THE CLASSIC, BLOOD-CURDLING MOVIES so many people like to watch in the days leading up to Halloween suddenly don’t seem so frightening when compared to the real-life horror flick that made its debut in Washington, D.C., last Friday. An hour-and-a-half of ominous background music, graveyards scattered with human skulls, and a relentless murderer as its main character, the documentary film is called WMD: The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein. Its eye witness accounts of two decades of gruesome torture perpetrated against the Kurdish population of Iraq–and never-before-seen footage of chemical attacks that occurred during Saddam’s 35-year rule–are chilling.

Despite recent reports that no weapons stockpiles have been found in Iraq since the beginning of the war, WMD‘s central message remains sickeningly true: Saddam himself was a weapon of mass destruction, responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.3 million Iraqis since he took power in 1979.