't cop one in the end like all good concentration camp baddies should. Instead we see him fraternising with the USA army during the Korean War. Is this some sort of slur against the United States? That they turned a blind eye to the Japanese atrocities in China? Is China aggrieved at their close relationship? Does China want the US to stop meddling in Asia?