'Disgusting' horror is illegal to watch in the UK because of clips of real-life murders
It's not often that I look at a film and question if there is any justification for making a film, but I think Traces of Death may fit into this category.
Released in 1993 under Brain Damage Films, the movie - if you can even call it that - is an amalgamation of real-life clips of people being injured or dying while screenwriter Damon Fox narrates over the top.
The film's content is said to include footage from various high-profile cases, mixed in with videos of animal experiments and autopsy footage.
According to a recap on IMDb, the film starts by showing the death of Maritza Martin, a woman who was fatally shot by her ex-husband while live on Spanish-language television, before cutting to the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege.
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The film continues in the same grim tone, showing viewers a living pig being burned alive with a torch, graphic footage of a sex change operation, and the moment R Budd Dwyer fatally shot himself in the head while speaking on TV.
There's also archive footage of Ilse Koch - the notorious Nazi war criminal who created lampshades and various other household items from the skin of prisoners at Buchenwald Concentration Camp - included towards the end.
"It doesn't get any deader than this," reads the film's extremely morbid tagline, which appears to be a pretty accurate summary of the 76-minute film.
Is Traces of Death banned in the UK?
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that a film which is made up of animal cruelty, genocide and extreme violence wasn't considered suitable for public consumption.
In 2005, the British Board of Film Classification refused to give Traces of Death an age rating, after concluding the film had 'no journalistic, educational or other justifying context for the images shown'.
Which is completely understandable, as this isn't fake blood and carefully choreographed sequences you're watching, but instead real people meeting painful ends.
If the film had received a licence, there's also a chance it would fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act, which, again, isn't surprising.
Over in the US, Pennsylvania woman Amy Hochberg rented out the film from her local video store in 1997, believing it to be clips of '911 calls with a little more'.
After witnessing the extreme violence depicted, Hochberg told local paper The Morning Call that she vomited after watching several scenes before calling her local police station to report the film.
Can I watch Traces of Death?
Thanks to the freedom of the modern-day internet, it is theoretically possible to obtain a copy of Traces of Death, although a better question would be whether you want to.
The subject was recently broached on a Reddit thread, with even the most robust of horror aficionados warning curious viewers against willingly traumatising themselves.
"Traces of Death is often footage of real people actually dying my dude, be very very VERY VERY sure you actually want to see that before you go poking into it," read a response to a user requesting a link to the film. "Remember, it's almost impossible to unsee something. If you have the slightest inkling you don't want to see real human beings actually die in accidents, suicides or murders, then please do your future self a favour and skip the watch."
"The 3 traces of death videos are absolutely crazy," added a second person. "When people say FACES of Death is the most horrible thing they've ever seen, I just think like, OMG those were absolutely nothing compared to Traces of Death."
Brenna Cooper