the film and got two fish as a reward, that the cat was made wet with honey and theater blood (as opposed to real blood like other scenes as the rat would attack otherwise), and that the rats were licking and eating the honey only. Reception The film was panned for its directionless narrative & insensitivity to historical tragedies. From contemporary reviews, "Lor." of Variety declared the film to be a "lowbrow exploitationer treating a serious subject, Japanese war atrocities." noting that "Explosive material is dramatically potent and could have been handled tastefully, as with Kon Ichikawa's classic films like Fires on the Plain" but "resorts to nauseating sensationalism, with butcher-shop depiction of autopsies on live subjects, a disgusting "decompression" experiment spewing intestines out of a victim and a horrendously realistic scene of a pussycat bloodily mauled by a room full of rats." Sequels The film spawned three pseudo-sequels: (黑太陽731續集之殺人工廠, 1992) Narrow Escape (死亡列車, 1994) Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (黑太陽─南京大屠殺, 1995) See also Philosophy of a Knife Unit 731 References Sources External links Robert Firsching's review 1988 films 1988 horror films 1980s Mandarin-language films 1980s exploitation films Films set in the 1940s 1980s historical horror films Japanese human subject research Second Sino-Japanese War films Obscenity controversies in film Films about war crimes Censored films Hong Kong splatter films World War II films Films directed by Mou Tun-fei Torture in films Hong Kong war films Hong Kong horror films Horror war films Cultural depictions of Japanese men Cultural depictions of male criminals Films about fascism 1980s Hong Kong films