Rostros de la muerte III

Michael Carr is back as Dr Francis B.Gross to narrate a series of faces of death. These include motor accidents, serial killers, sex murder, drugs, suicide, diving accidents including a shark attack, dog attack, slaughterhouses plus some open heart surgery. Only the latter two are definitely genuine, the rest being obviously re-enacted. Quite poorly too in most cases, and a lot of it is just a rehash from parts 1 and 2. In Britain the BBFC cut it by 78 seconds, a scene of sexual violence but having watched the missing footage online I don't understand why as they have passed more graphic film than that. Having seen the first 2 FOD movies then it was worth watching as an addition, though it is inferior to both.

Okay, first of all, if a man is being convicted for the rape and murder of a woman, and the main piece of evidence against him is a hand-held video of the assault, one would think the law might also want to go after the guy holding the camera. This "documentary" is populated with shaggy-haired mustachioed police men and soldiers who all look alike and spout such incredible kitchen sink moments as, "this place is going to hell!" and "I hope someone gets those bastards!" And I swear to god that the narrator said a cut could become "infested".

If you're looking for wild animals attacking sides of beef dressed in coats and hats (the beef, not the wild animals - that at least would be a curiosity) make this your first stop.

...I, however, went into "Faces of Death III" (on loan from a friend) not being exposed to any previous or subsequent entries in the long-running DTV series and came out rather amused. This collection of supposedly authentic footage of murder and mayhem has the appeal of a traffic accident (ironically, one of the first 'faces of death' displayed here)...depicting shark attacks, (real) animal slaughter, executions et. al. While the various sequences are stitched together as loosely as Frankenstein's monster, the real incentive for viewing comes in the form of 'creative consultant/narrator' "Doctor" Francis B. Gross' commentary on them...absolutely hilarious, pseudo-philosophical rubbish that will have you rolling on floor. For an accurate look at REAL faces of death, log on to Rotten dot com; for chuckles and a funky '70s look, have a ball with "Faces of Death III."

I've seen a lot posts about a certain retail store selling a DVD set of Faces of Death 1-4. It's been years since I've watched any of the Faces of Death movies so I figured I would rewatch them.

First up is Faces of Death III. I'm not sure that I had seen this entry before tonight. I found F. O. D. III to be rather slow. I'm not sure that there's anything real here other than the slaughterhouse scene.

There's fatalities on the Autoban, a serial killer targeting the homeless, a guard dog attack, venomous snakes, a shark attack, suicides and more.

Faces of Death III is neither gory or disturbing. These things have been over hyped, especially on Faces of Death III.

These days, the Faces of Death movies are fairly redundant, the internet offering up way sicker sights than any VHS release of the '80s. That said, Faces of Death III was pretty pointless from the get go, the creators attempting to pass off badly staged footage as real-life horror. Anyone expecting a dose of extreme nastiness will be sorely disappointed by this lame threequel; part II was almost all genuine, but this one is 99% fake. The end credits state that 'certain scenes have been recreated'. You don't say!

The film's poorly acted scenes include the search for, and trial of, a serial killer, the court case involving grainy video footage of the killer raping and torturing a girl (the film doesn't explain who was holding the camera), drug traffickers shot at by police in the everglades, a parachutist eaten after landing in an alligator farm, a prisoner in El Salvador interrogated and tortured, a bomb disposal gone wrong, a suicide leap from a tall building, and a barracuda biting a diver in the face. The only real content is the obligatory animal slaughterhouse footage and some open heart surgery.

The first two films were suitably abhorrent: this one is also repellent, but only because it doesn't deliver what it promises. The raison d'etre of this kind of film is to show the viewer the harsh reality of life and death, so what's the point if virtually none of it is genuine?

1/10, with a very generous extra point for having an editor named Wayne Smegma II (his name's probably as fake as everything else, but it made me laugh).