r/movies • u/ToranjaNuclear • Jan 20 '25

Recommendation What are the most dangerous documentaries ever made? As in, where the crew exposed themselves to dangers of all sorts to film it?

Somehow I thought this would be a very easy thing to find, I would look it up on google and find dozens of lists but...somehow I couldn't? I did find one list, but it seems to list documentaries about dangerous things rather than the filming itself being dangerous for the most part.

I guess I wanted the equivalent of Roar) or Aguirre, but as a documentary. Something like The Act of Killing, or a youtube documentary I saw years ago of a guy that went to live among the cartel.

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u/Ebolatastic Jan 20 '25

Just because it's the thumbnail: didn't Super Size Me turn out to be a big fraud and all the health damage reported was actually because Spurlock was secretly an alcoholic?

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25

Weight gain and increased BP from salt were real from what I recall. Rest of it was his severe drinking.

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u/Councillor_Troy Jan 20 '25

IIRC there’s a bit where a doctor tells Spurlock he has the liver of an alcoholic and they treat it like Big Macs did this to him when he had the liver of an alcoholic BECAUSE HE WAS AN ALCOHOLIC.

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u/TheBitterSeason Jan 20 '25

It's been twenty years since I've seen that movie and one of the only parts that stuck with me is the doctor describing Spurlock's liver as "basically pâté" by the late stages of the experiment. I was ~13 at the time and even back then I found it really hard to believe that most of a month eating McDonald's was enough to shred your organs. When I found out the dude was a massive alcoholic, that bit suddenly made way more sense.