Faces of Death
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Faces of Death (1978) is a mondo film which guides viewers through explicit scenes depicting a variety of ways to die and violent acts. It is often billed as Banned in 40 Countries, with that number varying with the years. The film has, in fact, been banned (at least temporarily) in New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Finland.
The film was written and directed by John Alan Schwartz (credited as "Conan le Cilaire" for directing and "Alan Black" for writing). Schwartz was also the second unit director, credited this time as "Johnny Getyerkokov". He also appears in one of the segments in this film, as the leader of the alleged flesh eating cult in San Francisco area, and puts in cameo appearances in several other films in this series.
The film stars Michael Carr as the narrator, and 'creative consultant' called "Dr. Francis B. Gröss". John Alan Schwartz has gone on record as saying this film's budget was $450,000 and there are estimates that it has grossed more than $35 million worldwide in theatrical releases, not including rentals. It was ranked #50 on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time" in 2000.
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Plot
On an operating table, an unnamed patient undergoes open heart surgery. The titles run over footage of fresh and rotten cadavers, and footage of a complete organ harvesting where the patient received the heart. After cleaning himself up, pathologist Francis B. Gröss states to the viewer that he has become interested with the transitional periods of life and death thanks to a recurring dream. He describes the dream as one that featured grotesque deaths, but was not a nightmare because his experience as a surgeon allowed him to accept the events as they are. He has accrued footage either himself or from several parts of the world in an effort to better understand and study the many "faces of death".
An examination in natural and unnatural animal death takes place; footage of a chicken being beheaded at a farm and graphic slaughterhouse footage is shown. In Mexico, Gröss has captured the mummified corpses of the deceased inhabitants of Guanajuato, as well as footage of a dog fight between two pit bulls. He next examines the natural predators of the Amazon rainforest and the ways in which they kill their prey. Footage of a monkey being killed and its brain being eaten by guests of a banquet is also shown. A man is killed by an alligator, an act that Gröss calls a "violent retaliation from a creature who has suffered continued abuse from mankind".
Gröss next narrates over recordings of human deaths, namely assassinations, stating that homo sapiens are the only species to kill for greed. Assassin François Jordan is interviewed, admitting that he kills solely for payment, not for "political" or "social value". Next, Gröss 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 shows footage of criminal Larry DeSilva being executed by electric chair.
A Chinese Morgue is shown, and multiple autopsies are shown with Dr. Thomas Noguchi performing the embalming process. One cadaver was a drowned woman, who is pale and horrifically bloated. Another was a decapitated man, who has their skin peeled off their skull for examination. After these actions, Gröss askes Noguchi for his thoughts on his own embalming process after he dies, to which he replies, "life is purely a transitory state".
One sequence involves cryogenic patient Samuel Berkowitz, who was frozen in July 1978 and stored in northern California. Graphic images and brief footage of the cryogenic process of replacing bodily fluids with a liquid with a low freezing point, to prevent freezer burn on the corpse. Gröss goes on to explain the purpose of this process is to preserve the body for future sciences to revive him, asking "imagine what it would be like to die in 1980, and wake up hundreds of years into the future".
The next segment displays war and atrocities in history, including the Holocaust. Horrific acts during said period are displayed and analyzed in full detail, and how desperate Adolf Hitler became during the latter years of the war. The segment ends with Nazis being obliterated in battle by land and sea, with Gröss adding, "Hitler soon lost control not only of his army, but of his mind". The mind and suicide is examined when footage of a woman jumping from 23 stories is shown, her body hits the concrete and makes a loud boom sound. Gröss admits this face of death is one he wishes to never face again.
More examples of the nature of man is examined with footage of animals dying due to litter and pollution. Following with poor villages with sick children due to polluted lands and famine. Another "horrific nature of man" is examined with footage of a satanic cannibalistic cult disembowling a cadaver stolen from a morgue. They eat the innards and partake in an orgy soon after. Gröss fears for the safety of him and his crew, so they abruptly leave.
Footage of several more tragic accidents is shown, both animal and human, culminating in a segment focusing on vehicle accidents, including a train derailment and crushed bodies being pried out of wreckage, vehicle stunt for a film gone wrong, a cyclist having her head crushed by a semi truck, and a scene in which a wing walker attempts a parachute jump from his plane but dies after the parachute fails to open properly. Gröss disputes the notion that this death was quick and painless, as the jumper would have been conscious and aware for the entire fall to the ground. The segment ends with photographs, footage and air traffic control audio from the crash of PSA Flight 182 and its grisly aftermath of scattered mutilated body parts and numerous destroyed houses. Gröss states that to this day (at the time of the film's release), the neighborhood smells like "rotting bodies and jet fuel", and claims that a mutilated body with only its torso and right hand "is the worst face of death".
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.
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". Gröss ends by questioning whether death is "the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end" and leaves the footage he has shown to the viewer's interpretation. Immediately after Gröss's final dialogue, the film ends with peaceful music, footage of a baby's birth and photos of the child growing up happily.
