Barbara Yu Ling
Mark 13 is a government-built killing machine programmed with artificial intelligence, able to repair and recharge itself from any energy source. Through a series of coincidences, the cyborg's head ends up in the home of a sculptress as a bizarre Christmas present from her boyfriend. Once inside its new home, the cyborg promptly reconstructs the rest of its body using a variety of household utensils and proceeds to go on a murderous rampage.
The police and British security forces call in Professor Van Helsing to help them investigate Satanic ritual which has been occurring in a large country house, and which has been attended by a government minister, an eminent scientist and secret service chief. The owner of the house is a mysterious property tycoon who is found to be behind a sinister plot involving a deadly plague. It is in fact Dracula who, sick of his interminable existence, has decided that he must end it all in the only possible way- by destroying every last potential victim.
Set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, the film focuses on the brutality and horror that the allied prisoners were exposed to as the Japanese metered out subjugation and punishment to a disgraced and defeated enemy. This harrowing drama concentrates on the deviations of legal and moral definitions when two opposing cultures clash. Although fictional, this was one of the earliest films to deal realistically with life and death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second War.
