Faces of Death II

I was relatively kind in my review of the first "Faces of Death" movie. Sure, it was utter trash, but I could see at least a reason for its exsistence: to scare the hell out of people. The sequel's only goal is to make more money off the original's infamous reputation. What kind of inspiration is that? The idea of a film comprised of footage of real people and animals getting killed in front of the camera is sick and disturbing. The first time around, there was merit, the idea of making more, just for the sake of making more is totally wrong. (F) Not Rated, but equivalent to an NC-17 for continual graphic carnage and gore from man and beast.

Best (HAH!) of the series.

Most of this was real footage.

Accident scenes from the autobahn.

Avalanche deaths.

Johnny Owens' last fight.

Only the cop shootout at the drugstore seemed fake. Too many camera angles and too much OTT acting to pass off as real.

Digging the bodies out of the avalanche was tough to see because most of the faces of the dead were easy to see.

The fire at the German nursing home will NOT be easy to stomach.

And the autobahn's traffic deaths were also a little heart rending.

My one question; Did 'Francis B. Gross' really make that much money off the first film that he could afford expensive boots, a new motorcycle, and to drink tequila in Mexico?

Faces of Death 2 does not live up to the pure gore style of the first film, which makes it not quite as good. The one thing that makes this film stick out is the amount of real footage. Faces of Death used fake footage to get fame, which was okay because the footage was still so graphic and disturbing that it didn't really matter. But almost all of the footage found in Faces of Death 2 is real, with the exception of a few scenes, such as the drugstore shootout. It has some good stunts gone wrong, a few disgusting animal scenes, and a really brutal boxing match where a heavyweight takes on a man who looks like he hasn't eaten in five years. Faces of Death 2 isn't the best in the series, but it isn't the worst either.

Not much better than the 1st one, although there were several scenes of dare-devil stunts gone bad. Those are neat. Especially the rocket powered Lincoln Continental. (You just have to see it) I guess a good point to the movie is that not everybody dies. In some of the aforementioned stunt scenes, the drivers just get hurt. Whoooopeeee !!!!!!

Since death is something that we all have to face at some point, it's no surprise a lot of people have a morbid fascination with the subject, or that 'documentaries' such as this exist (or, indeed, websites that trade in grisly real-life imagery). For many it's about confronting reality, others will be testing the limits of what they can handle, and there'll no doubt be those that find the whole thing funny, and something to boast about having seen to friends. Whatever your reason for watching, there's no denying that Faces of Death II contains some very disturbing scenes, and that the film should be approached with caution.

The first FOD film was a mix of fake footage and real-life horrors, but part II is almost all genuine, with only a drugstore robbery gone wrong being apparently staged (the hysterical female witness isn't very convincing): the film features Hindu cremations, an avalanche disaster, a fatal boxing match, unsuccessful daredevil stunts, and airplane crashes, the camera lingering on the victims. These are either accidents or acts of nature, and are comparatively innocuous. Scenes of war atrocities are harder to take, although these days such harrowing footage is often broadcast on TV in news reports and in documentaries, and unfortunately no longer has the impact it once had. For me, the real 'punch to the gut' is the animal cruelty, specifically the brutal slaughter of dolphins, made all the more difficult to stomach after the narrator, Dr. Francis B. Gröss (Michael Carr), talks at length about the intelligence of the species. Sometimes, the human race really sucks (I guess that's the main message to be gleaned from this film).

Other abhorrent content presented for your entertainment includes a tribe of cannibals with leprosy, and a mass execution by firing squad. Don't say you haven't been warned.

4/10: it's worth seeing if only for the jet-propelled car stunt: did they really think that was going to work?