Faces of Death (1978)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Yes, I was one of those lucky kids that had older "friends" who loved to experiment with the quality control stages & the psyche of a naive, fertile mind. Yikes! I think I managed to survive such torture, for the most part. As to whether these films contain actual footage and are 100% authentic? Well, I can only say that as a child, EVERYTHING looks to be, and is, REAL! However, a seasoned gore watcher will separate what is fact and/or fiction. Either way, you are in for some major "gross-out" time and I would advise you to stick to light snacking, especially for the more stomach sensitive viewers out there! This debut film (of a five-part series, respectively) is still one of my guilty pleasures, although it still gives me the chills even thinking about it! The narrator's voice keeps you frozen to your seat as the visual bombardment varies from mildly disturbing to extremely gruesome. Throughout the entire film, the viewer will be forcefully reminded as to how there is just something quite so unnatural, and tragic, to see the dead in their various stages of decomposition mostly due to A.) natural causes; or B.) horrific, freak accidents.

The only thing on film worse then FOD is Death Bed The Bed That Eats. In another user's review FOD is referred to as tripe,couldn't agree more. Oh how I tease my roommate for watching this a week ago and believing it was all real. So why is FOD bad? Oh let the count thy reasons 1. Police shootout scene -there is no recoil when they fire. 2. Restaurant scene-dude places money in the belly dancers waste,umm she's not a stripper. 3. The Morgue-most if not all the bodies are badly decomposing and only half covered with sheets. I highly doubt The L.A. county Corners office is that sloppy and disrespectful to the deceased. I can keep going but you get my drift. Now maybe its because I'm a crime buff but I've seen episodes of A&E's American Justice with much more distributing footage then this terrible film. I can't lie however when I say I didn't watch this movie for the same reasons as everyone else and that of course being the "shock value". It's certainly no surprise to me that to date FOD has made profits to then tune of $35,000,000.

Faces of Death is a curious viewing experience. The variety of emotions it triggers is unusual. From pure revulsion to unbridled laughter, this film certainly covers a lot of bases. Where the real material is genuinely disturbing, the faked stuff is often so poorly done it makes for unintentional comedy. At the very least, Faces of Death can certainly not be accused of being boring.The credit sequence kicks in with scenes from open heart surgery and an autopsy. It's pretty grim stuff quite frankly and not exactly the kind of material you want to digest immediately after dinner. The early parts of FOD in general are more horrific; in particular, the slaughterhouse sequence. It's pure horror. If there is any positive legacy from this documentary then it must surely be that it's made a few more people aware of the terrible route some animals are forced to take on the way to our dinner plates. The treatment of the animals in this environment was nothing short of barbaric and very difficult to watch. After this opening bombardment I was actively hoping for some of the famed fake material and thankfully I didn't have long to wait. The political assassination and alligator attack were spliced into the flow, and both were incredibly unconvincing and silly but also a relief from the unremitting heaviness of the preceding material. Some view the fake material in FOD as a weakness, a reason to disparage it. I, on the other hand, thought it was a welcome change of tone and a bit of unexpected comedy relief. The combination of the ultra-grim with fake schlock was ultimately what made it palatable for me.It has to be said though, that there is an undeniably fascinating aspect to much of the real atrocities on display. It is very exploitative but you do see things that you normally would never see, or perhaps wish to see. The footage of the aftermath of the aircraft crash was haunting and is something I will not forget; the autopsy scenes are grimly fascinating; the Liberian execution is a no-holds-barred presentation of capital punishment. While the scenes of animal cruelty do serve a purpose in that they confront the viewer with some very cruel practices and are legitimate in the sense that they expose some very terrible things that man does to other creatures on this planet; in addition to the aforementioned slaughterhouse scene, there is the extremely unpleasant footage of the seal cull. While stuff like this has been selected with exploitative purposes in mind it does make the viewer think about wider issues, which is certainly unexpected. Some of the most famous sequences turn out to be fake however, for example the monkey meal and the electric chair scene. Although these, along with the death cult section, are all pretty graphic none-the-less and operate successfully as tasteless exploitation fodder.Overall, I found Faces of Death to be compelling. I was genuinely sickened in places, disturbed in others, fascinated at times and even enlightened here and there. I also was amused too by the more ridiculous fakery. It's a hell of a combination that some people will regard in highly dubious taste. Some of it SHOULD shock you and some parts of it will stay with you long after. It's not a film to sit down with the family after a good meal. But this shockumentary/mockumentary is certainly something to behold.

This video nasty was also released under the title The Original Faces of Death. It is a mondo film which guides viewers through explicit scenes depicting a variety of ways to die and violent acts. It was finally released in Britain in 2003 after they cut over 2 minutes from the film.In 1978 this might have been more than most people had experienced in their lives. Thirty years later, it has lost its shock value as we are exposed to some of the same faces of death from war. genocide, disease, and natural disasters like Katrina on our TV screens every night.It is not clear that most of the deaths we witnessed were real. Some may have been staged. If so, they certainly pale to what we see in films such as Saw or Hostel.There are a couple a scenes in the movie that were interesting, but certainly not worth the time spent watching the whole story.And to think that writer/director John Alan Schwartz has about six more of these for you to see, if you are so inclined.