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OVERALL
BEASTS
BREASTS
Aka: The Original Faces of
Death (USA) (video box title)
Death (USA) (video box title)
Director: John Alan Schwartz
Writer: John Alan Schwartz
Cast---
Michael Carr ... Dr. Francis B. Gröss
Samuel Berkowitz ... Himself; Cryogenics
patient
Mary Ellen Brighton ... Herself; suicide victim
shown jumping out of a window
Thomas Noguchi ... Himself
Runtime:105 min
Writer: John Alan Schwartz
Cast---
Michael Carr ... Dr. Francis B. Gröss
Samuel Berkowitz ... Himself; Cryogenics
patient
Mary Ellen Brighton ... Herself; suicide victim
shown jumping out of a window
Thomas Noguchi ... Himself
Runtime:105 min
FACES OF DEATH (1978)
I hold in my hands the extremely controversial (blu-ray, 30th Anniversary edition of) “FACES OF
DEATH” documentary film which appeared in the late seventies. In this report I have yet to see the
director’s (Conan LeCilaire) feature length commentary or any of the other special features because the
film is sickening enough. When I was in my elementary school days and VHS was king “FACES OF
DEATH” was the ultimate scandalous treasure to young curious minds. I remember it spawning several
sequels (up to 6 or more)and imitations like “TRACES OF DEATH” and “THE MANY FACES OF DEATH”.
It starts out with an array of coroner scenes where they open up the bodies and some narration about
how death awaits us all. The narrator is a coroner who’s been fascinated by death and want’s to make a
documentary film about his feelings on the subject and expose his extensive knowledge of death. First
he shows us some of his best material. The infamous monkey meal scene is shown intact and it’s real
as far as I know. The varied work on decomposing corpses in the med school is pure disgust and horror.
I don’t want to see the “real” shit here folks, let’s keep it on the down-low. The truth of gore really brings
us to our knees and we puke out our cheap preconceptions. But we don’t want to go that far down. Let
me state that I believe half the film is authentic but it al feels spooky to me.
In this second act it gets more boring, except for the electrocution scene and a couple of others.
There is more narration and boring bullshit. The soundtrack to this film is like hippie shit. It dosen’t
match the onscreen deaths. Here we are introduced to suicide, violent criminal behavior and stunts and
mishaps gone deadly wrong. The narrator now speaks about responsibility with our lives and how one
may avoid unnecessary risks. The boring parts come now. He talks about the holocaust, the
concentration camps and war in general and all it’s atrocities. The pace slows down, we move on to
cruel animal killings, slaughterhouses and watching chickens dance with their heads off.
Now we move onto the afterlife. What follows when our bodies are ravaged by death? Does our
eternal soul move on ? We’d certainly like to believe so. Without delving into religion he sets up
conversation with a man who has had a bad run of luck. This guy lost his daughter to cancer, or was it a
hit and run? Then his wife committed suicide a month after. He agrees to have paranormal specialists
check out his house. After a while they find proof that his family is still roaming about the place. Now they
bring in a medium. I can’t believe a serious documentary would go this route. Anyway, the medium does
her mumbo jumbo, spews out a few incoherent gibberish and we are meant to believe that the after life
is waiting for us.
I cannot overstate how disgusting this film makes me feel. I would never watch this film again on my
own but I would recommend it to others so they could see for themselves how cheap, and debasing this
film is. It manages to scare, spook and unravel through all these years. It is only a film but right now it’s
the scariest shit I own!
- Jorge Antonio Lopez
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