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After the end of World War 2 and the defeat of Japan, the Russians want
to reactivate Unit 731, the infamous research facility in Manchuria where
the Japanese tried to create a new bulbonic plague virus. But Doctor Ichikawa, head of Unit 731, doesn't want to
have anything to do with it, and he tells a compelling story from back in
the day to make his point ... The story is about Honda, a soldier
recruited to work at the unit - but he is soon appalled by the inhuman
human experiments on prisoners of war that are conducted there, yet he simply knows no way out.
Meanwhile, back home, his fiancée Iko learns about his death from a
rejected lover , but refuses to believe it and thus goes to Manchuria
herself to investigate ... but she seems to hit a wall of silence
anywhere, so she has herself arrested pretending to be Chinese, and
brought to Unit 731 as human guineapig. Seeing his fiancée being dragged
off to be wasted in some human experiment or other, Honda finally musters
up enough courage to rebel against the system, and he shoots the guards to
not only free Iko but the other captives as well. But the prisoners led by
Honda have not even left the premises of Unit 731 when they are mowed down
by Japanese machinegun fire, and when Honda rather surprisingly survives
that, he is beheaded by one of his superiors. Having finished his story,
Doctor Ichikawa thinks he has made his point and leaves - but soon falls
victim to a targeted assassination. In essence, Laboratory
of the Devil is not much more than a retelling of Men
Behind the Sun, even going so far as to recreate many of the
earlier films gruesome effects (like the infamous scene where a woman's
flesh is cooked off her hands in hot water) - but taking a pass on the
actual animal torture. In direct comparison though, Laboratory of the
Devil surprisingly enough is the better film, it features a more coherent
plotline, a less blunt approach to Japanese wartime atrocities (real and
imagined), actual characters to identify with, and a more differentiated
view of the Japanese oppresors. That all said, Laboratory of the Devil is
still far from being a good movie, it's just definitely preferable to Men
Behind the Sun.
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find Men Behind the Sun 2: Laboratory of the Devil at adultvideouniverse.com
