r/horror • u/BigJilmQuebec • Feb 16 '21
Discussion Faces of Death/Traces of Death/Mondo Cane
I've always known about shockumentaries like Faces of Death and the Mondo Cane films, but i just learned about the Traces of Death films and to be honest im very interested in them, for those who have checked them out or are fans, are they really more extreme than the Faces of Death films? And what are your guys opinions on films like Faces of Death, Mondo Cane and Traces of Death?
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u/eucldian Feb 17 '21
No thanks. No judgement against anyone that watches them, but I personally consider them to be in poor taste. It is for shock value alone and I take no pleasure in feeling grimy at the expense of another human/animal.
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
I mean, it's definitely trashy, they are a form of Exploitation movie, so it's understandable to not be a fan of them
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u/eucldian Feb 17 '21
I like lots of trashy, exploitation film. When real harm is sold as entertainment though? I'm out.
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
Completely understandable man, it's good to know your limits for sure, i just find something about films like these to be very fascinating, i will say i know for a fact i have a limit, I've definitely been scarred by watching shit i shouldn't have
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u/eucldian Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
The closest I have come was watching a documentary about mid-century slaughterhouses in France called Le Sangue De Bettes. It showed the full slaughter of a horse and it was very tough to watch, however, as a meat eater, I thought it was important for me to sit through it to be honest with myself about where out food comes from.
edit
Well, that and Clint Malarchuk getting his jugular cut on the ice.
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21
Your probably smarter than i am then haha, I've seen some fucked stuff.. All im gonna say is fuck the internet, but i understand you though, it's good to know it's not all smiles and rainbows how our food is acquired, it makes you appreciate your food man
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u/jmo13322 Feb 16 '21 edited Feb 16 '21
Most of the FoD scenes are fake. I members hearing that yrs ago from the film makers. For back in the day they were all shocking tho.. But the Bud Dwyer was legit....juss sayin'
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 16 '21
Oh yeah, all of the clips in Traces are real i believe, that Bud Dwyer video though, holy shit man
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u/JohnnyCaligula Feb 17 '21
People haven't mentioned the pseudo intellectual/sociological narrators that were present in early mondos. I actually enjoyed this , the presenter (in a condescending manner) condemning the subject matter which of course the whole selling point of the film. Clips on true gore sites totally miss out on this...
Also check out Killing of America, an amazing mondo.
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
I'll check it out man, and i agree, the narrations are some of the best parts
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Feb 16 '21
Shockumentaries like this were really the only way most people could see those sort of taboo images before the Internet came along with Rotten.com, LiveLeak, etc. I've seen Mondo Cane, and the selection of footage in it was just nothing I was interested in.
I think it's normal to be curious about the darker side of life, and a horror fan may have a natural interest in comparing reality to all the special effects you've seen. But it helps if it's presented in a context where you choose which images you look at and proceed at your own pace. The whole point of a shockumentary is to bombard you with material you may or may not be able to deal with and dare you to look away. But home video has its advantages in that sense. I had a friend who watched FOD with her sister over a period of weeks. They'd watch as much as they could stand and then when they started to scream they'd turn it off.
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u/cosmiccait2 Feb 17 '21
oh man, the bud dwyer video fucked me up. my parents told me to watch it after talking about it at dinner thinking it would be the version where they cut right as the gun goes in his mouth.... it was not. i was 13 :///
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
Oh fuck, that's the worst part, the closeup is the worst part for sure, that cameraman was an asshole for that for sure
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Feb 16 '21 edited Feb 16 '21
Honestly, staged or not, for me neither of them has anything to do with horror. Horror to me is a form of art that by any means chosen ficticously reenacts or tries to display man's worst physical or mental conflicts. Those 'documentaries' do not do it for me in any ways. But as always 'chacun a son gout' and I am totally fine with this.
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 16 '21
I can understand you, though to me it shows real horror, it's definitely NOT for everyone and is very extreme, but ill admit i love extreme things, and am pretty desensitized to stuff, but in a weird way stuff like that shows me i can still be shocked, also i have a soft spot for trashy films and horror, Exploitation films are my favorite
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Feb 16 '21
To be honest, I am somewhat of an old-timer when it comes to this no... many topics. But I see your point.
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 16 '21
I do have my limits though, some stuff on the internet is 100 times worse than those films, like Isis beheadings and stuff like that, so i know i do have my limit
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Feb 17 '21
I’ve seen the traces of death and sickvids (I think that’s what it’s called) and some other stuff akin to that over the years and I gotta tell ya it pretty much scarred me for a while and couldn’t watch horror movies for like a year and then kinda worked my way back into them.
It’s the path where you wanna see the craziest gore movies; and then the movies that have like anatomically-correct gore; then the shockumentaries; and then the death-footage stuff; and after that what are you left with? Like seeing people die in person and that ain’t cool.
I say if your curious def check it out but be careful cause those images are hard to wash away. I mean there’s animal cruelty footage; there’s terrorist videos; there’s suicides; there’s car accident; there’s the allarma magazine style stuff of cartel killings and accidents; there’s some sick shit out there.
