Grimmest documentaries you've seen

[El Unicornio, mang]

A man gets AIDS so his boyfriend starts filming the progression of the illness, then he gets it, so someone else steps in to film the both of them dying.

Thought you were then going to say "...and then he gets it", and so on and so on

[Garam]

Reindeerspotting - Filmed on a camcorder by some early twenties Finnish drug addicts from a frostbitten northern dump. Focuses on this one guy hooked on a French heroin substitute as he robs cars, gets his finger cut off because of a debt and finally, with a big score from a cash machine, goes on the lam to France so he can get all the legal drugs he wants. While daydreaming about a better life. Really eerie atmosphere to this one.

Collapse - Peak Oil doomsayer Michael Ruppert telling us why we're all fucked unless we change everything immediately. Just depressing on a catastrophic level really. Watched it over a year ago and still think about it almost every day. Similar in feel to 'The Fog of War'.

[Steve Lampkins]

Thought you were then going to say "...and then he gets it", and so on and so on

Thought you were then going to say "...and then small_world picks up the camera", and so on and so on

[thugler]

Collapse - Peak Oil doomsayer Michael Ruppert telling us why we're all fucked unless we change everything immediately. Just depressing on a catastrophic level really. Watched it over a year ago and still think about it almost every day. Similar in feel to 'The Fog of War'.

Even though he's clearly delusional and talking shit?

[ThickAndCreamy]

When a man collects his own piss to use as fertiliser for his garden ready for the day that society falls apart I think he should only be admired and loved for such perfect foresight.

[Koant]

"The World's Worst Sex Change Surgeon" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwWT6C8fOco

*** Very graphic! *** You've been warned.

Grimness level: so many lives ruined.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Found this when looking for a thing to post in Breaking Bad thread. Documentary about the New Mexico 1980 prison riot. Inmates take over the prison and get access to a load of blow torches and the cell block where they keep snitches and paedophiles. You can probably guess the rest...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M-hPpuAqwQ

[QDRPHNC]

Found this when looking for a thing to post in Breaking Bad thread. Documentary about the New Mexico 1980 prison riot. Inmates take over the prison and get access to a load of blow torches and the cell block where they keep snitches and paedophiles. You can probably guess the rest...

During an edition of BBC's Timewatch program, an eyewitness described the carnage in cell block 4. They saw a inmate held up in front of a window, he was being tortured by

Spoiler alert

using a blow torch on his face, they then started using the torch on his eyes, and then the inmate's head exploded.

[close]

Jesus fucking christ.

[BlodwynPig]

Jesus fucking christ.

Indeed! I loved that doc. It felt much older than 2000 and made me nostalgic.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Worst of all, it took them 3 hours to get through all the cells, so basically the ones at the end had to hear/watch inmates before them getting blowtorched to death, knowing that their turn was coming.

[MonkeyDrummer]

Found this when looking for a thing to post in Breaking Bad thread. Documentary about the New Mexico 1980 prison riot. Inmates take over the prison and get access to a load of blow torches and the cell block where they keep snitches and paedophiles. You can probably guess the rest...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M-hPpuAqwQ

I watched that too after you posted it in the BB thread.

So, yeah, thanks for that. It was, without doubt the grimmest doc I can remember seeing. And in response to your later post, yeah.

It was the build up of the victims believing that they'd be safe behind their bars, only to realise that they'd found a way in, and would eventually get around to "doing" you.

Compelling viewing right enough, what I did find disturbing was that no one was ever charged with any murders? Did I remember that right? But of course, if you'd just witnessed 33 snitches etc getting tortured and killed it would make you think twice about becoming one yourself.

The most heartbreaking for me was

Spoiler alert

the guy who was in for shoplifting and had been gang raped by 7 of the inmates. Decided to press charges and was moved to CB4

[close]

[El Unicornio, mang]

Yeah, him and the guy with the mental age of 12 who they decapitated with a shovel. Horrible. There are two books which go into a lot more detail, "The Devil's Butcher Shop" and "The Hate Factory". They explain more about the brutality, for example prisoners were being served rotten food, and also the violence that ensued, which involved a lot of raping of prison guards. With mass quantitites of drugs being consumed, and rape and murder going on all around, it must have truly been a hellish experience. Surprised a movie hasn't been made of it yet.

[QDRPHNC]

I haven't listened to the commentary track in years, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the riot scene in Natural Born Killers was heavily influenced by it.

[Mini]

Georges Franju's Blood of the Beasts is a jolly little documentary about slaughterhouses from 1949. It's a bonus feature on my Eyes Without a Face DVD and consists largely of footage of men killing animals in a disturbingly blasé manner.

[checkoutgirl]

I would advise anyone in an even fractionally emotional mood to give "Dear Zachary" a wide berth. I can't remember a film ever upsetting me so much. If you have any compassion you will probably cry. I do not enjoy crying.

