Faces of Death

FACES OF DEATH
By: Blake Redding

WARNING

All movies reviewed for SUNDAY SNUFF contain graphic depictions that may include rape, live animals being murdered, and extreme gore.  None of the writers condone such acts we just watch this shit. 

If you were born in the ‘80’s and a sick lil’ puppy like I was (and still am,) then you most likely considered FACES OF DEATH to be the Holy Grail of all horror movies. Could there really be a movie that shows real death scenes?!  Since there was not an internet machine widely available at the time, we had to get creative and really use some detective work to track down those rare, hard to find flicks. Being only twelve years old made it pretty difficult to buy. There was always the good ol’ Premiere Video, my favorite video shop of all time growing up in Spokane, but good luck getting your folks to rent you a movie that has ‘BANNED IN 40 COUNTRIES’ slapped right on the box. The next step was to find the friend with the cool parents and hopefully watch it over there. Well, we were all good Christian kids so those parents seemed hard to come by. No dice. I had all but given up when one day I came across an all black VHS that contained a crudely recorded FOD. I cannot for the life of me remember where it came from. Did it rain down like manna from heaven? Doesn’t matter, let’s adjust the tracking and give this bad boy a watch!

FOD was made in 1978 and really was the first of its kind aside from the MONDO movies of the sixties.  Though it seems lost on the younger generation now that people can just get on Youtube and see all kinds of disturbing shit, this movie was truly like watching hell alive. It plays out like a documentary and is narrated by the monotone Dr. Gross.  So how does the movie hold up these days?  Unfortunately, not very well; it is extremely dated and the material is actually fairly tame compared to today’s standards in vulgarity. The human death scenes are all staged and look very fake. The director later confirmed this. For the longest time people believed that these were real. Even as a kid I thought they looked staged and had a hard time believing all the hype. The mock up scenes include a jumper suicide, a bear attack, an alligator attack, and an execution to name a few.  For the real deal FOD banks on stock footage of crime and accident scenes showing some blood and the gory aftermath.  For me the most disturbing moments come from the surgery footage, notably a beating heart as the person lays there with their chest wide open.  For all you PETA enthusiasts out there, there are a lot of real animal deaths! Lovable baby seals are clubbed to death, a monkey gets his head bashed in with a hammer then his brains are eaten, chickens being decapitated, and to top it off a gruesome tour through a slaughter house. This is all VERY real and kind of makes you crave some good BBQ.

While FOD may seem like child’s play today, back in 1978 it was very innovative. It spawned many sequels and countless copycats (my favorite being TRACES OF DEATH) It should be in every horror movie lover’s collection, at least for nostalgic reasons.

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Realistic Gore: 4 out of 5, Lot’s of animal and people gore!

Rape: 0 out of 0, nothing to see in this department sicko!

Animal Death: 5 out of 5, Should have been called LIVESTOCK OF DEATH, lots of dismembered critters.

Necrophilia: 0 out of 5, there may have been some dead sheep fucking off camera.

Torture: 4 out of 5, Animal torture. Being strung up by your legs then getting your throat slit is probably not a comfortable way to go.

Overall Movie:  3 out of 5, it's a legendary movie to say the least but like a lot  of "shock-u-mentarys" it's not a repeat viewing.