Death Faces

No good, exploitative direct-to-video film in the mold of the "Faces of Death" series should drive the viewer to a somnambulant state, but "Death Faces"--an incredibly bad collection of cheap thrills (and even that is a stretch)--does. After an opening-credits sequence that seems to have been done on a camcorder, we begin a descent into the horrifying world of violent, grisly death, with an evil-voiced British narrator dubbed in to provide some connectivity to this disjointed, unfocused muddle. Amid the endless stock footage of a native New Guinea tribe (some coy nudity and nose-piercing, but otherwise nothing remotely 'shocking'), we are treated to stock footage of Nazi war criminals being executed, concentration-camp victims, (really lame) race car crashes, and the JFK assassination. The whole thing is a stock-footage bonanza that would make Ed Wood shed tears of joy, but those looking for genuine shock value (or even genuine unintentional humor) will be left feeling burned by this obscure collection.

The narrator at the beginning of this video says "This incredibly expensive, often brilliant, always nauseating piece of video artistry is not part of the Faces of Death series, and that they (the producers) have never represented it as such" - I don't know where to begin with this one?

Just the simple fact that no one involved with this takes any on-screen credit - except for stupid a$$ pseudonyms like "Damian Gravenhorse" This video is nothing more that grainy black-and-white, high generation, silent footage of old cannibalism documentaries, some of it must date back to the 1920s. The audio is so clear though, that if you listen carefully, you can actually hear the off-screen narrator leaning back in his chair, and you can hear him BELCHING... Right before he starts babbling about there not being any "religious or cultural reasons behind cannibalism", you can hear *urrrp* Now this is a high quality documentary indeed...

In one of the sequences, we hear the producer telling the narrator to "show some death" and "switch the bloody footage" - I guess they were trying to be funny, and failing miserably. The narration often times doesn't have anything to do with what's going on on screen (during the tattoo scene) and it is often times drowned out by some prerecorded Burundi inspired tribal drumming. Early on in the video, we see a New Guinea bushman getting a bone stuck though his nose, then we plod through about 45 minutes of similar but unrelated footage, then we see the same bushman getting the same bone stuck though his nose again. Did they think it was so interesting and exciting that they had to show it twice? Then, for no apparent reason, the video then shows us about five minutes of stock car racing crashes, which if I remember correctly was the only colour footage in this entire video, before we go back to watching an episode of, what the video refers to as: "Candid Cannablism". Hilarious, just absolutely hilarious.

This is actually available under several different titles: "Death Faces IV", "Death Faces", "Beyond Reality", "Dying: Last Seconds of Life" (and it sucks under any title ) Under the title "Dying: last seconds of Life" they had to alter the introductory dialog to omit the original title: "the sickening reality of Death Faces", it was changed to just simply "the sickening reality". But in the rest of the video they still referred to it as "Death Faces IV". It gets even better: when I first saw this one on video, under the title "Death Faces IV", (I was tricked into seeing this TWICE!) I let the tape keep playing once this was over, and there was an old unidentifiable western at the end of the tape. They couldn't even afford blank tape they had to record over some old western? This was followed by a sequel!

I saw the Beyond Reality version, tagline "The Way Death Likes It!" The box credits are: A Mahoney Brothers release, directed by Victoria Bloodhart, creative consultant and narrated by Bizarro Blackstone, script by Sebastian Shock, produced by Damian Gravenhorse. Apart from the Mahoney Brothers' name, there are no opening or end credits, although the Chinese Justice newsreel is attributed to Mink De Ronda, who appears to have been a real person. The sticker on the cassette itself identifies the director as Steve Whight, however.

There's supposed footage of New Guinea cannibals and body modification, the aforementioned Chinese execution of drug runners, fatal car racing accidents, Kennedy assassination, WWII executions, 1930s gangsters, etc. Not very interesting stuff. I've seen the box for Beyond Reality II, which appears to have the same box in fact, with just a "2" stuck on the back next to the title! I've also seen a box for Dying Part II, actually just another title for Beyond Reality II, which is also attributed to Bloodheart.

Before the opening title, there's a teaser trailer for Chiller Part 2, consisting just of that title. I'm not sure what movie that might be.

I saw this with 2 friends in the Saturday after Thanksgiving of 1994. We laughed at the intro where it had the English producers voice telling the narrator to get on with it. I remember the tiger(or cheetah) showed dying after being hit with an arrow and the feral women in a cage with a dead body. She took out an human organ and wiped it on herself. Seemed fake. Do not remember the Budd Dwyer ending but remember the Nazi footage and the car crashes. Also the elephantiasis. I remember in the beginning it mentioned itself as "Death Faces IV" and knew form then that this would be a ripoff of FOD. If I saw this today, I would probably not remember it as fondly but I always will since that was a great weekend and this was part of it. It would not be as remembered to me if was on another weekend.