I’m calling this a deathbed confession, but in reality when this director died a couple of years ago, he didn’t say anything, but he left behind a bunch of old film reels from some of his movies, including several from the first installment of his most famous movie.
Prior to the internet, everyone who discussed the movie did so probably without actually having seen the movie.
What were people dying was actually the work of actors and some not very good editing and camerawork. It was low budget and a long time ago, so that is understandable.
There was also some footage that was not shot by the director, but bought from a news organization.
With all of that being said, one of the scenes shot by the director is actually someone getting killed and the angles and outtakes in the unseen footage show for a fact there was an actual death.
There is more footage of a death that didn’t make it into the film.
The fact that it is footage shows it wasn’t bought, but actually filmed.
That footage may or may not show a death.
It looks like a death.
People are reacting like it is a real death, but there are only a handful of people remaining on the planet who would know for sure, and they haven’t been asked/found.
Director: John Alan Schwartz
Faces of Death
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‘Banned in 46 countries’ – is Faces of Death the most shocking film ever?
The year is 1985 and two California schoolgirls called Diane Feese and Sherry Forget are watching uncomfortably as their teacher wheels out a TV on a stand. Lessons are meant to be over for the day but, rather than let his students go home, Mr Schwartz is insisting the teenagers watch a movie. He pops a tape into the VCR.
What follows is a parade of grotesque images. Dead bodies are sliced open in an autopsy, people at an occult orgy smear themselves in human blood, a man is electrocuted, sheep writhe on meathooks and there is an awful scene at a restaurant involving a monkey.
“The people at the table,” says Forget today, “beat this monkey over the head with a hammer until it died. Then they cut the top of its head off and ate its brains.” As an animal-lover, she found the film deeply disturbing and asked to leave. Mr Schwartz said no and when Feese also tried to go, he forced her to sit down, grabbing her chair and spinning it aggressively towards the screen.
They were watching Faces of Death, a film containing footage of humans and animals, either dead or in the process of dying, usually brutally. It opens with a pathologist, who introduces what follows as his own personal collection of clips gathered from around the world. “Over the years,” he proclaims grimly, “I have compiled a library of the many faces of death.”
The documentary approach was what made the film so upsetting. “We went into the movie knowing this was real,” says Forget. “That was what was so weird,” adds Feese. “I was like, ‘Why are they filming this? Why are they doing this? What is wrong with people?’”
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. – Source
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