Le facce della morte

It's really ironic that of all the "shockumentaries" that have turned up on video in recent years the "Faces of Death" series has attracted the most attention (positive and negative), since so much of its "shocking" footage is blatantly phoney. Those with an interest in authentic death and atrocity footage would do better to check out the "Death Scenes" series (3 volumes), "Inhumanities 2" or the British documentary "Executions". (An editorial aside here, since I'm frequently asked why I watch such material: While I wouldn't say that such films are fun or enjoyable to watch, I make myself watch them occasionally to remind myself not to take the best things in life - or life itself, for that matter - for granted.)

I can't remember a time when I've felt so afraid to die!! This movie (the first of a series) shows you what you've always been frightened to see. You're staring into the faces of the condemned. You're witnessing the last moments that others will ever spend on this planet. You're seeing the horror, terror, and insane fear that strikes without warning as you are about to die.

Yet, after watching, there is a strange feeling. I walked around for two days unable to erase the images from my mind. I saw this film by accident (my brother and a friend were watching it, I walked in thinking it was "Children of the Corn" and somehow stayed glued to the couch until the last credits rolled).

I never felt nauseous. The only emotion I had was one that I had never TRULY felt before...empathy. I felt sickened for the families of the people who I was watching. I felt like crying because there was nothing I could do. It was just a movie. What I was watching had been done years before. For those people whose faces appeared on the screen, peace had finally come. But me...I would never be the same again.

I saw that movie about ten years ago. To this day, I still see some of the scenes in my mind, particularly when I hear the evening news or see a car accident. For anyone considering renting it, you will be forever changed after watching. It is really quite unlike anything you will ever see.

Currently, I've never given a movie a 1 star rating before. I've given out a 3 star rating before to a movie but never a rating this low. This is mainly because even some of the worst movies I've ever seen had at least a few things good about them. But I have always wondered when I'll be able to find a movie that is so bad that regardless of how hard I try, I would not be able to find anything in it which is even somewhat good or entertaining.

I think that I've found one.

This awful disaster of a movie is distractingly violent, super offensive, and full of shock value. I can safely say that this is one of the worst movies ever made.

This documentary really has no plot. It's just a montage of people and animals dying gruesome and bloody deaths and the narrator also gives disturbing commentary detailing how they died.

The only point to this film is to shock and disturb the viewer. It's a hard movie to watch because the movie featured gruesome deaths just for the sake of it. There was not a single moment in this movie that contained any power and I didn't feel engaged at all throughout its entirety. I enjoyed Come and See because it had power with its massacre scenes and it had intelligent violence which stayed with me long after viewing it. Faces of Death on the other hand is nothing more than just 105 minutes of endless and tiring shock value.

Also, there is one thing that really infuriates me about this movie more than anything else. It is that the movie often plays goofy and uplifting music while it shows footage of people being brutally murdered (also, most of the deaths displayed here are in fact real). Most of those people died brutal deaths here and it downright disgusted me how the movie uses the goofy music to make them sound like some kind of a sick joke. However, the movie actually offended me in this case. It proves that the directors clearly don't care at all for any of the people or animals who brutally died in this movie. This clearly has some of the worst, unfitting music ever in cinema history.

I've actually seen some people give this movie a 5/5 rating. I've read many of the reviews by them but none of them have been able to justify this movie's flaws at all and none of them have been able to convince me that this movie isn't complete garbage yet. For the entirely of this one guy's review, he rambled on for how much of this movie was fake and how much it diminishes the movie's impact because of it. Yet, that idiot gave this movie a perfect rating. I have no idea know what those people see in this movie and I don't know why they think that this movie is a masterpiece. If you think that this is a masterpiece then go watch Come and See. Then tell me that this is a masterpiece.

So in conclusion, this is an awful movie. It's just a montage of shock value and the movie handles them very poorly by throwing in super unfitting music which I found to be highly offensive. There was not a single moment in this movie that even somewhat interested me and I was extremely glad after this movie ended. This is the worst documentary I've seen and this is also the worst movie I've ever seen as well.

Before I get responses beginning with "you sick bugger", let me explain that this set of movies is the jewel of my collection strictly for it's cult status. I first saw FOD #1 when I was about 12yrs old in the extreme early 80's. The caption "Banned in 46 countries!" made this a compulsory rental for twisted little minds. During the first viewing however, I can remember distinguishing between the "real" and "fake" clips and thinking that the blood in "Dawn of the Dead" was far more realistic. Jump ahead about 20 yrs. I purchased the 6 video collection (with additional "Executions" video thrown in for good measure) in the late 90's. For those who have only seen clips or stopped after #1, the rest of the videos are pretty much the same (#2 is a lot of war atrocities, #3 has more nature/animal attacks, #4 should be called "Faces of Stupidity" due in part to the dumb ways people are getting killed, and #'s 5 & 6 are a best of compilation....the "real" 5 and 6 are German and Japanese releases that are fairly hard to get a hold of and rather expensive). I watched all of these videos, knowing that the majority of the clips are staged with bad SPFX and the real clips look as though they are unedited news footage, but It's "schlockiness" is mildly entertaining (Dr. Francis B. Gross hosting). The "Executions" tape I received as well however I have been unable to make it through in the past 6 years(everything on there is real and disturbing). I found that in my teens, this series was amateurish and only slightly interesting, but in my mid thirties it is much harder to watch and brings up morality questions that I didn't have when I a kid. The series definitely isn't for the faint of heart, but credit must be given for an unapologetic exploration (albeit 90% phony) of often taboo subjects.

The movie itself is horrible, but if you look at it from a marketing standpoint it's brilliant! "Faces of Death" is in all of our collective conscience. The infamous "monkey brain scene" has been talked about in this forum ad naseum. Most everyone has seen or at least heard about this movie. It WAS a right of passage from when I was a teenager. "Banned in 46 Countries" made me HAVE to see this as a 15 year old in the late seventies. Look how the country is transfixed by "reality television" of today. This was definitely a precursor. The makers of this movie were not concerned about how the movie looked artistically, they wanted to get your attention, they wanted, no, dared you to watch. I'm sure the people that made this are all retired now and living on private islands with all the money they've made off the FOD series. As well they should! The curiosity of people and the word-of-mouth strategy used worked perfectly for them all over the world (This was well before the internet world we live in today). Masters of marketing they all are. Movie makers today only wish they can get this sort of buzz and interest in a movie. And to all of you that say that the people who watch this are sick and depraved, you know what? They got you too! Your curiosity made you look and watch. That's what the makers of this film wanted all along and you took the bait. It is people's curiosity that got them watching, not their morales. BRILLIANT!