Empire of Madness (1989)

Don’t be misled by the title and put your lube away: True Gore II (aka Empire of Madness) (1989)–M Dixon Causey’s follow-up to the eponymous first entry–has virtually no true gore in it at all. Instead, the first half is a compilation of faux-snuff vignettes akin to something you’d find in a SOV horror collection like Snuff Perversions 1 & 2, Snuff Files, The Dead Files, Violations I & II, or even more recent titles like Murder Collection Volume 1. The second half is in turn a send-up of satanic panic style videos like Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults, Devil Worship: The Rise Of Satanism, and countless others shat out during the 80s/90s. The vignettes are hilariously inept to the point where it seems clear that Causey was parodying the shockumentary form. Even the credits are a joke, mocking the seriousness with which shocku producers take themselves, crediting a ‘researcher’ for a film that clearly had none, and a ‘visual archivist’ being listed in place of a cameraman.

Released Jan. 1, 1989 86 min None+

Genres: Documentary, Horror

Keywords: tmdb.spoof, imdb.shockumentary, mdblist.imdb-video, mdblist.three-actors, imdb.severed-head, imdb.disembodied-head, imdb.suicide + 27 more, imdb.slaughterhouse, imdb.sexual-violence, imdb.satanism, imdb.necromancer, imdb.gun-violence, imdb.gore, imdb.drugs, imdb.devil-worship, imdb.decapitation, imdb.death, imdb.dead-body, imdb.autopsy, imdb.exploitation, imdb.fake-documentary, imdb.mondo, imdb.independent-film, imdb.organs-removed, imdb.dismemberment, imdb.scene-during-opening-credits, imdb.human-skull, imdb.work-gloves, imdb.scalped, imdb.video-nasty, imdb.brain-removed, imdb.talking-severed-head, imdb.throat-slit, imdb.blood