Man Behind the Sun

Original title: Hei tai yang 731

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

7.6K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

4,608

648

Drama History Horror War

Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

7.6K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

4,608

648

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Director Tun-Fei Mou paid a lot of attention to the film's historical accuracy and sought to create something that very earnestly captured his true-life source material doing years of research. He chose actors who purposely resembled Japanese people of the war era and even cast Korean kids living in China to play the Youth Corp as Mou thought Koreans most resembled Japanese kids of that era. Mou filmed the movie in Harbin, Manchuria where 731 was stationed. He used 731's real headquarters as a location, it was a school at the time of the shoot. When Mou took down the school's name and put the Japanese flag back, it horrified the local elderly who had lived through the war. One particularly upset old lady approached Mou and his crew and said "I knew they'd be back (the Japanese), I just hoped it wouldn't be this soon!"

Goofs
Surgeons cut the stomach of an alive boy without any bleeding.

Quotes
Dr. Shiro Ishii: A small rat can beat a cat. Fleas and germs can defeat bombers and guns. This is... the basic theory behind Squadron 731. It is also my philosophy.

Alternate versions
The UK version was cut by 2 minutes by the BBFC to remove a scene where a cat is thrown into a room full of live rats and then killed by them, and to edit shots of rats on fire. Despite the film's graphic violence it received no further BBFC cuts, possibly because the video was given a limited UK release and sold only through Chinese video stores.

Connections
Edited into Men Behind the Sun 3: A Narrow Escape (1994)

User reviews91

Review

Featured review

8/10

Think you've seen it all? Try this one for size!

Watch Man Behind the Sun expecting something along the lines of a Chinese Ilsa movie and you might be in for a surprise: this film has none of the camp qualities to be found in most POW exploitationit's pure cinematic harshness from start to finish with not a buxom leather-booted commandant in sight.

Set at the end of WWII, director T. F. Mous' harrowing tale centres on Camp 731, a medical centre where the Japanese attempt to perfect bacterial weapons, using Chinese prisoners as guinea pigs in their nasty experiments. Mous' objective is to reveal to the world how his people suffered at the hands of their enemy, and in this he totally succeeds; the atrocities that are depicted in Man Behind The Sun are completely sickening and disgustingly convincing.

From the moment that a woman's baby is smothered in snow by a soldier, to the depressing, downbeat finalé in which the camp is razed to the ground by a retreating Japanese army (after shooting and burning all prisoners), this unflinching portrayal of man's inhumanity to man is a total gut-wrencher and certainly not recommended viewing for the easily offended.

In this film, people are treated worse than animals and the 'experiments' they have to endure are shown in every nauseatingly graphic detail: a woman has her arms frozen and then dunked in hot water, allowing the flesh to be easily ripped from her bones; a prisoner is placed in a decompression chamber resulting in his intestines erupting from his body (a scene rumoured to use a real body, but which, according to the director, was actually achieved using special effects); a boy is tricked into being the subject of a live 'autopsy' (cast-iron stomach necessary for this bitreal autopsy footage was shot for this scene!!); and a group of prisoners are 'crucified' in a field and used for target practice by Japanese bombers.

On top of all this there are also two moments of animal cruelty that will have pet-lovers up in arms: a cat is thrown to hungry rats and is eaten alive (not sure if this was done with FX or not, but the cat doesn't look too thrilled), and a load of rats are also set on fire (now this is definitely real!!).

As you have probably gathered, Man Behind The Sun is hard going and should be watched with caution. However, it is a well made film that does what it set out do doeducate viewers about the horrors of war. It's a hard one to rate, because it is such a gruelling movie and can't really be described as entertaining, but I'll give it 8/10 for being so genuinely disturbing.