Faces of Death

March 31, 2003

I only thought of this because someone in the WWE folder said something about Brock Lesnar's missed SSP was damn near Faces of Death material.

Anyway, my dad rented one of the infamous FOD series one time and said he only got through about 20 minutes of it. Now this was probably 8-10 years ago, when it was already banned in like 40 states, so I'm not sure if you could even find one today. I know I've never seen one in the video store, but 1) It's not like I was looking for one and 2) Places like Blockbuster probably wouldn't carry it due to their "family" image.

Has anyone here seen one of the FOD series? What are they like? The closest I could say I've seen was that one Banned From TV video that came out a few years ago, the one that showed the woman who got hit by the train.

March 31, 2003

The only time I'd seen FoD, was about 7-8 years ago, when my brother (in-law) brought home two editions of the series.

Since I was around 10-11 years old, I could only stand to see about 5 minutes of the video. I wussed out real early, with nightmares to come that night, but I've been desensitized to death since then (9/11, war documentaries). It's very similar to the Banned from Television series, but that's only judging from what I've seen on commercials hyping both products.

It's what you'd expect people to catch on camera (people jumping out of tall buildings on fire, etc.), though I wouldn't be surprised to hear of worse.

March 31, 2003

I've seen the first three and was terribly unimpressed. You can actually see much worse clips on the 'net now, anyways, but even back when I saw it (which was when I was in high school, so it was like '89 or '90) the thing that was most disturbing to me was when they showed an Asian family preparing to eat a dog. Actually, that and the people cracking a monkey's head to eat his brains are the only two things that I really remember.

Also, a kid that I went to college with was from LA and he allegedly knew someone who's father was a producer of some of the videos and confirmed how much of what they showed was bullshit. Whether this kid that I knew was full of shit or not I don't know.

I can understand why a kid would get all sketched out by it, but an adult? Puh-lease.

March 31, 2003

They're not that hard to find, I've seen them on dvd at Best Buy. I've got them all on video myself (there are 4, by the way, plus a 'worst of'). It's really nothing to get worked up about, I usually laugh my ass off at them. Most of it is fake, and a good key to telling the difference is that ironically, the ones that look the fakest are the real ones. In part one there were only two real scenes, the one where a guy was speaking at a podium and gets shot by an assasin, and... damn, I can't remember the other one.

If you get creeped out by it (unless you're a kid), it's usually the bizarre 'doctor's narraration. Picture it sped up with Benny Hill music. Much better.

Mrnoitaull · March 31, 2003

I've seen a couple of minutes too. But i was too young to realize that is was real. Saw like some guy in Asia get beheaded across a log,gas chamber,monkey brains scene. BUt like I said, I thougt it was all fake.

March 31, 2003

The one that really stuck with me is the one where a guy is scuba diving and a barracuda swims past him and apparently slices through his thigh. He gets dragged back in the boat and all the meat and viscera just spills out of the bloody slit in his leg. Just awful.

March 31, 2003

Yeah, they have a box set that's always at Best Buy. It also comes with a documentary that tells you which is fake and which is real. You can also rent it from Netflix.

I've seen all of them several times. Like somebody else said, the only one that bothered me was the Asian family cracking open the dog and eating it. Was that part 3 or 4? Whichever part that was is my favorite and I saw it at the theater. It kicked ass in the theater. Watching those movies with a crowd is priceless. I had already seen it a few times and was prepared. When that damn dog lunch came up, the crowd was NOT prepared and went apeshit. It was awesome. My all time favorite is the stupid frat house kids that want to bunjee jump off the roof but they buy a normal rope that is like 10 feet too long. Splat. It might've been fake but it's the thought that counts. I also remember the magician getting his head smashed being good. When I was a kid we took a lot of scenes from it, added our own narration to it and made a America's Funniest Home Videos parody.

I went throuh a period where I was obsessed with this shit and I got all of them. So, if you're gonna get something like this, get the Faces of Death movies. All those rip offs suck. The rip offs may be more real but they're usually just a bunch of crap like holocaust footage. That stuff isn't very entertaining. FOD may be fake at times but watching a guy get ate by a bear or a gator is fun. Watching a bunch of skinny jews thrown into a pit isn't fun at all. And only get like the first 4, all the recent ones are just the old movies re-edited to try to rip people off.

March 31, 2003

Speaking of rip offs, there is one called Faces of Torture, which I seriously doubt you'll ever see anywhere, but if you do, pick that motherfucker up. There's really nothing gruesome in it at all, but it's really halucinogenic and weird. If you're dropping acid at an s & m orgy, Faces of Torture is the movie that should be playing in the background.

March 31, 2003

Or you can download them on Kazaa which I am doing as I write this.

March 31, 2003

The one that really stuck with me is the one where a guy is scuba diving and a barracuda swims past him and apparently slices through his thigh. He gets dragged back in the boat and all the meat and viscera just spills out of the bloody slit in his leg. Just awful.

Whoa, wait a minute. "Viscera" is an actual word? What does it mean?

March 31, 2003

Viscera = guts/entrails.

April 1, 2003

If you're dropping acid at an s & m orgy, Faces of Torture is the movie that should be playing in the background.

