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The true history of Japanese Unit 731, a research laboratory that was created by military police of the Imperial Japanese Army for researching epidemic prevention and developing weapons of mass destruction. Within these facilities a unit of chemical and biological warfare research team called Unit 731 (from its beginnings in the 1930's to its demise in 1945, and the subsequent trials in Khabarovsk, USSR) committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by conducting torturous and fatal experiments on Soviet and Chinese prisoners with estimations resulting in around 200,000 casualties.
The facts are told by an eyewitness to these events, former doctor and military translator, Anatoly Protasov, reveals previously unknown evidence.
Part documentary and part feature, the story is shown from the perspective of a young Japanese nurse and a young Japanese officer. Their life were like a living hell as they compelled to carry out horrific experiments on the other prisoners, using them as guinea pigs in this shocking tale of mankind's one of the greatest barbarity!

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I haven’t seen any of Andrey Iskanov's earlier works like "Nails" & "Visions of Suffering", "Men Behind the Sun" or even that much of other sickest & disturbing movies (like August Underground's Mordum, Salo or Guinea Pig series) so far and thus I can’t compare it to others. But I’m quite sure enough that definitely this is going to be a new addition in a higher rank to the sub genre of sickest, disturbingly disgusting and explicit brutal violent movies ever made!

Here I like to give you some highlights of the death and torture of the movie:...
***SPOILERS***

The subsequent freezing and skinning alive of a soldier,

The soon to be famous dental scene where every tooth was extracted from a poor woman's mouth! The victim's teeth were not just pulled out, they were painfully twisted and bent and hammered out of her gums one by one, as she screams and bleeds until every last tooth was removed from her mouth.
The cesarean scene where they rip a woman in half to get at a small fetus inside.

But the scene mostly shocked me where a woman was stripped naked and tied to a chair while a large cockroach inserted into her vagina with full of graphic detail. After several hours of the cockroach moving around under her skin, they tortured her so badly that it was like the cockroach felt so disturbed that it decided to come out through her mouth while they cut and peel off her entire face!

There were also many others like the radiation experiments, the chemical experiments, the sexually transmittable diseases experiment…overall, every single experiment has been showcased in gruesome details which is one of the reasons for it being 4 hours long (broken into two parts, 2 hours each). The prisoners of Unit 731 were test subjects who were not war criminals or enemy soldiers but general people. They needed the people with normal health condition so they could understand the effects of the experiments and the various reactions on human bodies to certain situations.

***SPOILERS END***

The good thing was the film was shot in Black & White, and I think that surely made it quite watch able for some viewers. The B&W format also helped it to meld both archival footage and newly shot footage to create a new reel of sadistic moments in cinematic history.
Moreover its intensely distressing soundtrack adds another level of madness to this visually challenging documentary film. The CGI & special effects are not best but effective indeed.
Besides the background narration there is no dialogue in this long length slow paced movie so some viewers may get bored (!?) for that. Some narration comes from the female nurse recalling the events (with her nasty but polite descriptions regarding the situations). Everything else is done simply through actions and facial expressions, such as the infatuation one of the male soldiers has towards a female Russian prisoner.

I have read in some other review that Andrey Iskanov was thoroughly investigated by the KGB while conducting his research for this film…the film where his purpose was to remember those who sacrifice their lives for the benefits of others.

Highly recommended for those who like to watch this kinda sick & disturbing films!