By Keri O’Shea
Y’know, it’s a funny thing. For a genre which has always gone so firmly hand in hand with fantasy, there’s always been a small, but stubborn undercurrent to horror which obsesses over the antithesis of that fantasy – the portrayal of ‘real events’. Whether it’s rumours of real footage being hidden in movies, or outright bullshit projects like Snuff which seek to directly exploit this fascination, or even persistent rumours about certain Hollywood actors who were so convinced by the fantasy on their screens that they called the FBI, the threat of the real has hung on in there. Notions of crossover between the real and the imagined just refuse to go away, and maybe they never will. Well, back in the heyday of 60s and 70s exploitation cinema, when directors were up against fierce competition from one another and growing ever more determined to hit on an innovative format which would allow them to swap maximum outrage for maximum gain, a certain ‘documentary’ movie was made, and it’s one which has clung onto its reputation for savagery, come what may.
In many ways, the persistence of Faces of Death is remarkable. (Sure, the original film did well enough to spawn a small franchise, but it’s the first film in the series which people tend to remember, and scenes from this first one which people can still discuss.) And yet, compared to many contemporary shockumentaries of the day, Faces of Death is surprisingly amateurish. When Mondo Cane (literally, ‘A Dog’s World’) burst onto the underground movie scene back in 1962, it set the bar in terms of the format (and the tendency to fudge together fake footage wherever filmmakers Cavara, Prosperi and Jacopetti saw the need for it) but, say what you like, it was still a milestone in originality. So much so, that an entire tirade of similarly-styled movies followed in its wake, as well as a Mondo Cane 2 the following year; where the imitators differed from their source, however, was in their own focus. Mondo Cane achieves its slightly bewildering effect through interspersing the nasty with the silly; drunken antics take their place on-screen alongside a battery of deeply-unpleasant animal cruelty scenes, for example. Perhaps the nasty footage got people talking the most, because the films which followed tended to include more and more of it. And so, by the time we get to 1978, we’ve found a specific focus – death itself, and depictions of death (and only death) on the screen.
So why, exactly, has Faces of Death developed the lasting reputation for extremity, even when – for example – a later film like Traces of Death (1993) seems, to this writer at least, a lot nastier and a lot more unpleasantly credible? It’s something I’ve wondered about a lot as I come to write this piece. As far as it goes, personally, I’ve seen shockumentaries I find far more upsetting, and also shockumentaries I find far more interesting, if I can call it that (like Shocking Africa, for instance), but my first viewing of Faces of Death has still stuck with me like glue. It may well be that once a film’s reputation reaches critical mass, then most of its work is done, before you actually sit down to watch the thing. If you;re young and impressionable, that helps too. Add notoriety to anticipation and find a better, more far-reaching ad campaign than any money could buy, and that is still true in many cases even in our cynical, internet-savvy times. Hell, even today, people who have never been anywhere near a viewing of Faces of Death will recognise the title. But the film’s reputation can’t be completely explained away by the snowball effect.
For me, Faces of Death is still so well-known for the notable and often downright bizarre way in which it skirts the facetious and the unpalatable. For example, director and writer John Alan Schwartz (who, just as bizarrely, also wrote a few episodes of Knight Rider, which starred his old college roomie David Hasselhoff) must’ve known that the footage he was going to stitch together was going to be a real rag-tag affair, so he decided that he was going to give us a credible authority figure, to help generate the impression of an overarching structure. Or, ahem, perhaps not. The inclusion of Dr Francis B. Gröss (aww, come on!) as played by actor Michael Carr bequeaths to us one of the most dubious medical experts ever, and as such the voice-over which Carr provides throughout the film adds a great deal to the often perplexing, ‘should I be laughing or not?’ tone. The film forces you to waver between belief and disbelief, wry humour and outright disgust throughout.
So, you’re watching it, you’re transfixed by the dulcet tones of Dr Gröss as he explains the relevance of each sequence to the overarching theme of death…and, then what? Next, you might feel yourself assaulted by the barrage of images thrown at you, and made to reflect on their authenticity, or otherwise. This in itself can be quite a testing experience. A number of lurid scenes follow hot on the heels of the last, so that one moment you’re ostensibly peering into a cannibalistic Satanic orgy, the next at what really does look like a suicide (clue: it ain’t – more anon) and then at live animals being presented at table. To ask yourself if what you’re seeing is real, well, you have to really get a good look at it. If you realise that you have just witnessed something real, then it’s not the nicest of sensations, and it’s important to remember that, even though Faces of Death has had its claims of being 100% real conclusively quashed in the past three decades, a reasonable amount of it is real. So, even though you might be able to work out by yourself that they’re not really killing a monkey in that scene, and that’s an actress pretending to leap to her death in that scene, all the scenes are part of a fairly sickly entirety. The conceit overall is unpleasant, and cumulatively, shot through as it is with shards of black comedy, it still has the power to spit you out the other end feeling repelled. To demonstrate this feeling of being repelled with an example of my own, it’s worth mentioning at this juncture that Faces of Death has had, believe it or not, a long-lasting impact on my life, and I’m being perfectly serious here. I saw this film when I was fifteen years of age after tracking it down – as usual – on a hokey, thrice-copied VHS tape. The moment I was through with the slaughterhouse sequence which appears early on in the film I said to myself, ‘I am never eating meat again’. Nearly twenty years on, I never have. It’s only a movie, sure, but there we go, that’s what Faces of Death can do…
Thirty-five years after this movie emerged – turning a huge profit whilst spinning a huge yarn – it has maintained its cult reputation, regardless of the quality or quantity of films which have followed in its wake. In this day and age where shock value and saturation have hit a premium in the horror movie world, you can’t help but be a little impressed by that, even whilst acknowledging, even enjoying, the film’s flaws. And yet, despite its grand old age, Faces of Death feels in a few ways like a very modern movie. There are still those amongst us who seem to want to ponder the veracity of death footage, albeit in an online format now as opposed to analogue; that unholy marriage of attraction and repulsion is still an impulse for many. Faces of Death was also one of those films – not the first, sure, but an early example – which began the process of reducing the distance between the camera and captured footage. If you cottoned on to the fact that some of that footage was fake, then you could then understand that we had a cameraman pretending to be a real figure on the ground, and you just might be able to see where we have the odd example of that in modern horror cinema. The phrase ‘Based On Real Events’ has become a huge cliché, too, a further testament to the fact that select horror audiences (and directors) give credence to this kind of set-up.
Perhaps most of all, though, Faces of Death – with its proud reputation of being banned in a record number of countries – speaks volumes to us about the law of the forbidden in film. Tell a punter they can’t see something, and they will cross hot coals to do that very thing. Hell, deliberately put footage in your film which will automatically put it on the naughty step, and watch the demand for your film grow. Faces of Death might not be the most accomplished, or charming example of this truism, but it’s certainly one of the most memorable, and it looks like its disrepute will continue to hang on in there.