My friend and I were talking through an old favorite…
Faces of Death I,II,III,IV
Traces Of Death
I don’t watch new movies much.
I finally got around to watching that Korean movie “PARASITE” that came out a few years back.
It was pretty wild, haha!
faces of death… holy shit. that was a freak out back then. that shit is old school.
didn’t that have the video of the politician blowing his brains out in front of all those reporters and people in his office?
Bud Dwyer. (Coincidentally that’s who the song is talking about on “Hey Man Nice Shot.”) I’m sure it did. Some of that shit was made up though. I remember being at my friend’s little studio apartment and watching it on VHS and the movie ended but we din’t stop it cause we were still talking about it and right before it cut to screen snow it came up “Some events have been recreated to show actual events.”
Makes sense since a few were “home movies” that had multiple angles. The two that stand out the most to me was the guy driving a water skier in a boat and there’s only the guy driving the boat and yet there’s footage from someone in the boat. And then the college kids that miscalculated the the height of their dorm building for their homemade bungee jump. There was only the kids on the roof yet somehow they got multiple angles of the fall.
I remember some magician dying from some trick too but I don’t remembering an inconsistency with the video. I remember Some homeless guy jumping from a bridge but you barely see him jump and you certainly didn’t see him hit the ground … My 18 y/o self was all gipped over that, my 40 y/o self is probably happy I didn’t see it.
Classic…
If you’re interested in the true story of Faces of Death and other “snuff” films (including the Guinea Pig movies that fooled the members of Skinny Puppy) I recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Culture-Creation-Cinema-Collection/dp/1871592208
Of course, now that we’re in the day and age when you can watch a video of actual people dying in gruesome ways on the phone in your pocket in seconds the concept of snuff films seems almost quaint.
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Charlie Sheen famously thought one of the Guinea Pig movies were real and called the FBI…not exactly a “winning” move…
Yeah, that shit was fucking funny. I watched some documentary recently about the same “snuff” phenomenon and learned more about a lot of those films, including the “Guinea Pig” series. I think the “Cannibal Holocaust” director similarly had to prove in court that it was not actual people being killed on film, hahahaha. The crocodile, however… yeah, sorry, Dude.
This aspect is really wild and it’s crazy just how jaded everyone has become by virtue of being mundanely exposed to both real and simulated death/torture/rape/etc. And the technology/ tools for creating an alternate reality has bled over to cause doubt of actual documented REAL stuff.
I remember when the beheading of Nick Berg by terrorists in Afghanistan or Iraq about 15 years back was the big video being passed around that everyone had to see. I opted not to (I avoid most of this type of stuff nowadays) but remember so many online arguments with people claiming dogmatically that there “wasn’t enough blood” . . . “it would be shooting out” . . . and other crazy shit.
Actual REAL death and murder just wasn’t gory enough for everyone, I guess.
When I ponder what we’ve become as a people I actually get pretty depressed. I’m not judging. I was no better when I was a shitty college kid in the early/mid-90’s. But it seemed that we had to WORK a little to get access to such horrible things by trading bootleg VHS and whatnot. And it was mostly us degenerate outsiders that partook in challenging ourselves to see “Faces of Death” and whatnot. Now, with online and cellular access to everything, it’s literally EVERYONE that laps it up. When I see 14 year old girls posting reaction videos on YouTube because they’re watching “2 Guys 1 Hammer” before heading to the Ariana Grande concert, another part of my soul just kinda dies.
I hate being that old guy that became one of the old guys we rebelled against as kids, but I do feel it’s a bit different today. We were getting giggles and freaking out our teachers and parents because we had some Ozzy records. We weren’t generally watching actual torture/murder vids at the click of a button.
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I think that was the last “snuff” film I saw. My problem with the video wasn’t the amount of blood or gore, my problem was the fact that the “terrorists” turned the camera during the actual beheading. Why would they do that? Are they not trying to offend our sensibilities? Isn’t the point of terrorism to instill terror? Wouldn’t they want us to see them cutting his head off? especially since they showed us his severed head? My 2nd problem was the dude wasn’t struggling at all. I would like to think my sense of self preservation would kick in and I would not make it easy for those fuckers to kill me.
I think someone posted the “2 guys one hammer” link here a while back and I started to watch it but quickly saw where it was going and decided i didn’t need to see it and just shut it down. I pretty much pass on that shit now.