Riiiiiigghhht

(makes note to never drop acid and go to an S & M orgy)

April 1, 2003

If you're dropping acid at an s & m orgy, Faces of Torture is the movie that should be playing in the background.

Riiiiiigghhht

(makes note to never drop acid and go to an S & M orgy)

April 1, 2003

Viscera = guts/entrails.

Now I'm full of questions about the former Mabel's old character. Did they just pick "Viscera" because it sounded evil? Was there a deeper meaning? Was it supposed to lead to something that eventually was deemed too extreme? Someone get Vince Russo and Vince McMahon's email addresses for me.

April 1, 2003

I don't know if the site is still around, but I stumbled onto a site called Snuff-X a couple of years ago that had some very disturbing footage. I think those were the days when Hardcore TV was free every week on IGN.

April 1, 2003

Faces Of Death is all a work.Or at least the one I saw (part 4 or 5) was.

April 1, 2003

I don't know if the site is still around, but I stumbled onto a site called Snuff-X a couple of years ago that had some very disturbing footage. I think those were the days when Hardcore TV was free every week on IGN.

Just how do you "stumble" onto a site like that?

Seriously, though, how long has it been public knowledge that FoD was (from what you all are saying) mostly fake? Was it really banned by anyone, then? I remember hearing it was banned in like 43 states.

With all this talk of "works" and FoD and Viscera, I hope Rob Black doesn't come here and get ideas of a joint wrestling/FoD-type thing.

April 1, 2003

Well, anybody can watch it and figure out that a lot of it is faked. But it wasn't officially know until a couple of years ago when the creator came out and admitted in interviews like this one from 2000.....

Most adolescent slumber parties in the '80s began or ended with a video screening of the cult classic, pseudo-snuff flick Faces of Death. After the movie, no slumber came, only nightmares and debate.

"Did those people really beat that monkey to death and eat its brains?"

"How did they get that footage of the flesh-eating cult?"

"Is that electric chair execution real?"

Is any of Faces of Death real? What does the man who made it say?

"I'll never forget: All of a sudden on the news one night they're talking about Faces of Death!" says John Schwartz, who directed and wrote the movie and its sequels I through IV (there are now eight Faces of Death movies). The flick was intended as a Japanese-only release in 1979, but found its way to the United States, and the national news, a couple of years later.

"I almost fell out of my chair," says Schwartz in a phone interview. "Dan Rather on CBS was talking about these "incredibly horrible videos.' 'Cause everybody thought they were real!"

If anybody thinks Faces of Death is footage of actual deaths, it's because it says so on the video's box, right under the cheesy drawing of the hooded skull with the forked tongue and fangs. Schwartz and company did film real footage of slaughterhouses and autopsy rooms, but any other "real" deaths came from file footage.

"We traveled to all these different film libraries to see what we could find about death and disaster," says Schwartz. "I found this footage of this woman jumping off a building, and it was just incredible footage. But the part of the footage we didn't have was the aftermath. So we (filmed) inserts into the actual footage to match it."

Then how did Schwartz and company acquire the more bizarre footage? "I was the leader of the flesh-eating cult," Schwart admits. "I had scenes in each of these movies. . . . I'm the crazy, drugged-out killer. . . . I play this freaky rapist in the courtroom scene, and they show the rape on video, and it just so happens that the girl (in the rape scene) was this girl I was dating at the time."

You mean, the famous electric chair scene was fake? But the guy was foaming at the mouth and everything!

"We built a cell in a friend's loft, and we lined the guy's mouth with toothpaste," says Schwartz, laughing. "My research material for that: I happened to pick up a Hustler magazine and there was this great article about electrocution that really detailed how a person is executed. . . . And that's what I used as my basis."

Schwartz is listed in Faces of Death credits as "Alan Black." "My middle name is Alan, and schwarz means black in German."

He used the fake name to prevent bias at his other jobs, writing for TV shows such as Night Rider, Street Hawk and The Fall Guy as well as original movies for HBO and Showtime. But to date, the original Faces of Death has grossed over $30-million. It cost $450,000 to make. These days, Schwartz proudly includes Faces of Death on his resume when cashing in on the "reality" entertainment trend which he helped pioneer.

He's currently working for ABC's Totally Out of Control Videos series. "I created Totally Out of Control Love and Totally Out of Control Vacation . . . real stories of people who got married jumping off cliffs and underwater and, you know, weird stuff."

But once a year, at Halloween, Schwartz speaks at college campuses about his adventures creating Faces of Death.

"It can't be denied," he says. "It's my legacy at this point."

April 1, 2003

Viscera = guts/entrails.

Now I'm full of questions about the former Mabel's old character. Did they just pick "Viscera" because it sounded evil? Was there a deeper meaning? Was it supposed to lead to something that eventually was deemed too extreme? Someone get Vince Russo and Vince McMahon's email addresses for me.

Some I found:

Billy Gunn [email protected]

Debra [email protected]

Gangrel [email protected]

Gerald Brisco [email protected]

Howard Finkel [email protected]

Kevin Kelly [email protected]

Mick Foley [email protected]

Michael Cole [email protected]

Paul Bearer [email protected]

The Rock [email protected]

Shawn Michaels [email protected]