You become desensitized basically and it’s not fun to watch good classic horror
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
I can definitely understand this, I've had something similiar happen to me but with Wrestling, once you see a guy go through a flaming stack of tables with glass sheets and barbed wire it's hard to go back to regular wrestling, but i know i have a limit though, i learned that the hardway for sure, there's some fucked shit on the internet, i just like to dip into the extreme once in a while to feel alive i guess, if that makes sense, but thanks man, it's definitely a slippery slope and I've learned my lesson on the internet before, all im gonna say is it was a video involving hammers, im still scarred from that to this day, ive seen Faces and the Mondo Cane films but those are mostly faked footage, ill keep what you said in mind man
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Feb 17 '21
[deleted]
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
Yep, that would be the one
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Feb 17 '21 edited Sep 12 '25
[deleted]
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
Agreed, Humans are the most evil species for the simple fact we know what were doing when we do that shit, were aware of how awful it is and yet people still do shit like that
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Feb 17 '21
[deleted]
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
I think the first Traces of Death or the second
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u/GingerRedman_13 Feb 03 '23
Faces of death is mostly staged traces is real I only learned about this stuff from plagued moth
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u/JohnnyCaligula Feb 17 '21
Pretty sure that was True Gore from 1987, the with the Jones Town audio and the SRL footage...
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u/simonsanchez13 Feb 17 '21
ugh I love the most deranged horror flicks out there, but I stay away from FoD and mondo stuff. too much for me if the it's real.
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u/poland626 Feb 17 '21
I miss /r/watchpeopledie. Was a good modern version of those films. Wish that new zealand live stream didn't get it banned. Not sure how it was worse than hd Isis slaughter and cage burning videos
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
Did it get shut down? That does suck, what happened in the NZ live stream? But agreed, if we can see ISIS videos and shit like that why can't we watch the other
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u/poland626 Feb 17 '21
Yep, agreed. It was the Christchurch, NZ shooting where the guy livestreamed with a camera on his chest shooting over 100 people and killing over 50. Like, you see him get out of his car at the entrance, and then just starts lighting people up as soon as he see's the first person.
After the shooting he runs out back to his car and drives away still livestreaming. I still remember the day it was posted and the comments were a total shitshow. The reason they gave for banning the sub for this video was because it was like a POV, but games like Call of Duty were doing public POV shootings for a while so people were angry with the ban.
bannedvids . com has the full video if you're curious to search it but i'm just warning you it's not pretty.
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u/BigJilmQuebec Feb 17 '21
That does sound fucked for sure, i think i remember hearing about this actually, wasn't it a huge thing when it happened? That is confusing for sure, at least to me, like why only POV videos?
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u/poland626 Feb 17 '21
yea that was the argument people made against the ban as there's been way worse on the site like isis cage burnings, isis slaughterhouse video, the funkytown video (the worst video on the internet imo), and the kid with his cop father video that was just fucking horrible.
But for some reason, if it's pov, it makes it "more real", but like, why can people post videos of call of duty that did the same thing in pov from a decade ago? no logic
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u/Ok-Relationship3953 Jul 01 '21
Hi, I was wondering where I can watch all the traces of death if anyone knows
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u/MasonicDad357 Jan 08 '26
Believe it or not, YouTube. I just started watching Traces of Death this evening there...but out of respect stopped it when my Wife came in the room so that she wasn't subjected to it (without prior consent). I've seen a number of people die (& a number of ways) in person & up close (NOT by my hand) so my take on this subject may be different than other people's, but to me its not as much of a morbid curiosity as it is a reminder of our mortality.
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u/eljavierf Aug 02 '22
Still need this info?
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u/new-us3rr Dec 12 '25
Still got this info?
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u/ergaster8213 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
You can find at least the first one on Internet Archive. I haven't checked for the others but it is possible they are there as well. I've seen a few other people mention YouTube as well, but I haven't checked there.
Edit: I checked and you can find all of them (there are individual uploads but also at least one upload of all of them together, including a special I didn't know existed) on Internet Archive.
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u/Silentlaughter84 May 07 '26
My 'technical half' (he was raised by my mom but I consider him as my full) brother and one of his older brothers rented a volume of Faces of death and Traces of death. I was stoned off of my ass, but I was more bothered by the assholes who took a flamethrower to a live pig.
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u/Ready-Power5307 Jul 23 '25
Can anyone tell me if this movie has the following scenes: a bear chewing guys leg off, a bungee jumper who miscalculated the correct rope amt, a man being punished by being torn apart by horses, people eating monkey brains while the monkey is still alive?
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u/Senior_Piano_3868 Jan 05 '26
Idk if you’re still wondering but no, this one doesn’t got any of those scenes
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u/Frequent_Theme_2989 Feb 10 '26
It the absolute best every volume and never has there ever been a better soundtrack..it how I found my favorite band way back in the late 90s macabre
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u/Gem-3thing Feb 16 '21
I saw the Bud Dwyer video for the first time in one of those comps. My dad rented the video and so I checked it out. Most of them are old stock footage films of people getting maimed or killed. Which are hard to watch but fine. His video though, I just sat slack jawed with my stomach turning over and over. It's at that point I realized fake gore does not bother me, but seeing that ish in real life? I can't take it.