I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Good concept, poorly executed.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

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.

Faces Of Death is a film that doesn't really follow any storyline. It really doesn't, so you must be asking yourself, "How does this movie go on then without a story?"A false rumour spread that the violence in this was unsimulated, so this film immediately caused controversy. That false rumour is how this film got all of these viewers, people were flocking to see it just to see how graphic and disturbing the violence was. Most audiences were repulsed by the violence, calling it "graphic" and "disgusting," and the false rumour spread even more.Let me get this clear: this does not have unsimulated violence. If some silly friend of yours came over to you and said, "Hey, there's this film called Faces Of Death with unsimulated violence," then he/she's lying without knowing it. But, the violence in this looks very real, which may be why so many people were led to believe the rumour. Of course, we all know it's false now, but back then, Faces Of Death was one of the most disturbing and graphic films of all time, along with I Spit On Your Grave, Cannibal Holocaust and Mondo cane.Despite being simulated, I can guarantee that the film lives up to the hype, violence-wise. It's graphic, shocking, disturbing and downright tasteless, with no coherent storyline at all. The film was made just to shock viewers out their lunch.I won't call this film downright bad, but I won't call it a masterpiece either. It's an interesting film with very realistic violence that makes you stand and marvel at how the filmmakers were able to create such realistic looking violence. But remember, the violence in this film is completely tasteless, and doesn't really serve apart from shocking.Overall, it's disturbing, but I wouldn't call it a film to go put on your watchlist. If you get the chance, maybe watch it if you have a strong stomach, but otherwise, just steer clear from it. 5.2/10.

Currently, I've never given a movie a 1 star rating before. I've given out a 3 star rating before to a movie but never a rating this low. This is mainly because even some of the worst movies I've ever seen had at least a few things good about them. But I have always wondered when I'll be able to find a movie that is so bad that regardless of how hard I try, I would not be able to find anything in it which is even somewhat good or entertaining.I think that I've found one.This awful disaster of a movie is distractingly violent, super offensive, and full of shock value. I can safely say that this is one of the worst movies ever made.This documentary really has no plot. It's just a montage of people and animals dying gruesome and bloody deaths and the narrator also gives disturbing commentary detailing how they died.The only point to this film is to shock and disturb the viewer. It's a hard movie to watch because the movie featured gruesome deaths just for the sake of it. There was not a single moment in this movie that contained any power and I didn't feel engaged at all throughout its entirety. I enjoyed Come and See because it had power with its massacre scenes and it had intelligent violence which stayed with me long after viewing it. Faces of Death on the other hand is nothing more than just 105 minutes of endless and tiring shock value.Also, there is one thing that really infuriates me about this movie more than anything else. It is that the movie often plays goofy and uplifting music while it shows footage of people being brutally murdered (also, most of the deaths displayed here are in fact real). Most of those people died brutal deaths here and it downright disgusted me how the movie uses the goofy music to make them sound like some kind of a sick joke. However, the movie actually offended me in this case. It proves that the directors clearly don't care at all for any of the people or animals who brutally died in this movie. This clearly has some of the worst, unfitting music ever in cinema history.I've actually seen some people give this movie a 5/5 rating. I've read many of the reviews by them but none of them have been able to justify this movie's flaws at all and none of them have been able to convince me that this movie isn't complete garbage yet. For the entirely of this one guy's review, he rambled on for how much of this movie was fake and how much it diminishes the movie's impact because of it. Yet, that idiot gave this movie a perfect rating. I have no idea know what those people see in this movie and I don't know why they think that this movie is a masterpiece. If you think that this is a masterpiece then go watch Come and See. Then tell me that this is a masterpiece.So in conclusion, this is an awful movie. It's just a montage of shock value and the movie handles them very poorly by throwing in super unfitting music which I found to be highly offensive. There was not a single moment in this movie that even somewhat interested me and I was extremely glad after this movie ended. This is the worst documentary I've seen and this is also the worst movie I've ever seen as well.

This video nasty was also released under the title The Original Faces of Death. It is a mondo film which guides viewers through explicit scenes depicting a variety of ways to die and violent acts. It was finally released in Britain in 2003 after they cut over 2 minutes from the film.In 1978 this might have been more than most people had experienced in their lives. Thirty years later, it has lost its shock value as we are exposed to some of the same faces of death from war. genocide, disease, and natural disasters like Katrina on our TV screens every night.It is not clear that most of the deaths we witnessed were real. Some may have been staged. If so, they certainly pale to what we see in films such as Saw or Hostel.There are a couple a scenes in the movie that were interesting, but certainly not worth the time spent watching the whole story.And to think that writer/director John Alan Schwartz has about six more of these for you to see, if you are so inclined.