Despite the ban, several bootleg VHS tapes were released in the country, and the film was unbanned and released uncut on DVD in 2007. However, its sequels remain banned in the country. In Germany, the film was edited for a VHS release, with the removal of some graphic scenes. Although several of the human death scenes and one depicting a monkey being killed are obvious fakes (with Allan A. Apone, make-up and special effects artists for the movie saying that about 40% of it is fake), most of the remaining footage is genuine (approx. 60%). Traces of Death is a collection of archive film and borrowed stock footage, notorious for its pointless exploitative content.
In June 1985, mathematics teacher Bart Schwarz showed the film to his class at Escondido High School in Escondido, California. Schwarz was suspended from the school for 15 days without pay, but was not fired. As a curiosity piece, Faces of Death is well worth a look, especially if you’ve not seen it in a very long time.
There is a segment that deals with an alligator that accidentally entered ‘residential’ waters. The local warden goes in his boat to get the alligator back into the sea when he accidentally falls over and becomes gator bait. The film ends with newsreel footage of people jumping off buildings and major accidents. Due to its graphic content, Faces of Death was banned and censored in many countries. The movie is often billed as “Banned in 40+ Countries”, but this claim is doubtful. In the United Kingdom, the film was prosecuted and added to the “video nasty” list, as it was deemed to violate the Obscene Publications Act 1959.
Table of Contents
Videos1
Furthermore, it claims that the run time is 90 minutes. 70 minutes of crap we have already seen in Faces Of Death 1, Faces Of Death 4, and first compilation, The Worst Of Faces Of Death. Whether you watch it and roll your eyes at some scenes or cover them for others, there’s no denying that it is a prototype for the more visceral materials that would become available online to everybody a few years later.
Assassin François Jordan is interviewed, admitting that he kills solely for payment, not for “political” or “social value”. However, Gröss next introduces “another type of killer”, “the one who kills for no apparent reason”. A gunfight ensues between a SWAT team and an armed murderer who is shot, after which the team enters the killer’s house to find his family stabbed to death; Gröss questions whether the man’s actions were caused by society. Soon after, Gröss exhibits video footage of criminal Larry DeSilva being executed by electric chair. In the 40 years since its 1978 release, Faces of Death has earned a reputation as one of the most shocking films ever made. Even today, in the age of police body cameras and Islamic State execution videos, it retains its power.
Movies Preview
This movie features Michael Carr as the narrator, and ‘creative consultant’ called “Dr. Francis B. Gröss”, whose voice is reminiscent of Leonard Nimoy in the popular TV show In Search of…. John Alan Schwartz has said that this movie’s budget was $450,000 and there are estimates that it has grossed more than $35 million worldwide in theatrical releases, not including rentals. But it wasn’t enough, and LeCilaire decided to shoot staged sequences.
This movie continues in the same vein as F.O.D. 1 with short scenes of death related material. Mortuarys, accidents, police work are filmed by TV crews and home video cameras. Some of the material are most likely fake, some not as likely. The Streamable helps you find the best way to stream anything.
Movies In Theaters
Experience the graphic reality of DEATH, close-up…
In its opening you see the death of a woman named Maritza Martin, who was gunned down by her ex-husband on Spanish language television. We then witness British SAS troopers storming the Iranian Embassy in 1980, this is followed by a police chase of a criminal in a pick up truck and the deadly finale. It then goes to footage of animal experiments with a grizzly scene of a live pig being burned alive with a torch. Autopsy footage is then shown of an Asian individual. We are then shown a very graphic presentation on a male to female sex change operation. One interesting scene has a man who had his nasal cavity removed and replaced with a prosthetic.
Faces of Death, for all of its trickery, contains some very real graphic footage. To this day, I still see some of the scenes in my mind, particularly when I hear the evening news or see a car accident. For anyone considering renting it, you will be forever changed after watching. It is really quite unlike anything you will ever see. As a kid, I didn’t know that this stuff was mostly staged, and the thought of seeing “the real deal” led to me getting copies of the various sequels and the countless imitators, but after a while, I sort of grew out of that stage.
A brand new high definition transfer was made with new material and a 5.1 digital soundtrack. In his review, Screen Anarchy’s Ard Vijn was dismissive of the film, remarking that “many of the segments have lost their ability to shock, or can easily be recognized as fake by today’s more media-savvy audience. Interesting as a curious bit of film history, but nothing more.” Gröss remarks that after studying Binder’s case, he has concluded even “when we die, it isn’t really the end” as “the soul in each of us remains a traveller forever”.
The only emotion I had was one that I had never TRULY felt before…empathy. I felt sickened for the families of the people who I was watching. I felt like crying because there was nothing I could do. For those people whose faces appeared on the screen, peace had finally come. I walked around for two days unable to erase the images from my mind. I saw this film by accident (my brother and a friend were watching it, I walked in thinking it was “Children of the Corn” and somehow stayed glued to the couch until the last credits rolled).
The closing has some stock footage of a funeral and an animal attack. Instead, it goes straight into more stock footage, primarily from parts one and four. The goofball, obviously staged monkey brain eating sequence from the first film is shown again in its entirety; Samuel Berkowitz makes another cameo, as his encapsulation is recounted wholly; the head-in-a-box from part four is here, too. As most of the footage here is lifted whole from the first film, it is appropriately capped off with the closing credits from the first film.
Gröss introduces his next topic, the role that supernatural forces might play in death. He meets with architect Joseph Binder, whose wife and son both died under tragic circumstances. He confides to the viewer that he believes his deceased family remain as ghosts in his house and are attempting to communicate with him. Gröss enlists the services of parapsychologists to verify this, and the team later takes photographs of footprints and two apparitions. Binder then communicates with the spirits of his family through a medium, seemingly confirming the existence of life after death. When she finally went home that day in 1985, Forget went straight to her room.
The great irony I found while making the podcast was how many of the most talked-about scenes in the film are fake – yet to this day, many viewers believe it’s all real. That said, many of the sections of genuine documentary footage – in particular, the grisly aftermath of a plane crash – are undeniably shocking. A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV-material to home-made super-8 movies. Ask any horror movie fan old enough to remember the genre 30 years ago, and he or she will probably tell you about their first experience with Faces of Death, arguably one of the first “found footage” movies ever made. Faces of Death portrayed itself as a film compilation of real suicides, deaths, and autopsies.
English 
Romanian