I've been a huge Computeropolis fan since ever the first movie came out. The Computeropolis series was great and it followed the adventures of a teenage boy named Peri Dazz and his friends in the computer world.
The franchise started in 2004 with the original film, Computeropolis. After the success of the film, it was followed by two sequels in 2007 and 2010, respectively. It also had its own TV show on Gingo, titled Computeropolis: Adventures of Peri and Nicky, which ran from 2008.
I had the second one on DVD as well as the first four seasons of the show on DVD. Well, I used to have the first one on DVD from like five years ago but somehow I lost it and I can't find it everywhere. So, I decided to search Amazon.com for a preowned DVD of Computeropolis. I stumbled across one, at the rather cheap price for $6.99, including delivery. However, the DVD cover art seemed to have been torn off, with a label crudely placed on the front, written "COMPUTEROPOLIS" in a blue sharpie. I thought nothing of it, and decided to bid on it. Weirdly, despite it having a day to go, I immediately won the item. I proceeded to payment, left my feedback, and it arrived within a week.
When I turned on the DVD player and pop disc in, there were no previews and it skipped to the DVD menu. I thought it was a glitch or something, but I kept watching. The Universal logo appears, but instead of the Universal theme, it was dead silence. The movie opens with Peri playing a game on his computer. However, something felt off. There was backwards audio. I recorded it with Sound Recorder, and it played "You can't survive like this beyond death". I found that very creepy, but continued with the video. I got to the part where Peri gets sucked into his PC. Again, it was dead silence.
It cut to static for about five minutes, but again it was silent. The weird thing is that I could make out some sort of video in the static... It looked like Peri begging Nicky to not kill him but he did anyway and he cut his head off with a huge pool of blood. I nearly vomited, but after the video clip ended, the film cut to the scene where Peri and Nicky sneak in King Trojan's lair. Wow, that was pretty late in the film, but yet again it was silent. I wanted to turn off the DVD player but I refused.
When that scene ended, it once again cut to static. This time there was no hidden video thankfully, and it was just regular static. It cut to the shot of Peri and Nicky escaping from the lair. However the scene went on longer than I expected... Commander Cindy was crying, not like cartoon crying, but a realistic woman crying. And her tears were hyper-realistic. A massive spike came out of nowhere, chopped Cindy in half with a realistic 'crunch!' Hyper realistic blood and gore splattered all around, which scared me tremendously. I paused the movie and ran to the bathroom to throw up after seeing this sick stuff. This emotionally effected me greatly, as Cindy is one of my favorite characters!
It cut to Peri and his friends fight King Trojan. The disturbing thing is, the scene just keeps going. King Trojan and his minions eventually kill Peri's friends by beheading them. Then it cuts to static for 10 seconds and it showed a really disturbing image I ever saw in my whole life. It was King Trojan.... he was holding a wounded Peri by the head. Peri was crying, begging for mercy, sheer terror in his cries.
King Trojan literally broke Peri's neck, the sound reverberating, and I was 'treated' to the sight of King Trojan kicking the defenseless corpse of the poor boy around, blood flying everywhere, Peri's hair was breaking off, while all the time, the distorted sounds of King Trojan's evil laughter and Peri's screaming played. A distorted voice said something backwards. I recorded it and played it reverse. It said "Your life will be all over in a few seconds. You must be smart enough to play this backwards, because you're stupid enough to believe me". My chest pounded.
The credits were in Times New Roman. The background continued to show Peri's hyper realistic carcass fall and land on the floor, sliding off and hitting the floor. All you could hear was Peri whimpering, crying and asking "Why did you do this? Why?"
I promptly ripped the disc out of the DVD player, and threw them both straight into the garbage. To this day, I have never seen that eBay seller online again. My computer returned 404s on searching in the history, and anyone I asked on the eBay forums claimed the user had never existed in the first place. The next day, I woke up and I turned on my computer and went to my Yahoo Mail and contacted Universal about this.
Here's the reply:
"Where did you find out about that lost footage? Listen, we're VERY sorry your dreams have been crushed. But we can tell you that a murderer named Edward Gonzales made that footage. It is said that he murdered 9 people and raped 6 people. He was sent to jail and got sentenced for death. We also know that Edward was a very quiet and depressed staff. He got hired in 2003 but was fired the next year for making these kind of things.
Again, we're VERY sorry this footage spooked you. But no worries, we'll send you fun stuff. Just give us your address and we'll deliver it to you in no time."
I gave them my address, and 45 minutes later they just sent me Computeropolis books, plushies, DVDs, and toys. There was one more gift - a special one. It was in a cake package. It was a "we're sorry" cake. I guess they felt really sorry for me being very scared. Wow, the Universal staff is very nice. I ate the cake anyways and I kept the stuff.
So, that is my story. As long as I live, I swear to god that I'm never going to see that thing ever again.