Rating: 
Summary: great film, but where is it
Review: Do not be fooled that Amazon will actually can get this dvd. My order has been on hold for over three months and I doubt that I can ever get it from them.
Meanwhile, this movie is a historical document of what the Japanese did to the Chinese during the wane of WW2. "Atrocity" does not begin to describe the brutality of this film. When you hear the rats squeal for the second time in this film, even the strongest stomachs should use the fast forward feature. Unless you REALLY hate cats and applaud deliberate animal cruelty, for which the director was blacklisted. The horrible thing about this movie is that these "medical experiments" concerning frostbite, plague injections, ceramic bomb tests, death by pressure chamber, and various murders involving babies stomped into the snow, ACTUALLY HAPPENED. The live vivesection is also a popcorn treat. (through research I learned that the little boy dissected alive was sold to the director by Chinese peasants who were tricked into thinking that they were supporting the revolution.
For the gore-mongers among you, even you must beware of severe nausea. Thank God that Ishi did not document the"Rape of Nanking" also perpetrated by the sick Japanese of that time. In Nanking, live babies were thrown into the air and caught on bayonnets, among other delightful sport. Have fun if you dare, but do not expect more than excuses from Amazon.
Rating:
Summary: great film, but where is it
Review: Do not be fooled that Amazon will actually can get this dvd. My order has been on hold for over three months and I doubt that I can ever get it from them.
Meanwhile, this movie is a historical document of what the Japanese did to the Chinese during the wane of WW2. "Atrocity" does not begin to describe the brutality of this film. When you hear the rats squeal for the second time in this film, even the strongest stomachs should use the fast forward feature. Unless you REALLY hate cats and applaud deliberate animal cruelty, for which the director was blacklisted. The horrible thing about this movie is that these "medical experiments" concerning frostbite, plague injections, ceramic bomb tests, death by pressure chamber, and various murders involving babies stomped into the snow, ACTUALLY HAPPENED. The live vivesection is also a popcorn treat. (through research I learned that the little boy dissected alive was sold to the director by Chinese peasants who were tricked into thinking that they were supporting the revolution.
For the gore-mongers among you, even you must beware of severe nausea. Thank God that Ishi did not document the"Rape of Nanking" also perpetrated by the sick Japanese of that time. In Nanking, live babies were thrown into the air and caught on bayonnets, among other delightful sport. Have fun if you dare, but do not expect more than excuses from Amazon.
Rating: 
Summary: Am I Dreaming??????????
Review: I can't believe I'm seeing this..........Men Behind the Sun on sale from amazon!?For anybody unfamiliar with this infamous Chinese films reputation all I can say is that this could very well be the nastiest film ever made! I am in a position to say that I've seen nearly everything "shocking" out there, ie 'Cannibal Holocaust', 'I Spit on Your Grave', 'Emanuelle in America', 'Baise Moi', the 'Guinea Pig' series, ect and anything on the 'video nasties' list and most films that have a reputation (btw I will admit as I write this I have not yet seen 'Aftermath') and after all this I still feel that this film is the most unsettling for a number of reasons: it depicts a TRUE story, the film has an unblinking realism that is nowhere present in any other film to tackle a similar subject matter, the cruelty of the men conducting these experients illustrates the darkest side of humanity which did and I guess still does exist and lastly, this film contains the most sickening animal cruelty ever caught on film. During WW2 Japan occupied parts of mainland China and along with the many enormous massacres and genicides the Japanese army carried out for their emporer in the true 'samurai spirit', they also conducted cruel human experiments in germ warfare research camps using Chinese and Russian civilians and POWs. If the details of these Japanese atrocities are unfamiliar to you it is not your fault, while the Japanese govourment have humbly apologised for their treatment of US and Australian POWs, they certainly lose their memory fast when it comes to the subject of war crimes aginst the Chinese, the Nanking massacre and germ warfare camps such as these. Futhermore at the end of WW2 the same red army of "fighting Chinese allies" quickly became a "communist threat" and a defeated Japan with a new found passion for car manufactor and baseball became the friend in Asia thus Western history books and school classes ignore these events aswell. Men Behind the Sun is a film made to tell this forgotten and ignored histrocial facts and is therefore one of the most important war films out there. The director has chosen to not spare the viewer any gruesome detail and even goes so far as to secure an actuall cadaver of a young boy (the boys parents where glad to release his body as they felt the film was important for China) for a inhuman surgurey scene in the film. The director even went too far in the opions of many with a scene in which a cat is thrown into a pit with hundreds of starving rats. While I felt this scene adds nothing to the film besides extra nastyness and am myself a vegetarian and oposed to animal cruelty, I find it hard to boycott or dismiss a film soley on the basis of it comtaining animal cruelty as thousands of cows die each day for mere hamburgers that serve little more purpose than to put fat into comsumers butts.