Faces of Death (1978)

 

Faces of Death is an American mondo horror film that came out in 1978 in the language of English.

How I watched: Youtube

For the short of it: This documentary styled film shows uh...faces of death.

The long of it? Do you really want to know? 

Lovely Terrible Tuesday! My 2nd installment.

*Lotsa grainy images lo siento!*

I can't remember how young I was but I remember first coming across the VHS of this movie from what I can assume belonged to my uncle who used to stay with my family off and on throughout my childhood. He was into stuff like this. Little kid me was strangely fascinated with the cover and obviously scared the fuck out of me to even attempt to watch. Maybe that was a good thing I didn't expose my prepubescent brain to that horror at that young of an age.

It only took me to get to my 30s to get around to finally sit down to watch it. Why did it take me so long? Well, I've actually always wanted to tune in but just got mixed up with life and other distractions so trying to track down and watch a 70s movie was definitely not high on my priority list. However, what compelled me to REALLY sit down to watch it is the upcoming reboot on its way and it has a lot of big names in here. Shocked to see Charlie XCX in tacked on for it. Might as well do some catching up.

There's really nothing much to this movie as far as explaining and giving you the gist of this movie. As stated above it is filmed documentary style with a pathologist Francis B. Gross narrating while presenting to us the various footage of many lifeforms' death and how we handle it.

When I was a kid, I was under the impression that this was like a snuff film with actual brutal murders of people or like a mortifying version of America's Funniest Home Videos where people are candidly filmed accidental deaths and stuff. Negatory. 

Presented before us is sequences with varying forms of intensity of deaths ranging from slaughter houses, a monkey being eaten at a fine dining restaurant, man being killed by an alligator, tribes in the Amazon hunting/graphically slicing up what will be their feast, assassinations, and police shootouts. Wild stuff.

You know...just showing us that there are so many ways to die.

It's gruesome. Upon looking up more information, some of the deaths and footage were fake but there are plenty that is still real as fuck. Those cows and sheep at the slaughter houses were not paid actors, just in case you were wondering. 

So how much of it is fake, exactly?

The official statement is that 40% of it is fake, which includes the monkey at the fine dining restaurant in front of the customers. I was definitely disturbed at the thought of a monkey being trapped in the center of the dining table surrounded with giant heads staring at ya wielding a mallet that couldn't wait to bash your brains out. The monkey's screams. Oh my gosh those screams. Like I said, it was fake so there's that. 

The uh dead bodies though. Holy fuck it's so surreal seeing so much loose skin and blood flapping away from the skull like that. Even if it was during dissection by medical professionals and despite me even already watched Orozco the Embalmer, seeing legit dead bodies will never really cease to be give me the uber creeps. Only on screen though. I would lose my shit IRL I tell ya hwhat.

I admit, now that I got a percentage of what's fake I find it more consuming my brain to figure out which ones were actually fake. I know some where obviously staged like the beheading scene. No, not because I ever viewed one because fuck that. A little off topic but I don't understand why people seek out REAL footage of extreme murders like beheadings and stuff. I don't want to understand either.

 One clue was that the "iconic" scenes are fake. Well, that narrows it down a bit.

Anyway, this movie is fiction in the sense that the pathologist Francis B Gross is an obvious play on words and is played by actor Michael Carr. A few other actors are listed in the credits too.

Sure, it is definitely disturbing and many people may still say this is such a twisted piece of media to this day, but really...now that I have seen this movie as an adult I can say for a fact that my kid self grossly exaggerated of what I thought this movie was to be.

Yes, there's dead bodies, gore, even animal cruelty (dog fighting for instance) which is still unnerving to look at. While it is still creepy, especially being made in the 70s, I honestly didn't think it was that bad in general. It is still listed in my personal top disturbing movies though. Maybe one day I ought to sit down and actually make that list...future post idea??

All in all, thank you for listening to my rambling for this post. My thoughts are just all over the place here. If you reached this far then muchos gracias. Crazy movie, not sure if I would recommend to the average joe but if you can get past the crazy stuff in general in horror films then sure, why not give this movie a shot? Death is a part of life and it can be gruesome but it is the circle of life. It moves us all.

With that being said, what is my verdict?

I can at least cross this off my bucket list at long last

If you are interested in watching Faces of Death then please CLICK HERE to see which streaming services you can watch it on via the free streaming guide app JUSTWATCH!