[Cottonon]

Reindeerspotting - Filmed on a camcorder by some early twenties Finnish drug addicts from a frostbitten northern dump. Focuses on this one guy hooked on a French heroin substitute as he robs cars, gets his finger cut off because of a debt and finally, with a big score from a cash machine, goes on the lam to France so he can get all the legal drugs he wants. While daydreaming about a better life. Really eerie atmosphere to this one.

Thanks for this shout I really enjoyed it. Contains a couple of surprising Real Life Public Information Safety Film Moments;

Spoiler alert

the balcony fall

[close]

and the

Spoiler alert

zebra crossing near miss

[close]

which couldn't have been (accidentally) directed any better.

If this is your bag of tea then I recommend Dope Sick Love (2005) made in a pure Direct/Verite style, no voice over or music etc following two junky couples around NY. It's completely unblinking in it's gaze and very compelling.

[SteveDave]

Tonight I've seen the Mexican prison riot & the Worst Sex Change Doctor In The World Ever. Now I'm watching the Swansea Love Story.

I will report back tomorrow how bleak my dreams are.

[astrozombie]

I just finished watching "Just Melvin, Just Evil".

Fuck me that was harrowing.

I thought "Capturing the Friedmans" was the grimmest thing I'd ever seen but what I just saw blew that out of the water. Everything in that film was just a low, depressing, fucking mess.

I just literally turned the video off and two minutes before typing this stared dumbfounded as

Spoiler alert

at Melvin's funeral, which seemed to just take place in a woodland somewhere, his daughter shit-faced on booze all knelt over dragging the dirt with her bare hands into his grave falling over whilst clutching onto a whiskey bottle and then another drunk daughter yelling "Can we piss on him yet?".

[close]

Wow. There's a film that will linger in my mind for a good long while.

I had some suggestions for heavy documentaries to add to this thread but after seeing that I can't even remember what they were.

Goodnight!

[astrozombie]

Well as I can't sleep now...

I'm Your Number One Fan

Not as grim as some of the ones I've found in here but a good watch. I remember watching this a year or two ago and thinking about the self-named Blue Tulip Rose lady who appears in this in my mind for days. A downright eerie insight into the most extreme cases of obsession.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NlGFVadESY
Part 1 of 5


I tried finding this one but no luck. A few years ago around about the time when streaming TV shows off websites like TV Links etc. came about, I used to go over my friends flat who had high-speed broadband and a huge computer screen and we would sit down watching films online etc.

One day we said to ourselves "Let's put on a documentary!" so we went through the recommended section of the website and found one on Nazi Germany, the title vaguely being "History Channel Nazi doc!" and said to ourselves "Chuck it on!", then 10 minutes later were both sat in silence watching what was one of the most grimmest 'stick with yer' docs I've ever seen. It was all about experimentation on Jewish children in Auschwitz and even contained the bleakest of the bleak stock footage ever of starving kids being marched along to their ends. We turned it off halfway through unable to get through it. When I got home that night I pelted myself with Simpsons episode after Simpsons episode to ease my mind.

Christ that was a harsh one.

[Brundle-Fly]

Not watched it yet but from the scant clips I've seen, it looks very grim.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuqTmY3vAqM&feature=related

[El Unicornio, mang]

I always avoid any films/documentaries which show real animal killings/torture (the last one I saw, an expose of the awful way they treat animals in Chinese food markets, was enough to upset me for life), so will definitely not be watching that.

[SteveDave]

Well as I can't sleep now...

I'm Your Number One Fan

Not as grim as some of the ones I've found in here but a good watch. I remember watching this a year or two ago and thinking about the self-named Blue Tulip Rose lady who appears in this in my mind for days. A downright eerie insight into the most extreme cases of obsession.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NlGFVadESY
Part 1 of 5

That documentary is also the basis for all the news-stand headlines from series one of The League Of Gentlemen. "Ed Stewart's breath stinks" etc

[hedgehog90]

I watched that too after you posted it in the BB thread.

So, yeah, thanks for that. It was, without doubt the grimmest doc I can remember seeing. And in response to your later post, yeah.

It was the build up of the victims believing that they'd be safe behind their bars, only to realise that they'd found a way in, and would eventually get around to "doing" you.

Compelling viewing right enough, what I did find disturbing was that no one was ever charged with any murders? Did I remember that right? But of course, if you'd just witnessed 33 snitches etc getting tortured and killed it would make you think twice about becoming one yourself.

The most heartbreaking for me was

Spoiler alert

the guy who was in for shoplifting and had been gang raped by 7 of the inmates. Decided to press charges and was moved to CB4

[close]

I just watched this while I ate my lunch.
It was in the truest sense horrific. More so than any horror film I've seen.
I was not prepared to feel quite as sick as I felt while watching it.
The descriptions of certain murders were so vivid I feel as though I saw them in real-time.
There's images I've seen (in my mind) that will certainly stay there for a while...

