In a February 2012 interview with the National Public Radio program "On the Media," the movie's creator, John Alan Schwartz, said that the scene that purports to show real tourists in Egypt killing a monkey and eating its brains was really filmed in a Moroccan restaurant in the US using Schwartz's friends as actors, foam mallets, a model monkey with a prosthetic breakaway head, a trick table, and cauliflower covered in theater blood for the brains.
In 1985, a California school teacher forced his class to watch the film. Two of the girls, Diane Feese and Sherry Forget, were so traumatized, their parents sued the school. They were awarded $100,000. John Alan Schwartz was asked for his thoughts on the situation, he was horrified that teenagers were shown the film and said the teacher should've been fired rather than suspended.
This film has 60% of it's running time consisting of Real stock footage of accidents, suicides, autopsies, war atrocities, the Holocaust and animal killings. The other 40% contains many deaths that have been proven or admitted as staged.
Writer/ director John Alan Schwartz decided to admit which scenes were faked after fighting a cancer, which he believed at the time would kill him. He recovered and lived another 13 years until his passing in 2019 from dementia.
One sequence involves cryogenic patient Samuel Berkowitz, who was frozen in July 1978 and stored in northern California. The relatives who were funding the suspension began to lose interest and/or wherewithal, an offer was made to continue the suspension as a neuro (head-only) free of charge, but it was turned down. Instead in October 1983 they had Berkowitz thawed, submerged in formaldehyde, given a proper funeral and buried. No attempt was made specifically to preserve the brain.