Faces of Death 2

By Jimmy Squarejaw
https://www.facebook.com/yallaredead
www.yallaredead.com


It’s 1981 and our favorite fake Doctor, Dr. Gross, is back in the habit in the wonderful and criminally overlooked sequel to FACES OF DEATH, the sagaciously titled FACES OF DEATH 2.  Dr. Gross looks ever more afflicted with gigantism, or a hyperthyroid disorder, in this sequel and catches a little more face time than the original and that’s a real treat.  FACES OF DEATH 2 has a little more actual footage then it’s predecessor and overall I feel it’s a step forward for the filmmakers.

The opening narration this time around begins with Dr. Gross stating many of his previous theories from FACES OF DEATH 1 about life after death are probably wrong and in fact there is probably no life after death; but he does feel confident that we probably don’t feel too much pain when we die so there’s that at least.   The film goes through a brief history of how people in the 14th century were hired to rouse the dead from their slumber with various methods of accosting that also included necrophilia-I wonder if that was considered a state job with a pension and benefits?!?!  Once people figured out that no matter how many times you stuck it in Aunt Darlene, she aint’ waking up and people do actually die for reals the need for cemeteries arose.  On the heels of large scale cemeteries being built the need for morticians began and that is why we now have something called the funeral industry.  Evidently in 1981 the cost of a full funeral was around $3,500.00 plus embalming and cosmetics fees.  What a bunch of idiots, you can gouge the grieving for a FUCK TON more, you just have to push them a little!  So after going over some of the finer points of the funeral industry like burial outfits, cosmetics, and bronze caskets we move into the first video segment.  See kids, the FACES OF DEATH can be educational and should be introduced into the public school system.  Moving on. 

Sure cremation is cheaper, and in some countries-godless heathen countries that is-public cremations take place on pyres along the banks of rivers.  For hindus this is to liberate the soul instead of liberating their bank accounts to the deep pockets of a mortician.  Now cremation might be all fine and dandy, but FACES OF DEATH 2 is sure to point out burning alive is NOT all fine and dandy and footage of a german apartment building being consumed by flames is shown.  18 of the 20 people living on the apartment complex die and we get the horrible opportunity watching one of those people who is completely covered in 3rd degree burns try to cling to life in a hospital bed while the doctors have to perform a tracheotomy to open their charred airways so they can breath.  Kill me now is what I would say, if my fucking face muscles weren’t burned off or I could move my charred hotdog arms to write that out on a piece of paper, but this poor bastard died a slow and agonizing death.  

After witnessing the devastating effects of heat we get to watch aftermath footage of people being dug out of a gigantic avalanche set to the tone of rambunctious yodeling music.  For as much as I hate the enchanting and mystical qualities of snow, I sure as hell would hate it more if it covered my car in an avalanche and I froze to death and I knew the footage of my frozen body being pulled from the snow was going to be set to GODDAMN YODELING.  Who says documentary filmmakers don’t have tact?

Next we’re treated to a nice collection of footage about stunts gone wrong.  I love this stuff and this kind of crap just reenforces why I love this country so much.  A person can get financial backers to not only support them, but pay for a crew of people to work out the logistics of jumping a goddamn pickup truck over 16 cars.  And then said people can fill a stadium of people who are secretly hoping they see a crash and horrible dismemberment.  One of the clips they show is a stuntman named Kenny Powers, I thought that name was original too, who thinks he can jet propel some fucking jalopy car across a river that is a mile wide.  Evidently it took 4 years to plan and over a million dollars.  Holy shit what am I doing with my life?!?!      

Being that FACES OF DEATH 2 was made post-Vietnam, there is a segment on the horrors of war.  No sorry kids it isn’t Nixon trying to fellate himself ready to mop up his coagulated semen with the war’s casualty reports, it’s footage of a village that gets napalmed. The cameras roll as kids with dangling capes of burnt skin come running down the road screaming.  One little kid gets picked up and comforted by a soldier, but it looks like she is going to loose a sock-oooh no its all of the skin on her foot dangling off her still connected to her ankle.  Thanks Uncle Sam!

And what is a FACES OF DEATH movie without a horrible cavalcade of animal abuse and death?!?  The fur industry is put on a pedestal as the film describes, and shows, the origins of Persian Lamb fur.  See, you take a cute lil’ bulb-eyed lamb that is three days old and kill it then rip it’s skin off.  There is also footage of mink fur procurement that is just as unpleasant, baby seals being murdered for their hides, a dolphin slaughter in Japan, and a brutal whale hunt with the disembowelment following.  Ahhhh, time to go to my back porch and smoke a cigarette and weep for a bit.  Afterwards I’m going to check my makeup cabinet and make sure when I go out for drag night I’m wearing non-whale liquid cosmetics.   

There is all sorts of other goofball shit littered from the start to finish of FACES OF DEATH  2 and it definitely is a step above the original.  The entire film’s tone is grim, which begins with the opening monologue by Dr. Gross and there isn’t a sense of resolve or hope at the end of FACES OF DEATH 2 like in the original.  So crack that scotch open, settle into that thrift store couch pock marked with cigarette burns sitting in your otherwise furniture-less hellhole apartment, and ease into the misery.    

