#Blogtober 2 - October Horror Movie Challenge - Faces of Death

For the last few years I've been doing this challenge, I often have on the list one of the infamous Video Nasties, so I can work my way through most of them.  Thing is, for a lot of the ones on the main Section II lists (the 72 films that were charged under the Obscene Publications Act, 39 of which were prosecuted, 33 weren't), I've reached the point where what I have left are some of the more extreme titles, and a lot of the utter crap that got lumped in there.  So for the one on this week's list, I decided to make my watching of it directly linked to the fundraiser, as an incentive to get through it, as it's directly for a good cause.  I think this is perhaps the only case this particular title has done some real good, as it's one of the big ones in the field.  So in the mindset of "let's get this done quickly", here are my thoughts on the truly infamous Faces of Death...

Note that I'm not doing what I usually do and have a trailer; if I did, I would have to include quite the content warning on it, as the only one I could find opens with a clip of open heart surgery, which indeed the film does too.  It then blatantly does a slow-mo and freeze frame shot to imply that what you just saw was a death on the operation table.  And that's pretty much the film in microcosm; footage of things you really do not want to see, mixed in with a lot of very obvious fraud.  In fact the lies start right from the cover; although the film has faced a tonne of controversy (not entirely unwarranted), no it is not and has never been "Banned in 46 countries"; according to Wikipedia, it has at most been banned temporality in five.  I should mention that the version I saw (which I'm so pleased I didn't have to pay money for, it was randomly in a friend's box of DVDs) was cut by the BBFC, taking out some scenes of animal cruelty.  Man, considering some of the ones let through, including the slaughterhouse footage, I dread to think what those bits looked like.

This whole thing is based on an old trick that exploitation filmmakers have been doing since the 1930's; try to get away with as much extreme content as possible by claiming it's all educational, it's all for documentary purposes.  In here we have a Dr. Gröss (ha.  ha.  ha.)  waffling on about his "collection of faces of death from around the world" as our justification for all this sickness.  I think perhaps one main reason that this didn't affect me quite as much as I thought it might was that the other day I'd rewatched Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and some of the narration in this film reminded me so much of Garth's awkward metaphors and incompetent research.  I actually nearly burst out laughing at one point when he mentioned "The Country of Africa".  Yes, Country of Africa.  Mind, there were the odd few moments when they got close to a good point, like in one section mentioning gun violence, a line about how "The man who kills with a gun purely for the feeling of power is a danger to the world".   Also, there was a brief environmental segment later on does touch on a real concern... at least until the moment is spoiled by another blatant bit of fakery, full body burn stunt.

What's more, some of the many, many tangents this film goes down (it really does just flip from topic to topic like a bizarre almost snuff version of You've Been Framed!) highlight this whole angle of fraud.  There's a bit where they have a supposed interview with a real assassin... which lasts for two sentences. And towards the end, there's a full on ghost hunt condensed into the space of about a minute and a half.  Now I don't know about you, but if I was doing a documentary, and I had either full access to an international mercenary, or proof that the supernatural was real, I'd want to make the most of those.  I'd do a whole documentary about those alone, not just put them in a highlight reel of stuff like seal clubbing and such!  Why not have a full investigation into the cannibal cult alone?  Oh, right, that would be beyond the budget.  I will say that the cheapness of these sections is the one thing that might make them feel more genuine, as it's same sort of 16mm filmstock used by TV and news of the time. But then you notice things like how this execution chamber at a prison is blatantly inside a garage or something which spoils the effect.

Now the thing is, if the film was just these faked sections, the whole thing might come off as somewhat amusing, in attempting to pretend to be serious when it's so obviously a fraud.  But in fact, the net result is that when it does go to the genuinely disturbing real life footage (which includes accident aftermaths, footage of the Holocaust, starvation victims, suicides and so much else), it makes those far more impactful, you are aware of their reality all the more.  Now I believe in free speech, and in the proper sense of the term rather than what many online idiots use that phrase to mean, "I get to be as racist as I like and no-one can call me out on it ever".  I do believe that shocking imagery, even of real life atrocities in and of themselves can potentially have a place for public exhibition.  However, only if there's actually a point for doing so, only if there's a reasonable justification for doing so.  In the case of this film, it was made for the sole justification of putting a lot of truly disturbing shit together to sell to various markets (apparently it was Japanese media types who got the ball rolling on it).  This film's motives are purely mercenary, it has no real point to make in any of this, and as such I find the idea of using footage of real life tragedy to be in the worst possible taste.  If the imagery alone didn't sicken me, the intent behind this does; this film is a reason why terms such as "exploitation cinema" exist.

In conclusion, I should mention that I can occasionally get into rather severe melancholic existential moments when considering my own mortality and what that means.  For all this thing blathers on about death, I honestly didn't have a moment like that watching this one.  If anything, by the end I was just so bored by the mere word "death", it just lost all meaning through repetition.  This is just a mixture of inept fakery and gruesome shock tactics, with nothing proper to say.  I spent the whole thing just alternating between boredom, disgust, and plain anger at the film.  Fuck this movie, for its exploitation, fuck this movie for its tastelessness, and fuck this movie, for giving those spreading the scaremongering around Video Nasties back in the day perfect ammunition.  Needless to say, I am so not searching out the rest of these; yes, there are a whole bunch of sequels out there, and no I am so not doing those in future challenges.  I also strongly don't recommend you seeing this yourselves; if you are still curious about the film, rather than find a copy, I instead suggest that you check out the pretty good DVD set Video Nasties The Definitive Guide from Nucleus Films.  The extra features disc includes a trailer for the film and a talking head section analysing it, along with all the others from the Section 2 Nasties lists.

Phew, well at least this sets the bar low for the rest of the month, I doubt there's anything else on my DVD rack that will make me feel quite like this... I hope.

Please give generously to my regular Halloween fundraiser for Crisis.  Given what I've just gone through, I have earned every penny in there!