This is a strange digression, but it got me thinking... the story of Ed Gein inspired The Texas Chainsaw Massacre... I wonder what type of film the story of the New Mexico Prison Riot would inspire?
It's an awful thing to think, but I can imagine a brilliant horror film based on this.
Not because of the grisliness of the murders (well, it helps) but because of every other aspect. Being locked in a building with a bunch of psychotic bloodthirsty criminals seeking revenge.
Absolutely terrifying.

[riotinlagos]

Here's the deeply dispiriting You've Been Trumped, which is on iPlayer until Tuesday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nln7g/Youve_Been_Trumped/

[alan nagsworth]

Gotta give Hated: GG Allin & the Murder Junkies a shout. Watched it the other week and was rather shocked, not least of all by a man doing a poo on a stage and then eating it/smearing it on his face/throwing it at the crowd, but also by the casual nature of the whole thing. It's not a spectacle, it's GG's fucking life. He's not happy at all, ever, but this seems to be as close as he can get to any vague semblance of peace of mind. He openly states that he hates everyone and if he didn't do the things he did to himself, he'd probably end up killing someone.

Bonus points for banging on about killing himself on stage for years and then dying of a heroin overdose at an afterparty in the most pitiful bumbling rock 'n' roll star fashion ever, which is just one of the many institutions that he himself actively despised and kicked out against. Daft sod.

[DukeDeMondo]

Gotta give Hated: GG Allin & the Murder Junkies a shout. Watched it the other week and was rather shocked, not least of all by a man doing a poo on a stage and then eating it/smearing it on his face/throwing it at the crowd, but also by the casual nature of the whole thing.

Brilliant film, that. And from the fella behind Road Trip, Old School, and both of those awful bastard Hangover pictures.

(I did very much enjoy Old School, mind. And Starsky and Hutch.)

[Artemis]

http://www.vice.com/rule-britannia/rule-britannia-swansea-full-length

This one is pretty grim, about heroin addicts in swansea.

Fuck me, that's bleak. The grimmest of all the documentaries I've seen via this thread so far, to my mind. Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse they plumb the depths of despair one notch further. By the end, as Amy recounts her appalling life history as her eyes roll back in her head, and the Welsh choir pick back up their terribly bleak soundtrack, I did start to wonder if this is the grimmest documentary I've ever seen. Thanks for the tip!

[Hangthebuggers]

Not sure if it's been mentioned but I've just watched a documentary about slavery in the 21st century and how wealthy Arab's and rich locals butcher and enslave Sudanese people .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RH5g6hBxoBg

The title might be a tad 'Daily Mail' , disregard the title and the first minute or so (which is quite OMG American vs Islam), the rest of it speaks for itself though, even on a neutral, no bias basis. It essentially highlights the slave trade, which is quite real.

* Graphic content *

[Blinder Data]

Fuck me, that's bleak. The grimmest of all the documentaries I've seen via this thread so far, to my mind. Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse they plumb the depths of despair one notch further. By the end, as Amy recounts her appalling life history as her eyes roll back in her head, and the Welsh choir pick back up their terribly bleak soundtrack, I did start to wonder if this is the grimmest documentary I've ever seen. Thanks for the tip!

I think you could say it's the bleakest purely from the subject matter (drug addiction + Swansea = bleak) but surely other documentaries mentioned in this thread are grimmer? It's true that they play with your emotions like no other, especially when the addicts get clean and you're sure it's never to last, however much you're hoping. However, I could stomach a thousand documentaries like that over any detailing the horrors of a prison riot or the butchering of the Sudanese. I don't know how you buggers have the stomach for it. A wikipedia description or just the knowledge that such things took place are enough for me, thank you.

Also, with these bleak documentaries I find there is always some (pretty black) humour to find. The scumbag father avowing that 'I never hit my kids - well, maybe the once'. And that he'd never done drugs in front of them, only to be told that he'd been found on the toilet by his kids passed out on drugs. Obviously he couldn't remember, he was asleep at the time! Haha!

OK, I'm sure I'm not the only person who laughed at the final joke with the guy and his 'clean for x months' keyrings he'd received: 'I got that tag when I... I got it...The bastards must have given me the wrong one!"

[Retinend]

I think you could say it's the bleakest purely from the subject matter (drug addiction + Swansea = bleak) but surely other documentaries mentioned in this thread are grimmer?

I just watched it and I think that it has hit me harder than any of the others posted here... maybe it's a certain British-centrism on my part... but also I think that the documentary is unusual in the context of this thread because it looks at people who are not yet right at the bottom of their predictable downfall. They don't seem to have any hope for the future but are trapped on the trajectory they are on. It has stuck with me strongly in the last 24 hours. None of the other documentaries about drug abuse convey to me so well the weird self-distancing simplification of life which is (it seems to me?) one of the major motivations for the addicts.