Video Nasty #19: Faces of Death

Synopsis: Pathologist Dr. Francis B. Gröss thinks that to truly understand death, we must face it in every possible form. To this end the good doctor has travelled the world, amassing enough footage for a feature length snuff compilation. Genocide? check. Suicide? check. Eating a live monkey's brain? check. And you thought 'You've Been Framed' was a barrel of laughs!

Faces of Death was the film on the video nasty list I was most reticent to watch. I don't find real footage of death particularly enjoyable (assuming everything in the film is real) and, ignoring the questionable morality of a snuff mega-mix, a film comprising disjointed scenes of death just sounds dull. Faces of Death did, to a degree, surpass my low expectations. That's not to say it's a good film, it just isn't as morally bankrupt or boring as i'd expected. If I can say one kind thing about Faces of Death, it's that it isn't Transformers 2.

Despite my expectations, the film does have some cohesion between scenes, provided by the narration and philosophical musings of the fictional pathologist Dr. Francis B. Gröss. The voice over is surprisingly well written, making the piece more like a morbid discovery channel documentary than the low budget exploitation it really is. Some of the learned doctor's utterances almost provide an educational slant to the sick side show, such as Gröss' cowardly but identifiable admission that if he had to work on the animal slaughter production line he revels in showing us, he'd stick with the Nut Roast (the hallal slaughter of a cow is particularly grim and bloody). Other narration is less grounded though. Gröss suggests that cancer is a manmade desease that could be erradicated through sociological changes; the motivations of a human who takes their own lives is still a mystery; and the allies quickly beat hitler's army (maybe from an American point of view they did).


I have to admit that some of the footage is genuinely exciting, but it is mostly stuff that could and should be seen in good documentaries. Open heart surgery is fascinating (ignoring the filmmakers' cheap trick of pausing the footage to imply the heart has stopped beating) and some of the real nature footage is far more interesting than the staged footage of a man being eaten by a crocodile. The footage showing the aftermath of a 727 (PSA Flight 182) crashing over San Diego is morbidly fascinating and surreal, parts of plane and bodies strewn across the well kept lawns of suburbia.

As should be expected, the handling of some footage is in very poor taste. Although I can forgive the banjo music soundtracking the headless chicken 'dancing' around (it's just a nerve reaction after all), soundtracking real footage of a person jumping to their death with Dixie Land Jazz music is horribly disrespectful. Despite being accompanied by a rightfully somber narration, holocaust footage made me extremely uncomfortable, although I suppose genocide has to be acknowledged as one of societies many unnatural causes of death.

So is Faces of Death real or fake? I spent some time researching the legitimacy of the film before I watched it, mostly as an emotional safety net for some of the more infamous scenes. Regardless of what I discovered, I was always going to watch the film, uncut, because it's the only fair way to make a judgement on the Video Nasty furore at the end of this obscenity marathon. In true mondo tradition the film is a mix of fact and fiction, with no clear indication of what is real and what is fake. The Internet puts the figure at 40% fake, which seems reasonable. The fake footage is very well shot and as such i'm not sure how I would of reacted if I saw the film in '78 on a grainy VHS, especially as I wouldn't of had the detailed film geek analysis a few mouse clicks away. Obviously no person was killed for the film, and the infamous monkey antics is a certified hoax.

There's no denying that Faces of Death is made for a juvenile audience; IMDB's forum is mostly people reminiscing about watching the movie at sleepovers and believing everything was real. Despite the target market, the film is put together with some competency and, thankfully, it's clear that no person or animal was harmed for the sake of entertainment, something which cannot be said for other films on the DPP list (Cannibal Holocaust). Faces of Death isn't a good film, It just isn't as obscene as I expected.

I think i'll pass on the three sequels.