Faces of Death
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- This article is about Faces of Death, the film. For the rap album by the same name, see Faces of Death (album).
Faces of Death, also released under the title The Original Faces of Death, is a 1978 mondo film, lasting roughly 85 minutes, that takes on a "documentary" appearance as it guides viewers through explicit scenes depicting a variety of ways to die. It is often billed as "Banned in 40 Countries", with that number varying with the years. The film was written and directed by John Alan Schwartz (who was credited as "Conan le Cilaire" for directing, and "Alan Black" for writing), who also appears in a number of segments in the film, and stars Michael Carr as the narrator, "Dr. Francis B. Gross".
Although several of the "human death" scenes are very obviously faked, there are occasionally splices of footage captured during times of war that add a very real flavor to the proceedings. Famous scenes of death from the media are included, such as the suicide of Budd Dwyer and Nguyen Ngoc Loan's murder of a Vietnamese communist. Also featured are the actual, on-camera deaths of a variety of animals, including seals being clubbed to death and animals being killed on the slaughterhouse line.
The most famous (or perhaps controversial) scene includes the "murder" of a live monkey, which is then prepared and served to patrons of a "gourmet" restaurant. Although slap-dash in editing, the deaths all seem very realistic and are rather disturbing.
A number of Faces of Death sequels were made, each with a lower budget and production quality than the last. The first five films and Faces of Death: Fact or Fiction? (a "documentary" on the making of the series) were at least partially directed and written by Schwartz; the last two were directed by Uwe Schier. The first three starred Carr as "Dr. Gross", though the fourth installment instead featured Schwartz's brother, James Schwartz as "Dr. Louis Flellis"; the film explains the absence of "Dr. Gross" by stating that he had killed himself, having been driven insane as a result of seeing so much death.
The films in the series were:
- Faces of Death (1978)
- Faces of Death 2 (1981)
- Faces of Death 3 (1985) - co-written by Veronica Lakewood
- The Worst of Faces of Death (1987) - an anthology of the goriest scenes from the first three films
- Faces of Death 4 (1990) - co-directed by Susumu Saegusa
- Faces of Death 5 (1995)
- Faces of Death 6 (1996) - note that this installment of the series consists almost exclusively of footage recycled from previous Faces of Death films.
- Faces of Death: Fact or Fiction? (1999)
See also
Traces of Death, a production similar to Faces of Death, but with more real scenes.
External links
- Faces of Death presented by Gorgon Video (http://www.facesofdeath.com/)
- Lifting the mask from 'Faces of Death' (http://www.sptimes.com/News/102600/Weekend/Lifting_the_mask_from.shtml) (St. Petersburg Times article, October 26, 2000)
- Shot-by-shot description, with criticism (http://tafkac.org/movies/faces_of_death_review.html), from the alt.folklore.urban archive, concluding the first film showed probably three human deaths
- Internet Movie Database entries:
- Faces of Death (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077533/)
- Faces of Death 2 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085518/)
- Faces of Death 3 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121261/)
- The Worst of Faces of Death (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121864/)
- Faces of Death 4 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121262/)
- Faces of Death 5 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0160303/)
- Faces of Death 6 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0223250/)
- Faces of Death: Fact or Fiction? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0223251/)