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Laboratory Of The Devil

Think of how many times these statements have been made “sequel, not as good as the original” or “sequel can’t live up to the original” and many more. Well, this sequel to Men Behind The Sun is another sequel which falls into this category.

This time around the film is a lot more Americanized with subtitles being replaced by a bad dubbing job and the very tacky drum marching music. The movie is obviously downscaled budget wise and to be honest can’t hold a candle to the infamous original. Laboratory also plays as more of a remake than a sequel. We have a bunch of old Chinese army dignitaries from Squadron 731 meeting sometime after their stint of inhuman bacterial warfare testing in Manchuria. One of them recalls his time spent there and this makes up the whole movie. The only difference this time is the presence of a love story within the gruesome experimentation which like I said is not as nearly gruesome as its predecessor. The pay off is another downbeat ending. Unlike the original some of the Chinese chosen to conduct the experiments have second thoughts and realize what they are doing is severely barbaric and downright wrong.

Those who aren’t picky will get their share of gore even if most of it is rehashed material from the original (and not done half as effective). I always felt dubbing gave movies a goofy or humorous quality to them, something which works very well in Italian action and horror movies. A lot of the enjoyment taken out of these types of films is because of the inept and utterly stupid dialogue. In this case Laboratory Of The Devil as a whole is a no nonsense movie so the dubbing diminishes this effect.