Traces of Death

I prefer Faces of death, cause there's someone speaking to the audience telling every little detail about what you're watching, but this is definetly the goriest "mondo" bloody film that I've ever watched. There's two more parts and each one contain some boring footage (the one with the surgeries are terribly long, and without speaking) but it's worth seeing because of the other scenes, like explosions or real photos from the police. check it if you can stand it...

Wow theres not much that a user can say about this movie except maybe "Gross" or "wow" or "Shocking". But the movie is much more. A lot of people have badmouthed this film due to its violent content but that is just the point of the movie.

Although it doesnt live up to its image it is at times shocking and sickening. Its by far better than Faces of Death is. The narration is boring at times and it seems like the narrator is trying to gross people out and waste time instead of explaining the situations.

While it is more graphic than Faces of Death it does miss the storyline and the narrator explaining the things. There are several scenes that I found strange and would have liked to know some background on what I was seeing but it was not there.

Another low point in the film is the major hospital scenes. People under the knife and what not. This would have been truly shocking in the 80's / early 90's but now that we have shows like "Trama Life in the ER" scenes like this fall short of being shocking.

Overall the movie is well rounded in its style. Some times the movie does drag on but its much more entertaining than films like "Mondo Cane" and the like.

Overall I give this movie a 8 out of 10. While the film did keep me interested It fell short of being shocking. The prolonged warning at the beginning just made me hit the FF button.

***KEY POINT*** A key point to look for in this movie is towards the end they are "selling" body parts and other sick things.....its strange and without giving it away, just check it out for yourself. Its funny, strange, and shocking. I call it a reward for suffering through the whole entire movie. ***KEY POINT***

So overall I give this movie a 8/10. Its worth checking out if your a hardcore mondo fan...which I am not

Most human beings look at death with a sense of fear, but also of great interest, and this film caters to that interest. It speaks to the side of you that pays close attention when passing car accidents on the highway in the hopes of seeing as much as you can, that side of you that has always wondered what the process of an autopsy looks like, or what really happens in a gender-reassignment surgery. This film shows it all, and in gruesome, no-holds-barred detail. It showcases countless individuals' final moments, as well as freak accidents, among other things that can't really even be mentioned here. This film is ultimately nothing more than a compilation of footage from external sources. There's no plot; just a series of grotesque images and scenes playing out with a narration that tries too hard to be frightening. It is, without question, one of the most exploitative pieces of entertainment ever made in the sense that it makes a spectacle (even editing footage of a man shooting himself into the kind of early, pre-meme style editing you would see in the beginning days on YouTube) of other people's deaths, suffering and medical procedures. That being said, the medical procedures themselves are highly interesting, and feel a lot less exploitative. They take up a large chunk of the film, with music playing behind the procedures. Again, it speaks to that part of you that wants to wander behind closed doors and see exactly what happens. It satisfied a long-running curiosity, but at what cost? This is not a film that can really be recommended to anyone. In fact, it's best left forgotten as a product of its time, not given the time of day (I say as I sit here writing a review about it). It's blatant disrespect for the dead, and it's presented as one would expect a mockumentary of false events of peril to be presented; the entire film, while gravely serious in content, isn't particularly concerned with maintaining seriousness for the dead. It downplays the true tragedy of the loss of human life and, in turn, presents a message that "the reaper" is waiting for you and, one day, he's gonna catch you and you'll wind up like the people that were shown in the film. While that may technically be true, it's a tasteless message to drop in a film showcasing actual tragedies. Having watched everything they crammed into that 75-odd minute film, it does present an interesting perspective on mortality, and it's something that no modern horror film would ever give you (my thoughts immediately went to the recent, horrendous Stephen King adaptations that come a dime a dozen from the Warner Bros. and Netflix machines in these past few years... can we stop with those already?). This goes where traditional film refuses to go, and it feels as cheap as it is. On an estimated budget of only $18 (the footage must've all been public domain, so the budget was probably used to pay the voice actor for the 10 minutes or so of awful narration involved in the thing). One of the things that I cannot stomach in film, however, what needs to be talked about here, is animal cruelty. This film makes the ever-notorious Cannibal Holocaust look like a Disney film by comparison to this. At least in Cannibal Holocaust, the kills were relatively quick, according to animal rights reports. This has a too-long scene of a bound-up pig being torched alive. It has nothing to do with anything else you see on the screen; it comes out of nowhere, and it goes away with no purpose. It was one of the most uncomfortable scenes I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through, and something I can only pray to never have exposure to again.

Overall, this film is for the morbidly curious. It's sad in the sense that there have been VHS and DVD releases of this film that have been fairly successful, and that people have these tasteless exploitations of death proudly on their shelves. It's not something anybody can really enjoy. If anything, it's a harsh wake-up call to the realities of life. Part of life is death, and this film showcases that in a brutally blunt manner. It's something that's important to think about, but only the truly insane would dwell upon the content of this film, let alone suffer a second viewing and beyond. It's a one-and-done deal kind of movie.

I will not be viewing any of the subsequent entries into this "series."

I agree with D Segura that most of the film especially the autopsies need some narration of some sort as they tend to get a bit boring if you don't know what is happening. Its still fascinating in some parts. The sex change operation is painful to watch if you are a man ha ha. The pigs getting burned I could have done without though, very cruel indeed. The Faces of Death series at least had some sort of structure to it and it feels as though this has just been thrown together in no order.

Some of the scenes were short/poor quality and not explained at all.

The narrator is a giggle with his horror voice.

Without a doubt one of the most atrocious movies (made for $18?) you're ever going to find, "Death" or otherwise. The great majority of the movie is still-photographs of murders, suicides, electrocutions, car crashes, and it's mostly SILENT FOOTAGE, so that little bonehead Damon Fox added in some horrendous, canned background music, and his own idiotic narration to fill that particular void. Damon has the personality of a toilet plunger, so why would we need to hear what he has to say? Why did Damon not address the allegations of his pedophilic convictions, alcoholism, and various other sundry affairs in his bone- gratingly bad narrative, or in his lengthy, and wholly fraudulent, bio?

By the way, to Damon Fox, clever title that you came up with for this. What did it take you, maybe all of about four seconds to think of that title? "Faces of Death" and "Traces of Death" may have similar titles, but they're nothing at all like each other. Faces of Death was a brilliantly marketed movie. Its tag "Banned in XX countries" made people believe that it really had been banned in many countries all over the world, which only made many people want to see this to see what the big deal was. It was largely fake, but was coherently put together, and told its mock story well enough to make it involving.. Faces of Death at least had a sleazy, trashy documentary feel to it, some attempt at a sequence or progression from one scene to the next.

None of that here though.

This is just one still-photograph of brains splattered on the wall after another, another silent video of someone crushed in a compactor after that, all edited together without any progression from one scene to the next, with that annoying hairball Damon providing a thoroughly obnoxious and grating narrative. His fraudulent bio on IMDb is pitiful, claiming to be a big time film producer, musician, alleging that he graduated high school when he was 12 years old, etc. Why did IMDb bother to add such nonsense? What a pathetic fraud Damon he is, and what a pathetic video this was. We can only hope that his death comes soon. Few times has a movie made me as angry as this, or has a worthless waste of life like Damon made me as angry as this has. Rot in Hell, Damon.

Damon, and every copy of this, should be burnt, and the ashes sent into deep space, to never be seen again.