Death File Red

By Jimmy Squarejaw

Throwing their hat into the “shockumentary” genre, Japan’s DEATH FILE is a 60 minute cliff’s notes on all sorts of horrible shit from around the globe looped together by a straight faced bump on the log who is nothing like the Coroner from FACES OF DEATH, that dapper bastard.  DEATH FILE RED is the first of this series I have watched that from my best guess has parts 1 through 5, part BLACK, and part YELLOW.  My overall perception of RED is that it’s similar to the world wide coverage of MONDO CANE without the sharp humor and with worse music.  Then again, it’s in Japanese so I wouldn’t know if the narrator is funny or not.  A pain I know all to well.  Anywho, onto DEATH FILE RED…..

After a brief introduction by a guy, he walks across a beach and gets into a wood casket that eventually gets engulfed in flames.  I was crossing my fingers that that was real because he was as boring as licking envelopes.  Once the caught on camera footage starts it’s a quick montage of all the scenes we’re about to see set to intense music.  I was intrigued but pissed because now I know the gist of the movie.

The first stop is Tent Town, India.  The camera weaves through the tent camp interviewing different people and capturing different activities that happen in this alleged tent municipality. The footage following this however is of a city completely leveled by some type of destruction.  The tent town folks were setup as aid? Possibly? Regardless, all the footage is aftermath stuff so there is nothing too bad except a skeletal cadaver covered in debris and a few cadaver sniffing dogs scratching at the dirt. 

Now off to Ethiopia, which is evidently a pretty impoverished country with some health issues, had no idea. The cameraman focuses on kids that are practically walking skeletons covered with flies jockeying for position around their mucous membranes a eyes.  This was tough to watch, especially because I don’t want kids and I hate flies.

Next, we take a quick jump through a dirt mound cemetery somewhere in the world where the mortality rate matches the average I.Q. score and then off to Thailand.  In Thailand we visit probably the worst few clips, one of which landed on the cover of the movie.  First a tour of a baby incubator ward ending with a set of twins conjoined at the chest, hopefully these kids have enough cents to stay the hell away from chili cheese fries after 5p.m., imagine the heartburn, they’ll never sleep.  The cover of the movie takes a still from this next clip of a baby that I would say has more than a few problems.  Its eyes are red and bulging out of its head, its mouth looks like a suction cup, and all of its fingers and toes are tiny grey nubs on huge hands and feet.  Then all of the sudden it moves and drinks from a bottle and I shrieked a little.  My god, a glimpse of that in any sex-ed classroom and you’d end the teen baby crisis!  And the parting view from Thailand is a lethargic kid lying on a bed in a shack.  His placid face is quite the fake out from the festering open sore that’s infected his leg so bad it’s the size of a country fair pig.  And that’s it for Thailand. 

There are a few other entertaining scenes that I’ll leave be for those of you who might actually watch it one day.  It is definitely not very shocking by any means compared to some of the other movies out there, so it might be a good recommendation to a sociology or anthropology major you want to get beers and smell butts with.

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Realistic Gore: 1 out 5, really nothing too bad.  A pixilated autopsy is the worst for guts and gore.

Rape: 0 out of 0

Animal Death: 0 out of 0, a first for shockumentaries.

Necrophilia: 0 out of 0

Torture: 0 out of 0

Overall Movie: 2 out of 5, watched it once and I'm good. Yawn