True Gore

by jimmy sQuarejaw

www.facebook.com/yallaredead

Ahhh the death film: a smorgasbord of film and images of various aftermath scenes and actual death caught on film.  Usually produced by inept filmmakers trying to make some pseudo parable about life and death that only impresses teenagers stuck in a bong-fueled Friday night torpor.  However I love them, you love them and if anyone out there has two tits worth of sense in their head they know the death film True Gore, aka Super Junk, released by Wavelength Video in 1988 is close if not on top of the collecting cairn in regards to Death Films.  But before you steal some of your Mom’s tinfoil to freebase meth off of and rob the neighbor to try and afford this goddamn movie let me enlighten you on your potentially poor investment!   This movie kinda sucks.

Since the release and success of Faces of Death filmmakers have tried to create their own knock off movie complete with an enigmatic narrator similar to Faces of Death’s Dr. Gross who spouts off dumb bullshit about death and dying blah blah blah.  True Gore really set the bar low though, I mean really really low.  The narrator, who I will refer to as dude, is shrouded in the mysterious film editing technique known as ‘Low Contrast’ while he prattles on for a while about death.  Dude even states the absolute worst misconception about death that I loathe hearing, “hair continues to grow.”  After dumbing his audience down for a bit we are whisked away to a montage of death footage and pictures of the not so lucky.

The segment chapters in True Gore for the most part are old news in the land of death films and they include autopsy footage, AIDS the new plague clips, brutal animal death, S & M, and torture footage.  There is also staged bullshit like an interview with a necrophiliac and a serial killer that is almost unbearable to listen to. 

However all is not lost and a few scenes are a good watch.  First are the Jim Jones tapes. I’ve seen a few documentaries on our CIA agent buddy known as Pastor Jim Jones but I don’t remember these specific tapes and they are a grim listen.  The second worthwhile clip in True Gore, and my favorite, is the performance art video of robot engineer Mark Pauline attacking one of his raw meat monsters with a dentist drill set to the music of Factrix.  This footage is available online if you are interested and after you watch it you’ll be able to fuck with your gothic friends by saying you know more esoteric information about Industrial music than they do.  The last good clip worth mentioning is the final chapter in True Gore on the Atomic Age.  This chapter is more like a music video for the song, ‘A is for Atom’ by the Atom Smashers who is also known as Industrial Music pioneer Monte Cazazza.  The video is rife with neat animation, military clips of atom bombs, and people with radiation burns and mutations from said atom bombs.   

As I said in the intro True Gore for the most part sucks.  Sure there are a few things worthwhile but most of these clips can be found online somewhere and I couldn’t see shelling out the big bucks for a copy of this on VHS.  So if you see it on eBay don’t bid on it, let me bid on it you jerks!

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence/Gore:  3/5 – could be worse.

Rape: 0/5 but a chick does let a millipede crawl all over her vagina in one of the S&M scenes.

Animal Death: 5/5 yep, sucks, sad, and it’s the original source for the blowtorched pig scene in Traces of Death.

Necrophilia: 0/5 because the interview with a Necrophiliac was annoying as hell!

Torture: 1/5 there is some water torture stuff but it’s not too bad.

Overall Movie: 3/5 only for the aforementioned clips I thoroughly liked.