FACES OF DEATH (1978): When Narrative Snuff Is Just Not Enough!
FACES OF DEATH transcended its physical form. It grew like a starving void, spreading like an eldritch cancer. It bulged against the film reels within the VHS and bloomed violently out of the plastic housing. The metastasis could not be stopped by the barrier of its slipcase with the drawing of a leering skull, and the text that cautioned it had been "BANNED IN 46 COUNTRIES." Then, freed of physical bonds, it came for our minds. FACES OF DEATH wrapped its tentacles around the malleable, pink tissue of our brains, and planted ideas that would grow into unparalleled degenerate lore.
Pathologist Francis B. Gröss (Nods approvingly) is interested in the phenomenon of death. Luckily there's plenty of footage surrounding said event, thanks to a rich history of human evils (Still counting baby). We are subjected to said footage. Some is real (Holocaust footage, scenes at an LA County Morgue) and some is staged (The eating of monkey brains, a family annihilator facing off against a swat team). Gröss narrates the horrors with language so heavy handed it that would make James Hetfield embarrassed (Probably). Then, like a cartoon fart in the shape of a skull and cross-bones, it's over. We have all been irreparably changed.
In the year of our Antichrist 2026, you can stumble upon a man holding a severed head just by being on YouTube at the right place and the right time. What a blessing! However, back in 1978, we were still decades removed from even the Dr. Gröss equivalents on the early internet (Rotten.com, LiveLeak, select torrent sites). For fans of subversive horror, Freddy, Jason and their ilk still represented a glossy facsimile of the reaper's touch. FACES OF DEATH promised the black truth in all of its blurry details. The non-staged footage, and its warped celluloid proof of our depravity, bled out of the television, daring you to look away. That there was no one to fact check what was real and what wasn't, gave this compilation of violence a true power. The black Gorgon Video clamshell was stylized like it contained corrosive chemicals a deadly toxin or a cursed grimoire. To a mulleted kid in a sleeveless Megadeth t-shirt eyeing it warily from between the stacks in the video store, it was comparable.
Despite modern internet giving us horrors with a single click, people still rubberneck past a bad accident. They still replay a basketball player's bones audibly snapping from a bad fall. There will always be a perverse yearning to experience the vérité of our weak flesh succumbing to the indignities of the world. FACES OF DEATH spawned sequels galore (Most being glorified "Best Of" compilations) as well as challengers to its throne like Traces of Death (Notable for being exclusively actual footage scored by some choice death metal bands). However, time and place has ensured that the anecdotes of Dr. Gröss remain frozen in the amber of our degenerate minds. They are unreliable in their truths, and timeless in their implications. After all, what's more certain than death?
PS: Yes I'm baffled by the remake/sequel and expect nothing short of a shiny meta-narrative that jettisons the notion of dissecting our obsession with witnessing mortality through film medium. I guess the big studio film could prove me wrong...But it'll likely be dead on arrival.
-Dr. Benny Graves
