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 covered in concrete, a model monkey with a prosthetic breakaway head, a trick table, and cauliflower covered in theater blood for the brains. During that day of filming, the cauliflower had become rancid, but the actors decided to go along so it could add to their performances. The woman spitting it out wasn't scripted, neither was the laughter from the rest of the partakers.
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.
60% of this film'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 since been proven or admitted as staged.
For all the film's embellishments and fakery, the segment showing the gruesome aftermath of a female cyclist run over head first by the drive wheel of a semi truck was very real and culled from medical examiner footage and is thought to be the most revolting scene by David Kerekes and David Slater, authors of the book 'Killing for Culture: An Illustrated History of Death Film from Mondo to Snuff'
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.