In the mid nineties I found a website called the gore gallery and it kinda became a thing to see which of my friends could find the most fucked up thing. One of my friends became fascinated with it. I kinda lost interest because I hated not being able to get those images outta my head. That’s pretty much where I learned you can’t unsee things. In the late 90’s I went with one of my sister’s friends to the museum of death in san diego and that was disturbing as fuck. The serial killer exhibit with the disturbing artwork of serial killers was pretty fucked up. But, yeah, I’m over looking at death.
We’re all gonna die, and I used to hope i don’t out screaming or terrified now I hope those things too as well as not ending up on some gore site.
I think a lot of us went through the similar cycle. The one I remember in the 90’s was Rotten-dot-com. The “finding the most fucked up shit” game and being macho and watching it and then making our friends watch it . . . sure, I was there too, but it’s really pretty immature. And the “can’t unsee” aspect is kinda sacred to me. There are some professions (medic, coroner, detective, etc.) where you just have to see it as part of the job. There’s a reason that there is a premium attached to the paychecks and there is also a high degree of burnout, depression, quitting, and even suicide that comes with such industries/careers. The images that many of these men and women see haunt them forever. I really don’t care if people think I’m a pussy for saying no to seeing all that sick stuff. What’s the upside? Sure, there are SOME that actually “enjoy” it, but I think that’s a pretty small minority (I hope, haha). For the rest of us, yeah, most of us grow out of that shit.
Totally! Thankfully, that phase for me was over 20 years ago and thankfully I have forgotten most of the images but there are a few that I will never forget. mostly when I masturbate (HAHAHA Just kidding I just couldn’t help with that easy joke! LOL) But yeah there’s three: the Black and white torture picture of some women in some cabin with her arms tied above her head to some beam and what looks to be battery clamps on her nips and the wretched look of pain on her face is absolutely unforgettable. Her face is frozen in the most fucked up scream you can imagine.
The other one the sends the creepies down my spine is some murdered woman who had her nipples and areolas cut out and you could see the glands inside her boobs. uuugh. Now my stomach hurts!
Another one that stuck with me was a black and white pic of some dude with a little wooden wheel barrow that he would carry his nuts around in. He had (I think) elephantiasis of the scrotum. That one was disturbing enough but that pic is the one that stayed with me and I couldn’t block it out and at any time during the day that picture would just pop up in my mind for no reason. Ugh, you can’t unsee shit. I think it was that one too that made me realize you can’t unsee shit.
My buddy would come over to my house and spend hours on my computer looking at that stuff. I would get sick after a little bit. So, I would jam out on the guitar or do other shit and occasionally he’d be like “holy shit look at this one!” I’d look, get sick and finally was like “dude you gotta stop showing me.” I don’t know if he was immune to that shit or actually fascinated by it or what, but it was around that time that I clearly discovered that someone else’s misery is not and should not be anybody’s entertainment.
I totally get the curiosity angle but let it go after that. That shit can and will haunt you.
One of my friends/clients in Mexico is an ambulance driver. This is all volunteer in Mexico. He pays for this ambulance, gear, time, etc. This is because the volunteers get to the scene like a million times faster than any public employees and such. Anyway, me being a clumsy and ignorant dipshit, I ask Jaime, “What is the most fucked up thing you’ve seen on a call?” He just kinda politely shrugged it off and said something like, “Everything horrible that you can imagine . . . I’ve seen everything.” I think he mentioned the hardest thing to arrive to was a child’s suicide. I felt like such an asshole all of a sudden because, my brain had gone back to that “macho college kids trying to out-gross each other” but here I was talking to the real deal…the guy that sees this stuff FOR REAL and has to carry the baggage. It was a horrible thing to put on my friend. We’re cool, though. It’s just a bit shameful in retrospect.
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I was into gore and shit as a kid too. I remember discovering rotten.com in the early days of the internet. After watching the news on 9/11, and seeing the various images of all manner of carnage, I was done. I watched about the first 10 seconds of the Nick Berg video and immediately regretted it. Can’t watch any of that shit anymore. Don’t want to.
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As i recall there is nothing to the nick berg video they drag him off camera. They murder him off camera and hold up his head after. but I get it. the idea of what’s going on is bad enough.
There is this website called crazyshit.com that I’ve been checking out for quite some time…its a pretty fucked up mish mash of different videos…I only watch certain vids though…they are pretty good about warning you of the more brutal ones…I stay the fuck away from those…can’t deal with some of that shit anymore…
Not really movies but:
X Files Blu-ray: I’m up to season 6 of 9
Tales of the Crypt…DVD 1-7 seasons. Just started
John Wick in 4K…all 3
I have the box set of all these too!
They’re great.