Topic: Grimmest documentaries you've seen

[BlodwynPig]

This is incredibly funny or very sad, depending on whether you just made this up. If you did make it up you'll be pleased to know that i'm googling and frowning. If you didn't make it up, please point me in the right direction.

yours

waiting with embarassment on standby

(edit - having just read it properly, i've got the shame face on. But I'll leave my foolishness here for others to smile at.)

You will be relieved to know that its an actually a real documentary. Sadly, I am probably the only person to own a copy. Rarer than hardcore snuff (coincidentally, the title of an animated film that Tony was developing around the time of his death, starring Elvira Muckett).

[Don_Preston]

I like the bit where it looks like Melvyn Bragg's about to break down and cry.

[BlodwynPig]

I like the bit where it looks like Melvyn Bragg's about to break down and cry.

Brutal. A truly brutal scene. You must have the uncensored VHS version. I am loathe to watch that again. The Timmy Mallett mobbing is truly horrific, especially with Hart reaching for his claw hammer before it fades to black.

[Don_Preston]

What is impressive is the way he predicted the News Corp controversy by publically stating his terminal colon caner was named Rupert, after Rupert Everett.

[LORD BRAGG]

Brutal. A truly brutal scene. You must have the uncensored VHS version. I am loathe to watch that again. The Timmy Mallett mobbing is truly horrific, especially with Hart reaching for his claw hammer before it fades to black.

the were tears off joy and also Mr harts wif had peppery sprays me in the frontlawn befor the intervue becos i tried to tuch her fannies

I AM THE LORD

[SockPuppet]

You must have the uncensored VHS version. I am loathe to watch that again.

I found a dubbed copy in a video shop outside Tokyo back in the mid 1990's.

There were a few scenes with Morph that were either out and out fakes or had been recorded solely for the Japanese market. But what really sickened me were the random clips of the Bradford City fire inserted into the video purely for shock value.

[QDRPHNC]

Everyone shut up, Tony Hart was my dad.

[BlodwynPig]

I found a dubbed copy in a video shop outside Tokyo back in the mid 1990's.

There were a few scenes with Morph that were either out and out fakes or had been recorded solely for the Japanese market. But what really sickened me were the random clips of the Bradford City fire inserted into the video purely for shock value.

Ah, the Holy Grail. Only 3 versions exist. You have one, Piers Morgan has the other two allegedly, although he posted this information under a pseudonym Mr. Slit on an early Usenet group in the 90s.[1]

1.	Of course, this is pre-interview material that the documentary sourced for the 2006 edition

[tookish]

A grim serial killer documentary, which I can't remember the name of, but which contained a bit which made me laugh out loud.

It was some time after Fred West's conviction. It contained lots of footage of his police interviews - one of which displayed his unbelievable ineptitude with a scene which still makes me chuckle - in rather poor taste I have to admit.

Simply put, he denied everything, but piece by piece the police were reeling him in.

At one point they'd got him to confess to two of the murders which he claimed were actually accidental killings which he tried to cover up.

He was describing the aftermath of the second one they were aware of. He gruesomely described chopping up the body and burying it in his back garden before saying...

"I just stood their looking at what I'd done and thought - 'That's three now - this has got to stop'"

At which point the police obviously said "Three?"

Caught out he then proceeded to say things along the lines of "Yeah - I was confused obviously at the time and must have thought there was a third one, but it was definitely only two. Thinking about it now I actually remember thinking 'That's two now. This has got to stop.'"

Fred West - the funny murderer.

Someone what I know of (Jackie's sister's brother's boy) was part of the West investigation[1] and says Fred was very calm and charismatic, leading them around the garden like he was showing off his prize lettuces instead of revealing the bodies of his victims.

On the subject of ineptitude, he confessed to a huge amount of the things he did on the mistaken assumption that the police already knew about it.

1.	inWestigation?[1]  1.  no. no. god forgive me. no.

[Hank Venture]

(Jackie's sister's brother's boy)

So, eh, Jackie's nephew?

[Artemis]

I find it hard enough reading the headlines on the front of the papers in the newsagent in the morning when there has been some sort of murder/suicide without being haunted by images for the rest of the day without soaking it up for 90 minutes.

