Friday, April 20, 2012

Extreme Asian Torture Film! Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (a.k.a Men Behind the Sun 4)

Not long ago, I reviewed Men Behind the Sun on here, an extremely violent film by Hong Kong director T.F Mou about experiments with biological and chemical weapons conducted by the Japanese on prisoners of war at the end of World War 2. Men Behind the Sun was banned in Australia when it came out. In the mid 90's, Mou made a follow up film about war atrocities conducted by the Japanese at Nanking, Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre which is also sold as Men Behind the Sun 4. T.F Mou was not involved with Men Behind the Sun 2 and 3. Black Sun is the film that has a solider cut a woman's fetus from her belly and have it hanging on a bayonet. It is a hyper-violent war movie with very little in the way of plot. There's a lot of Chinese women being attacked by Japanese soldiers in it, there's a good bit of people being burned alive in it. I had read that it is not nearly as extreme as the original Men Behind The Sun, in which real cadavers were said to be used. in Black Sun a grandmother gets raped, so I'm not so sure if it is much less extreme. There's a whole lot of rape and killing in this film, and not a lot or "character development" or "narrative". It is what it is, the Men Behind the Sun films are extreme Asian exploration films based on World War 2 atrocities, big on violence and not real big on storyline as we conventionally understand it. While surely this kind of film is not for everyone, a clear market exists for this kind of thing- this review exists because my review of Men Behind the Sun did relatively well in terms of hits. Is Black Sun good though? Well, this week I also reviewed the fake snuff footage work of Dr. Don which got him into big legal trouble in Canada. While I was looking at that material I really felt that I was scrapping the absolute bottom of the barrel on the subject of extreme horror film material or horror film material that had been banned. I didn't have that feeling quite as much from watching Black Sun or the original Men Behind the Sun film. I'll give Mou that much at least.

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