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence/Gore: 5 out of 5, like so many others-it’s a death film kids.
Rape: 1 out of 5, not in this one.  But there is talk of spousal abuse and rape from villagers who are missing body part.
Animal Death: 5 out of 5, it’s not a Pixar movie-but that’d be kinda neat wouldn’t it?
Necrophilia: 0 out of 0, historically discussed but nothing cool is shown.
Torture: 2 out of 5, there is a nice firing squad scene with a little torture and the squad are not crack shots if you know what I mean.
Overall Movie: 5 out of 5, I love this movie.  Stands up to the original and raises the bar for number 3!

Junk Films

By Jimmy Squarejaw
www.facebook.com/yallaredead

When FACES OF DEATH was released in 1978, it was originally produced for the death hungry population of Japan by an Italian documentarian who wanted to up the ante a little in the mondo/bizarro/documentary genre.  In the land of the rising sun it was originally titled JUNK, and according to the commentary on the FACES OF DEATH 30^th ANNIVERSARY release it eventually grossed more than STAR WARS at the box office in 1977.  (Why the FUCK do I live in America?)  In the tradition of the JUNK movie series Tsurisaki Kiyotaka, director of OROZCO THE EMBALMER, compiled a collection of his psychotic short films and titled it JUNK FILMS which was released in the states a little while ago by Massacre Video.  Shall we?

JUNK FILMS opens in India (I think) with a few nice shots of an incredibly overcrowded tent town full of cripples, the impoverished, and amputees; it really sets a nice theme of “hey, life can be total shit.”  Scenes from Tsurisaki’s ambulance chasing days follow including first hand aftermath footage of, amongst others: a guy who got into a motor scooter accident and looks like a skin chalupa crammed full of guts, a lady stabbed to death with an eerie ceiling fan lingering above her, and a guy with his head split open displaying a plethora of webbed meninges everywhere.  One scene in this grouping of shorts I particularly like is a scene in an apartment above an alley where a guy has passed away by what seems to be natural causes while surrounded by his family and a lot of confused emergency service crew looking at each other trying figure out how to get this dude out of the apartment two stories up.  Take note kids, a lot of people don’t realize when you die you have to be transported to either a funeral home or morgue before you turn into a heap of jellied human jambalaya hosting a maggot orgy.  So the next time you think about shooting up and jerking off with a bag around your head, don’t fucking do it in your attic unless you weigh 80 pounds!  Moving along.  

One of Tsurisaki’s more elaborate shorts included in JUNK FILMS is of the Vegetarian Festival on Phuket Island, Thailand.  If you haven’t partied at the vegetarian festival you ain’t livin.’  These guys wail the fuck out of themselves on the back with blades until they split open like a hyman being ripped apart by a Los Angeles Laker.  After that stunt they stick guns, bars, and swords through their faces and follow in procession through the city.  I predict in 30 years this shall replace the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and we can all kill ourselves at any point before that happens.  Really, all we are missing is keg stands, twerking, and high fives and we got one hell of a vegetarian party!  But seriously this stuff is fucked up to watch and these people must have balls the size of skulls! Too bad that’s probably the reason smite was delivered to Phuket shortly after these films were shot in the form of a tsunami created by the righteous Pat Robertson and Jesus. 

The last scene in JUNK FILMS drove me fucking crazy and I really wish I didn’t ever have to watch it again.  Taking place in a nicer than nice looking crematorium, a group of Japanese people in their 30’s surrounds an urn containing the cremated remains of their buddy.  Instead of their brain using a two second buffer to restrain some of their idiotic comments, this group of hip folks just spout out the fucking stupidest shit for twenty minutes about death, and dying, and bones, and blah fuckin’ blah fuckin’ blah!  I cannot believe no one has ever pointed out to them how ANNOYING they sound as they try to weigh out life’s ultimate mysteries!  I bet Mr. Cremated Remains committed suicide because listening to these introspective morons for a short amount of time made me want to swallow a bee hive and ask a bear to fuck it out of me!

Other than that scene, I enjoyed JUNK FILMS quite a bit.  Tsurisaki did a good job making every segment interesting; whether it was with editing, camera effects, spooky music, or the subject matter itself, JUNK FILMS stands apart from the otherwise distended corpse known as the death film genre. There are a lot of scenes in this film I didn’t chat about so don’t let my brief synopsis throw you, it’s well worth picking up!

For Purchasing go to 

http://massacrevideo.com/site/shop/junk-films-standard-dvd/

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence/Gore: 5 out of 5, it’s a death film for real.

Rape: 0 out of 0

Animal Death: 0 out of 0, a nice reprieve from the usual animal massacre in death vids.

Necrophilia: 0 out of 0.

Torture: 0 out of 0, no one is seen tortured but I bet the family of the dead guy in an urn surrounded by his fucking moron friends at the funeral home were slightly tortured listening to those fucking idiots.

Overall Movie: 4 out of 5, very nice, very good, very well!

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.