Face à la mort 4

You said it has to be real, otherwise why is it banned everywhere including the U.S.

Ummm.... I've lived in three different states in the U.S. and it was widely available to rent on video in all three. Now maybe I just "coincidentally" happened to live in the three states where they allow it, but I doubt it.

You see, they put that it's been "banned" in so many places to make it sound cooler so people will rent it. It's a lie you buffoon.

Yes, most of the scenes are fake. But it was still pretty fun to watch back in the day.

As many should know by now, most of the things that are shown in these movies (at least, in the first four) are either staged or dull news footage. That said, there are so many mixed feelings I have about this one. I liked the darkly humorous narration of "Dr. Louis Flellis", and some of the nasty stuff was kind of neat (almost all of which was faked, I can guarantee). It wasn't nearly as shocking or effective as I'd hoped, but I suppose that that's a good thing in some scenes (puppy that's really a plush doll getting disemboweled, anyone?). I do like a lot of the no-nonsense political and social commentary the narrator makes, but sometimes it is very dishonest, like when we see the slaughterhouse footage and the narrator goes beyond the educational aspects of that scene's dialogue and panders to sick people's desire to enjoy pain and suffering of an animal. I do eat meat, and that includes pork, but some of the comments seem as if they're made simply to enhance entertainment value of real pigs having the blood drained from their throats. Even if I'm not a vegetarian, I do believe that more respect should be had for an animal instead of just regarding it as something that landed on your plate, as well as a realization that that animal died to help you survive. Also, there is some dialogue in the narration that seems outright right-wing. I don't go for the right or left wings, but that also means that some of the snotty dialogue in this grates on me a bit at times. Otherwise, this is a pretty diverting time-waster for people who might be interested in this sort of thing. I just don't understand what the big deal is when all those series out there that rip off these mostly fake "Faces of Death" movies are usually more real and disturbing than almost any of the things shown here. (Please note: The original "Faces of Death" is very different and it is actually a GOOD movie, even if it's by far more disturbing, as well as nearly as faked. See that one, for sure, no matter what you've heard, for it may surprise you.)

Every once in a while I google Faces of Death just to see what's out there, and I found this site. I was working one of the god-awfullest jobs in my EMT career in NYC one morning in 1988 at around 6:30 when we got the call for a "space case" in the subway at W. 66 and Broadway. This poor unfortunate trying to cross from the Uptown side to the Downtown side via the tracks, and didn't quite scramble up to the platform quickly enough before the train rolled in. Well, it was rush hour, and we were surrounded by freelance photographers and videographers trying to catch their last footage of the night (or first of the day) for the TV news, and our "patient" was still alive, although unconscious, so we had to offer advanced life support and remove him with the help of ESU. Apparently whoever took this footage couldn't sell it to the news in time, so he sold it instead to this monster who does the Faces of Death videos. You know, this was a serious call. I had the smell of that victim on me for days. But it was a public place, blah blah blah...fair game. P.S. He lived long enough to make it to the ER where he hung on even longer. Jesus, his torso was so twisted around, how did he last as long as he did!!!? It was grueling for us all the way to the bitter end. Oh, by the way, one of those paramedics working with me on the subway platform is Joe Connelly who wrote the book (which became a movie) Bringing out the Dead.

This movie is a perfect example of where curiosity leads us in life. Faces Of Death 4, like the previous films, dares to shock us with more violent images of (supposed) true life horror. It did it for me.....and will forever leave an impression on my mind that I'd rather not have.

Mindless direct-to-video continuation of the "Faces of Death" series, basically this is just a remake of the highlights from the first movie, but this time there is a new narrator in the bald, bug eyed "Dr. Louis Flellis" talking about his obsession with death and the afterlife all the while sitting in front of a bright glowing lava lamp(!). Did the original narrator really die, like it says in this movie? Or did he just not want to do another sequel and this is just part of the story? The guy in the auto yard that supposedly had his leg severed when a car fell on him doesn't make any sense: wouldn't the car have fallen on top of him, crushing his entire body, not just his leg? I also liked the mental patient that was wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit with the word "FELON" clearly written on the back of it.

Curiously, the thief that was locked in the airtight bank vault for over 40 hours and supposedly suffocated also looked strangely like this series' writer/ director/ producer etc. John Alan Schwartz. Can it be another one of his cameos? Who knows?