There's a crucial difference with a good documentary, though. Newspapers sell sensationalism for profit. Headlines can really get to me, and I find it tough to stomach what the press sell a lot of the time, but that's because they design, word and present their stories so people will buy them. Obviously a documentary maker wants to create a successful insight into their subject matter, but does so with time on his side, and care to ensure a balanced or fair look at whatever it is, or a more articulate expression of their argument (again, I'm talking about the better documentaries here).

Put simply, headlines are cheap; insight can be enriching - even just as an insight into the extremity of humanity, however bleak.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Someone what I know of (Jackie's sister's brother's boy) was part of the West investigation[1] and says Fred was very calm and charismatic, leading them around the garden like he was showing off his prize lettuces instead of revealing the bodies of his victims.

On the subject of ineptitude, he confessed to a huge amount of the things he did on the mistaken assumption that the police already knew about it.

1.	inWestigation?[1]  1.  no. no. god forgive me. no.

Did you see Appropriate Adult? These aspects of West's character were depicted quite prominently. I was impressed by the way the writer, and the actor Dominic West, managed to eke a certain sense of black comedy out of it, but without crossing the line into tastelessness. A very tricky balancing act, but they pulled it off.

[Steven]

This is incredibly funny or very sad, depending on whether you just made this up. If you did make it up you'll be pleased to know that i'm googling and frowning. If you didn't make it up, please point me in the right direction.

yours

waiting with embarassment on standby

(edit - having just read it properly, i've got the shame face on. But I'll leave my foolishness here for others to smile at.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI9YSVXUc5c&feature=related

Around the 3:00 minute mark.

[Steven]

It's a frightening story of a life chewed up by chance, and how everyone connected to that person thereafter spends their life considering, reenacting that turn of chance. At the end there is at least a lot of solace to be found as a viewer in the reconciliation of Jesse and Elaine, Elaine's marriage and David's success in a passionate industry.

R. Crumb and his brothers are a trio of strange individuals. Unlike the Friedmans, they are seemingly from the hard-faced, serious minded 50s world as satirized in Crumb's own comics - no abuse or the sorts of family incidents that one would explain a few developmental kinks into an adult personality.

Comparing it with the Friedmans, there are two sets of brothers who lose on chance: Jesse is put in a real bars-and-concrete prison, but the fameless Crumb brothers have fates which are less angering but more upsetting and hopelessly longing. They're free, but creatively aimless and coping with eccentricities whose expression is self-destruction rather than fame and acclaim - even "high art."

R. Crumb either doesn't want to say, or it does not occur to him, that had his own career not carved a lucrative niche for his revolutionary art, he would plausibly have ended up much like them. So similar are they all. As it is, his life is enviably well-lived. He is very much at peace with the world, and his notoriety has persuaded society to celebrate his eccentricities.

Crumb's own fetishes are of course less extreme than his brother Maxon's impulses towards unsolicited daylight sexual engagement, but Crumb has had the fortune of having his turn-ons enmeshed as an inseperate part of his artistic aesthetic/ public persona... and so had plenty of opportunities to work out the strange erotic associations that still remain childish in Maxon and the late Charles.

I remember recoding this off the BBC I think when I was around 12 or 13 and it really effected me. As I had been an avid drawer all my childhood and had a similar style to Crumb (loved to shade with tons of cross hatching and drawing really far-out weird stuff), Crumb's psyhco-sexual problems come out really strongly in his art work, especially after the LSD trips. Love the bit where Maxon is talking about following a jewess into a store and then pulling down her bottoms so he could see her ass, and gets all animated with his spastic hand twitching like fuck thinking about it.

R. Crumb himself seems quite well adapted apart from obsession with powerful women's legs, the ghost of their white-collar obsessed alcoholic father long dead still haunts all three of the brothers. The stuff I found most sad was Charles and his problems, living in squalor dosed to fuck on anti-psychotic meds and living with/having his mother constantly shouting at him at aged 50. THe scene where Robert shows Charles' early drawings is amazing, he probably would have been a better artist than R. Crumb if he had kept at it, the development where the comic strips gradually evolve into more and more text until its basically a novel, which gradually breaks down into smaller and smaller writing until it ends up just as indecipherable scrawls is just scary. It made me really sad when Robert explains that Charles' comics obsessed around the relationship with the boy and the captain from Treasure Island, eventually years later confessing that he had some weird kind of attraction to Bobby Driscoll the boy in the film. And of course that he eventually committed suicide after the documentary was filmed, how grim. I must have watched it tons of times as a kid, downloaded it a few years ago and still watch it once every year or so and show it to people, it's just a bizarre insight into the Crumb's odd world.

