- Directed by: Conan LeClaire
- Written by: Alan Black
- Stars: Michael Carr, Samuel Berkowitz, Mary Ellen Brighton
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpVAbT3tT4
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
There isn’t a story to spoil. It’s really just a collection of death and violence, some real and some staged, involving both animals and humans, put together as a sort of documentary exploring the many Faces Of Death, narrated by actor Michael Carr proclaiming himself to be Dr. Francis B. Gröss. There’s a lot of real graphic content, and even the staged stuff is pretty realistic, so it’s not for the squeamish. It’s an interesting piece of work, a little on the long side.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on grainy footage of an open-heart surgery. We watch the heart beating in the opened-up chest and then stop (it looks more like a freeze-frame than the heart actually stopping). We see many photos of shrivelled-up dead people and an autopsy as the credits roll.
The doctor comes out and looks into the next patient. He tells us about medical failures, which are common. He’s Dr. Francis Gross, a pathologist, and he’s compiled a whole library of the faces of death. He tells us about a recurring dream he used to have about a woman, a priest, and a funeral.
He talks about a cemetery in Mexico with a lot of mummified corpses. He also talks about Matadors, bullfighting, and pitbulls in Mexico. He shows us a “lost tribe” in the Amazon jungle that uses blow-gun darts to kill monkeys for food. Not only that, but these guys are head hunters! We then cut to watch some farm animals being slaughtered.
We then cut to a middle-eastern restaurant that serves monkey. They bring a live monkey out to the table and beat it to death with little hammers. Then they cut open the skull and eat its raw, warm brains.
We then shift to poachers and other animal slaughtering. This leads us to a very fake-looking alligator attacking a policeman who was trying to catch him.
Political assassinations are up next. A hired assassin tells us about his work.
At the L.A. Morgue, we talk to the (real) coroner and see how the bodies are treated and stored.
Executions are the next fun topic as we focus on a murderer’s execution by electric chair. We see him led in, strapped to the chair, and get all wired up. It’s pretty nasty (and one of the fake ones). There’s also a beheading by sword in the middle-east.
A flesh-eating cult in California is up next, and they’re weird in a 70s kind of way. This leads us to snake-handler churches in Kentucky.
Surprisingly, cryonics comes up next, with a man who was frozen after he died. This one was real.
Drownings are up next, with a real body caught on film. Spelunkers, hikers, natural disasters, pollution, burning, war, the Holocaust, plagues, poverty, cancer, bad parachutes, train wrecks, car accidents, plane crashes, and more are all addressed.
The narrator then goes into the idea of life after death. What about ghosts and the supernatural? We watch a seance.
Dr. Gross returns to the screen and wraps things up.
Brian’s Commentary
Back when video stores were a new thing, this was one of the first tapes I rented, and I assumed it was all real. It wasn’t. More than sixty percent of the deaths are real, but many are still fake. It’s all done very seriously, in the usual documentary style of the 70s.
It’s a little hard to tell with some shots whether they’re real or fake, so it is very effective. There’s a lot of gore and blood here. This was crazy in the 70s, but it’s pretty mild by modern standards. Or maybe I just read too much on Reddit.
It’s overlong, and I was ready for it to be over a half hour before the end.
Kevin’s Commentary
Adolf Hitler is listed in the credits, and today I learned he has 43 credits in IMDB as “Self” plus one upcoming at the time of this writing.
It’s a mix of real death and realistic staged stuff – violence, surgery, and gore. Trivia says it is about 60% real. The director openly admitted to everything after the movie was made. There’s a well put together Wikipedia page that tells about how it was made and information about what’s real and what’s not.
I don’t know if I’d define it as entertaining but it is at least interesting. Though like Brian said, it does start to feel long.
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