Shocking documentary featuring many different "faces" of death. These include autopsies, animal slaughter, capital punishment, humans being killed by animals, suicides, accidents, war, concentration camps, disease etc.
I think it's common knowledge that much of the footage is fake, though some of it is quite well done. There's a Satanic cult who cut open and start eating a dead human but you can clearly see the corpse breathing. Then when it descends into a sexual orgy everybody keeps their pants on! The film is supposedly narrated by real life Dr Francis B.Gross (think that's an in joke by the film makers) but in the closing credits it states that he was portrayed by actor Michael Carr.
The vile animal slaughter sadly was all too real - conscious sheep and cattle have their throats slit, seals being beaten to death, etc. Anybody who can find pleasure in that is sick and were I not already a vegetarian then watching that would certainly put me off eating meat.
There's a segment on man's environmental damage and sure enough it's come to light that the seas are now full of plastic. When showing footage of Jews in the Nazi concentration camps Dr Gross asks if genocide could happen again,, and yes - in Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans - sadly it has.
The film features a laughable paranormal investigation, Gross then asks if death is "the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?" The film closes, to some awful song, with a woman and her infant child.
Faces of Death was one of the more notorious Video Nasties in Britain in the 1980's. It has since been passed with some of the animal violence cut. The film is interesting, sickening and ridiculous in equal amounts. A strong stomach is required. There were several sequels but none of them lived up to this one.
Review of Faces of Death