(Please note: while I have always seen no reason to disbelieve the authenticity of the cat scene as the rats are set on fire for real later in the film and of course it's no secret that dogs and cats are eaten in Asia, alot of people feel, or at least like to say, this scene is faked by smearing fake blood on the cat and later using a prop cat puppet.) Due to the graphic nature of this film it has being long associated with the gore film genre and occasionally called "the Cannibal Holocaust of the 80s" and most viewers watch it simply due to its gorey reputation (I know I heard of it this way) which is good in a sense that it will live in infamy forever in horror buffs discussions and lists but not so good that most will not take it seriously. However this unbeleivably horrific film already has huge cult status and I have no doubt that future generations will appreciate it for its brutal honesty.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Film for people who don't like cats and rats
Review: I had read all the hype about this film. How shocking and disturbing it was. You have no idea what a disappointment this DVD was. Very boring. The few moments that show "gore or violence" are very weak, poorly shot, and the effects were cheap. You could see much more violent and disturbing things by randomly picking ANY horror film from the shelf at the video store. There is one slightly nauseating scene involving an autopsy of a supposed REAL corpse. Still I've seen worse footage of surgeries on the Discovery channel. the worst thing about this film is the footage of the REAL live cat fed to the room full of starving rats. This was out of place and totally unprofessional of the "film makers". And I use that term loosely. Later the same rats are set on fire. For real. Some real entertainment here, folks. If you are interested in the true war crimes of Unit 731 go read a book. Gore hounds like myself will be severly dissapointed.
Rating:
Summary: Good Film for people who don't like cats and rats
Review: I had read all the hype about this film. How shocking and disturbing it was. You have no idea what a disappointment this DVD was. Very boring. The few moments that show "gore or violence" are very weak, poorly shot, and the effects were cheap. You could see much more violent and disturbing things by randomly picking ANY horror film from the shelf at the video store. There is one slightly nauseating scene involving an autopsy of a supposed REAL corpse. Still I've seen worse footage of surgeries on the Discovery channel. the worst thing about this film is the footage of the REAL live cat fed to the room full of starving rats. This was out of place and totally unprofessional of the "film makers". And I use that term loosely. Later the same rats are set on fire. For real. Some real entertainment here, folks. If you are interested in the true war crimes of Unit 731 go read a book. Gore hounds like myself will be severly dissapointed.
Rating:
Summary: Reprehensible, gory, overtly tasteless, and historical????
Review: I saw the original film, which was shown in Chinatown NYC, in 1989, after the massacre at Tiananmen Square. This is a fictionalized version of the Japanese atrocities in China and Manchuria during World War II that were conducted at the notorious 731 unit for human "medical" experimentation. These atrocities match or exceed the worst of any of Hitler and Mengele's crimes against the Jews. The Japanese conducted germ warfare, and torture and murder by way of medical experiments, on Chinese men, women, and children, whom they deemed subhuman. There were frostbite experiments in which people's limbs were frozen until broken off and shattered by prison guards. Live lethal dissections and harvesting of human organs without anaesthesia. The Japanese also wiped out whole villages by bombing them with weaponized cholera or typhoid. The full facts of this beastly history are not well known, some say with the complicity of the American government, which saw fit to draw a veil over Japanese genocide. This film shrinks from not one detail of any of these genocidal acts. Its effect is absolutely full frontal. The film's imagery is strangely drawn from Asian martial arts conventions--and its unflinching brutality is unlike anything from Hollywood that you will ever see. By comparison, Western portrayals of violence and evil, however X rated, are oddly romanticized, muted or stylized. I actually do not recommend watching the film, particularly if you have a weak stomach, but it is nevertheless an important document, and there is a curious simplicity in the film's portrayal of brutality that is uniquely Asian in feeling. A book by Jonathan Barenblatt, entitled A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation, has been recently published, which details this relatively unknown history, perhaps in a more palatable form.