How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure.

[Artemis]

That YouTube clip of West is very annoying. Just as he's about to say something, there's a cut to something different he said.

[Dark Sky]

Catfish is one of my favourite films.  I've now ordered this TalHotBlond film of which you speak, and it's costing me £12.  If it isn't as good as Catfish then I shall be turning to you for a refund.  Just so you know.

I just watched TalHotBlond on the back of this thread. Fascinating story and though I wouldn't label it "grim" like some of the other movies in this thread, watching the whole thing play out does leave you with a sense of hopelessness. My one objection to the film was the narration. Seriously, what on earth compelled them to narrate from the point of view of the murdered man? It didn't add anything and in some instances really took me out of the story as they'd assert things from his opinion to which I'd merely think: You can't possibly know that!

DarkSky, I think you'll enjoy it. I too loved Catfish (and was sad to read after that it may've been a hoax) and this, while presented very differently, is an equally interesting story of internet deception.

Hmm, well I have now watched Talhotblond!  I agree with you, Morbunderast, that the story behind it is fascinating, albeit not particularly unusual.  I'm surprised this kind of situation doesn't happen all the time.  In fact, I absolutely believe it does.

I thought the documentary itself wasn't very well made at all, mind.  Having an actor narrate the film as the dead character was - quite frankly - cheap and sensationalist.  Shots of the night sky, stars twinkling, and they put words into his mouth about what he's feeling, and what he wants to say to his family.  WHAT UTTER BOLLOCKS.  I understand why they did it; to try and inject some empathy and pathos into a story which would otherwise have been about two horny men having cybersex with a girl. But it's manipulative and left a horrible taste in my mouth.  As did all the stock sad, mournful music during the sad, mournful bits.  Urgh.  Bad, bad filmmaking.

This is open to debate, but I started to wonder if the documentary was trying to push blame too much onto Talhotblond herself, rather than the man who pulled the trigger.  It was like they were trying to make out that this was a good, family man really, it's just that he was goaded into doing what he did, and it was his marine sniper training kicking in, not his rational mind.  But he was the one who kept talking to her and getting himself worked up over her.  The whole thing was in his head, and she certainly didn't condone or encourage him to murder.  Yet the documentary tried to make out that she was to blame for the guy's death.  And that disturbed me slightly.

So all in all, an interesting story, but you might as well just read some of the news articles about it.  Plus, there are plenty of stranger, more bizarre stories about internet deceit and deception out there.

As for the brilliant Catfish...  I understand why someone might compare it to Talhotblond on a superficial level because they're both about Internet deceit, but Catfish is an amazing film, a brilliantly told story which is funny, strange, scary, and ultimately incredibly moving.  To me, it doesn't matter if Catfish is real or not, because it's a masterclass in storytelling, an amazing narrative full of some great (and beautiful) characters.  I also find it a very uplifting film, showing off what's good about humanity, rather than being some kind of sensationalist scare story.  It's an engrossing, compelling piece of cinema, which isn't something I can say about Talhotblond, sadly.

TWELVE POUNDS PLEASE

[Junglist]

Catfish was dull. Very, very dull, and I've watched it twice (once alone, and once with someone else who wanted to give it a go)

Not once did I care for anything that happened.

[Dark Sky]

You miss out, boy.  You miss out.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Just watched Catfish, does seem a bit staged at points.  Sad if it's generally true though, not grim, just sad.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Talhotblond, now that is a really messed up and depressing film.  It's always good to remember that the internet is full of maniacs.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Dream Deceivers was an interesting one.  Something about he lack of insight of the parents of those teenagers, and their role in how their children ended up was really grim to watch.  Equally I found the members of Judas Priest to be somewhat dismissive, no it's not their fault these kids turned guns on themselves but they appeared somewhat callous in talking about the whole situation.

I can't put together any coherent thoughts about Dear Zachary.  That just left me in tears.

Edit:  Something that is left with me about Dear Zachary, is some sense of optimism out of all that tragedy.  The elder Bagbys, their commitment, love and downright decency is inspiring.

[thugler]

They appeared somewhat callous in talking about the whole situation.

