Based on true events, the film takes place near the end of World War II in a Japanese prison camp simply known as 731. The camp is run by General Ishii, who sees chemical weapons as Japan's key to winning the war, and will stop at nothing to create the perfect weapon. Ishii uses the Chinese prisioners (called "maruta" or material) in a series of sickening experiments, while a group of teenage soldiers known as the Youth Corps try to come to terms with the place that they now call home.

The plot isn't very dense, but Mous manages to create a set of well-rounded characters. Even General Ishii (even though he is undeniably more than a bit insane) doesn't come off as a total devil, and many of the characters -- especially the kids in the Youth Corps -- come off as fairly sympathetic. Mous notes in an interview included on the DVD that Man Behind the Sun is not an exploitation film, and I would agree. The expliotation genre takes glee in presenting over-the-top sex and violence, and this movie is an undeniably grim look at one of one of the darker points in the bloodiest conflict the world has ever seen.

I will grant that Man Behind the Sun does seem to go a bit overboard in parts, especially one scene where a man in put into a decompression chamber until his intestines shoot out his anus. But overall, it really gets its' point across. Even though I have seen many films with more blood and guts, rarely have I been so shocked. Man Behind the Sun is one of those rare pictures that will keep you thinking about it long after it ends. If you have a strong stomach, I highly recommend this film. Even if you don't, it's still worth a viewing, since it brings to attention one area of history most Westerners don't know much about.

In a way, Man Behind The Sun is beneath criticism. There is almost no plot - we are shown the experiences of a group of boys undergoing training as soldiers, the character of Cornel Ishii, the camp's leader, is demonstrated (but hardly explained) to us, and occasional gore scenes are thrown in when things get too uninteresting. There is no stylistic finesse, and several scenes border on the intolerable - the infamous cat/rat scene adds nothing but nausea to the movie (Mous himself doesn't like to discuss it), and an autopsy using a real corpse inspires comparisons with exploitation flicks of little merit. Mous' efforts at cruel realism put the film firmly into exploitation terretory, even though the parents of the dead boy used in the autopsy scene told him "that although their son was dead, they were happy to have him cut apart in the film as it was their way of doing something positive for the Chinese people".

No, this is no fun picture, and despite rumors to the contrary, T.F.Mous is not a pseudonym for hack Godfrey Ho who helmed part 2. Clearly, Mous wants to say something, his problem being that we don't really want to hear it, so his movie finds itself being located between Schindler's List, Cannibal Holocaust and Ilsa - She Wolf of SS.

When Steven Spielberg shot Schindler's List, he took great care not to offend his mainstream audience - the Third Reich never loked as good as in his glossy B/W photography, and, as some critic noted, only Spielberg would shoot a movie about the Holocaust in which none of the main characters died. However, it is undeniable that it was just this "softcore" approach which allowed him to reach the public.

Man Behind The Sun, on the other hand, is usually regarded as another weird Far East gore movie, which is more than unfair, even given the animal cruelty. Mous avoids falling into most traps - he doesn't try to make all Japanese look like villains, he doesn't sanitize the movie with love stories or a conventional happy ending (the end credits tell us that the historical Cornel Ishii worked for the US after WW II - possibly introducing poison gas to the Korea war), the acting is good ("The majority of the cast were non-actors with a few amateurs and a select stage actors who took the lead roles... The producer pleaded with me to have a big Hong Kong actor such as Chow-Yun Fat and give the film an identity.") and though he shows little visual style, he keeps the camera on focus and makes things look real.

Which is surely an odd claim for a movie taglined as "This film will provoke, anger and sicken." Why should you watch it? Well... why are you reading this review?