Laboratory of the Devil is essentially more of a exploitive rip-off / cash-in on the first Men Behind the Sun film. It does include all the gore and nastiness of the original film, but only because it's pretty much a scene-for-scene recreation of it.
It is years after the war has ended and the American government have called together all the surviving doctors from Unit 731 to offer them large amounts of money for them to continue their research into biological weapons. From here on out the rest of the film is told via flashbacks concerning the activities of Unit 731 during the war. This time we see the atrocities through the eyes of a young soldier who has been drafted and forced to leave his young wife behind to wait for his return. As he witnesses the treatment of the Chinese and the "experiments'' being carried out, he feels remorse at the crimes of his fellow countrymen and ultimately rebels.
The majority of the experiments and tortures on display here are taken as is straight from the first film - we have the hot / cold temperature tests ending in skin flayed from the bone, deliberately infecting subjects with Bubonic Plague, live vivisection, freezing limbs in liquid nitrogen then smashing them, etc, etc. The only major difference here is in the last half hour where the film deteriorates into a melodramatic action flick with Kung-fu and pointless heroics.
Due to being pretty much a straight-up exploitation film, Laboratory of the Devil looses the impact of its predecessor. It has goofy "comic relief'' scenes, some nudity, the aforementioned action sequences and an extremely trashy synth score, all of which combine to make it rather hard to take seriously.
All things considered though, its not an awful film and if I hadn't recently seen the first MBTS I probably would have dug it a lot more. There's plenty of gore and torture so I'd recommend it to all you rabid gorehound's out there, but if you're looking for a sequel as powerful and shocking as Men Behind the Sun, avoid or check out the excellent Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre by MBTS director TF Mous instead. 6/10
It is years after the war has ended and the American government have called together all the surviving doctors from Unit 731 to offer them large amounts of money for them to continue their research into biological weapons. From here on out the rest of the film is told via flashbacks concerning the activities of Unit 731 during the war. This time we see the atrocities through the eyes of a young soldier who has been drafted and forced to leave his young wife behind to wait for his return. As he witnesses the treatment of the Chinese and the "experiments'' being carried out, he feels remorse at the crimes of his fellow countrymen and ultimately rebels.
The majority of the experiments and tortures on display here are taken as is straight from the first film - we have the hot / cold temperature tests ending in skin flayed from the bone, deliberately infecting subjects with Bubonic Plague, live vivisection, freezing limbs in liquid nitrogen then smashing them, etc, etc. The only major difference here is in the last half hour where the film deteriorates into a melodramatic action flick with Kung-fu and pointless heroics.
Due to being pretty much a straight-up exploitation film, Laboratory of the Devil looses the impact of its predecessor. It has goofy "comic relief'' scenes, some nudity, the aforementioned action sequences and an extremely trashy synth score, all of which combine to make it rather hard to take seriously.
All things considered though, its not an awful film and if I hadn't recently seen the first MBTS I probably would have dug it a lot more. There's plenty of gore and torture so I'd recommend it to all you rabid gorehound's out there, but if you're looking for a sequel as powerful and shocking as Men Behind the Sun, avoid or check out the excellent Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre by MBTS director TF Mous instead. 6/10