Would you not be pretty miffed if you were facing prosecution and blame for some kids blowing their brains out? being accused of putting satanic suicide instructions in your music is probably not the best experience.

[QDRPHNC]

Would you not be pretty miffed if you were facing prosecution and blame for some kids blowing their brains out? being accused of putting satanic suicide instructions in your music is probably not the best experience.

No, but being the parent of a child who has killed themselves is significantly worse. Some empathy maybe?

[Theremin]

No, but being the parent of a child who has killed themselves is significantly worse. Some empathy maybe?

It's difficult finding the balance.

They're obviously grieving, and not in the most mentally stable place, but at the same time you and your entire career are under attack because of them.

[Default to the negative]

Animal Passions remains the most hilariously depressing documentary I've seen. It was about zoophiles and all of them were just what you'd expect. One of them was Mark — who looked like a kind of animal-shagging John Candy — a guy who went on Jerry Springer as The Man Who Married his horse ("I wouldn't take neigh for an answer"). He spoke of how he felt he'd "beat the system" by finding love with animals, because he'd been sorely rejected when he courted the opposite sex in his teens and then happened upon a means to sexual gratification that didn't involve pandering to the needs of those wicked women. As if women were thinking "damn, we really shot ourselves in the foot there". He lived with a wide range of livestock but ponies were his faves. He recounted his first time, in his southern drawl: "One day, I walked into that stable and saw that pony swishin' her tail up the air... and somethin' jes' went ka-ching!" At the time of interview, he was very ill and at the end of the doc we were told that he died soon after. He said his illness was from an infected tattoo needle but I don't think we'll be believing that, thank you very much. Lots of diseases come from human contact with animals; usually contact of the normal kind, like farming them. That's what why zoophilia needs to be illegal, I think: The potential they have to contract diseases we don't even know about yet through their extraordinary dealings with animals, then spread them among the wider population. HIV may not have come from inter-species sex, but it's a good example of the risks.

A while ago, I was arguing with a friend about the ethics of consensual sex with animals. His question was this: If the animal enjoys it, as some obviously do, and the animal isn't injured in any way, then can we truly say there's something wrong with it, even if it's personally distasteful to us? Well, all I had to do was play a few choice cuts from Animal Passions. Therein we see that the problem isn't the damage done to animals, the problem is the damage these people are doing to themselves and their state of mind. You will never meet a perfectly decent, likeable person who just so happens to have sex with animals. There's always going to be a whole range of deep-seated mental problems there, and Animal Passions puts that across quite nicely.

Whole thing uploaded here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBln6JyL74k

Watch it, I promise you all that you'll love it. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be moved. You'll come away from it an older and wiser person.

[clingfilm portent]

What I took away from that documentary is this delightful new acronym: J.R.H.N.B.R. It means Just (the) Right Height, No Bucket Required.

[Steven]

Re: Catfish again. I'd forgotten but I remember seeing a documentary a few years before Catfish came out about a child prodigy painter girl, who was having her own exhibitions and selling for quite a price, after a while it becomes more suspect her father is doing the paintings for her. I think this is another reason the premise in Catfish seemed a bit phony to from the outset.

[thugler]

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

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

[dr_christian_troy]

I have a copy of Zoo, but not yet seen it - although I have seen the full unedited footage of what was filmed on that fateful night, in which you can almost hear the sound of his colon being perforated. Can anyone verify the documentary is worth a watch?

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

Stuff about Talhotblond

I JUST SAID BASICALLY THE EXACT SAME THINGS, COPYCAT. GET YOUR OWN OPINIONS.

But yeah, the conclusion I found ambiguous but slightly leaning towards old-fashioned blame-the-bitch attitudes - that damn tease, inciting murder with her pretty pictures! The woman in question was awful to have used her daughter like that but there was no apparent intention to cause murder; marinesniper himself was clearly the unstable one who took things to an extreme level (I wouldn't say they were trying to paint him as an ordinary guy though, and if they did all the 'raped by n**gers' stuff somewhat put paid to that). But yeah, I don't understand why people have preferred this to Catfish; quite apart from its questionable attitudes it was pretty poorly made I thought. It seemed like a TV documentary - very little insight, overwrought at times with the narration, at other times quite plain and boring with the long scrolls of text, and generally not very 'filmic'.