Rating:
Summary: Cry for justice from beyond the grave
Review: in order for people who have not seen this to better understand it, i will compare it to two recent films, bowling for columbine and schindlers list. this is what schindler's list would have been if spielberg wasn't too busy trying to make people think how sad the events were. and whereas bowling for columbine helped people understand what is going on and pushed them on the path to discovering the truth, this film MADE you see and MADE you understand.TF Mous, the director, does a very impressive job of keeping the film from wandering dangerously into the area of exploitation, allowing the script to clearly get across its reason for existing. this film is the accusations that the victims of squadron 731 were never able to make, this is the bloodied finger pointing at the murderers of 3000 people for the sake of death. but then schindler's list did the same thing didn't it? it did....but it made the occurrence safe, they were distanced from us, everything was black and white (both visually and symbolically), it was safe in the past and it couldn't hurt us. man behind the sun does not allow us this safety, it shows us how well this was hidden from everybody, it shows how it is clearly tied to our present, it gives us a first person view into the sickness that man is capable of. in part, it does that by becoming part of the sickness, it is not afraid to get its hands dirty in order to make us understand, which lends it even more power. real corpses are used in several sequences, for a child's autopsy, for the decompression of a man. and there are scenes of animal torture (although the famous rats eating live cat scene is not real, the rats are obviously just licking the cat and the blood is clearly just poured on while the cat is probably drugged causing it to slow down and appear dead), clearly showing that nothing is safe from man when he allows himself to see everything as an object. another thing which makes this so applicable is its connection to America and our modern world. the events in the film are real. and the man at the centre of it all was later picked up by American intelligence and given immunity in return for handing over everything he had learned and coming to work for them. i believe it was called Operation Paperclip. and a hell of a lot of modern medical technology came from the horrific events depicted in the film. and i don't think i need to go into any detail discussing the way prisoners of war are used and abused.....*cough cough*... this is an intelligent, and very very honest film. it is horrific, and most people would be incapable of seeing it. but it is something that people should know about. there is not much we can do anymore about making the world a better place, but we must always strive to know what is going on, to never let our heads be shoved into the sand either by ourselves or the people who supposedly protect us. my only complaint with this film is the god awful sub-titles which often don't even bother translating stuff, which does make comprehension of what is occurring difficult at times, but that is no fault of the films.
Rating:
Summary: Reprehensible, gory, overtly tasteless, and historical????
Review: Men Behind the Sun is the mostly true account of the "Bacterial and Experimental Unit 731." It depicts in unflinching detail the depths to which Japan went in the name of science and imperialism during WWII. Hyperbaric chambers, live unanaesthitised autopsies, flesh debridement, forced immersion in liquid nitrogen: it's all the stuff of horror, but it really happened and to countless numbers of people. The historical accuracy of T.F. Mous' film is impeccable. Every experiment in the film is portrayed with the utmost realism and shouldn't be taken lighheartedly. What's really distressing is the fact that the "test subjects" weren't soldiers or insurgents, they were chinese civilians, refugees, and Japanese defectors. All were innocent! This isn't a film with a nice glossy veneer covering the genocide and human rights abuses that are inherent in warfare. It gives us a front row seat to humanity in its rawest form. Either you can handle the movie and the fact that it happened or you can't. You be the judge. Sidenote: The war crimes that were commited by 731 were never cited under the Geneva Convention so all the physicians, scientists, and military personnel who participated in the atrocities got off with no punishment due to dubitable evidence (its kind of ironic considering that the Japanese goverment has video footage of the experiments that hasn't been releasaed to the public and also photographs which were released only 6 years after the war ended, go figure.)
Rating:
Summary: Reprehensible, gory, overtly tasteless, and historical????
Review: Men Behind the Sun is the mostly true account of the "Bacterial and Experimental Unit 731." It depicts in unflinching detail the depths to which Japan went in the name of science and imperialism during WWII. Hyperbaric chambers, live unanaesthitised autopsies, flesh debridement, forced immersion in liquid nitrogen: it's all the stuff of horror, but it really happened and to countless numbers of people. The historical accuracy of T.F. Mous' film is impeccable. Every experiment in the film is portrayed with the utmost realism and shouldn't be taken lighheartedly. What's really distressing is the fact that the "test subjects" weren't soldiers or insurgents, they were chinese civilians, refugees, and Japanese defectors. All were innocent! This isn't a film with a nice glossy veneer covering the genocide and human rights abuses that are inherent in warfare. It gives us a front row seat to humanity in its rawest form. Either you can handle the movie and the fact that it happened or you can't. You be the judge. Sidenote: The war crimes that were commited by 731 were never cited under the Geneva Convention so all the physicians, scientists, and military personnel who participated in the atrocities got off with no punishment due to dubitable evidence (its kind of ironic considering that the Japanese goverment has video footage of the experiments that hasn't been releasaed to the public and also photographs which were released only 6 years after the war ended, go figure.)
Rating:
Summary: High pressure chamber DVD
Review: Prepare to be tested to the limit. Even if you're a gore buff or a splatter/slasher/exploitation freak, this will leave you ultra disturbed!!! They say Saló and Cannibal Holocaust are cruel and vile in their display of carnage and brutality, but Men behind the sun part 1 (2 more sequels out there) is the mother of all ...forget Caligula, Guinea pigs, irreversible or any other hard to swallow flicks....this is the most cruel and disgusting film ever made, period. Now after saying this you will think that there's no point of watching this besides the gore...if you really want to learn about the japanese human experimentation during WWII...this is your best chance!!!!!
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