Quartile rating: 4.5/10 · 1 rating
What question has plagued mankind more than the mystery—and terror—of death? This forbidden pursuit has driven Dr. Frances B. Gröss to the brink of madness, but in his obsession, he has amassed a uniquely comprehensive collection of films that depict life in its final, grueling moments. From the savagery of cold-blooded murder to the perverse realities of war, tragic accidents, and the everyday lives of those who collect, dissect, and bury the dead, this descent into morbidity lays bare a truth that all of us will one day face.
Faces of Death is a notorious shockumentary that strings together real and staged footage of death and gore under the framing device of a narrator-doctor. The 'plot' is essentially nonexistent — it's an episodic parade of death sequences with no narrative arc worth crediting, and the acting in the staged segments is notoriously poor. Cinematography is functional at best; much of the footage is deliberately raw or fake-looking, though some genuine archival material has documentary value. Novelty earns a moderate score because the film occupies a specific and infamous niche — it crystallized the 'mondo' shockumentary genre for American audiences and became a defining video nasty artifact, even if it draws heavily on the Italian mondo tradition before it. The ending, like the rest, simply stops rather than concludes anything meaningful.