'Banned in 46 countries' – is Faces of Death the most shocking film ever?

Written by the director, John Schwartz.

wasn't most of it staged? i saw this when i was very young and don't remember it as especially shocking.

I saw it a long time ago. There are some graphic scenes but there's a lot of fakery. Like a fake execution where the guy who's being electrocuted is unceremoniously dumped in a chair, the switch is turned on, and he immediately starts shaking and foaming at the mouth. It's laughably fake.

Thanks for posting that article, OP. It was very interesting.

Apparently, the footage of the 1978 crash of PSA flight 182 in San Diego, with body parts strewn about on the street, was real.

The worst thing I've seen on a Faces of Death video was footage of the aftermath of the 1978 PSA-182 crash; very disturbing shots of body parts (I recall an attendant uniform-clad torso), and a sickening shot of someone who literally ended up as a splatter on the side of someone's home.

The nasty, bullying neighbor boys had all of the tapes and tried to “force” me and my little friend into watching it. This was mid-80s.

All I remember is a scene of an old man being yanked by the arm out of a small boat by an alligator. I covered my eyes before he got chewed up. Was that scene faked? It sure looked real to me.

Looking back, I sort of wish that I had seen it just to know what all the fuss was about. But then again, “why should I sully my beautiful mind”, etc.

Someone rented this for movie night at my all-girls boarding school. Although some of it seemed fake, I think some of it was real and the feeling of death stuck to us for days. I felt compelled to show what a badass I was by watching the whole thing, but I found it disturbing. Even if it was partly fake, it’s fucked up.

The full movie is on Youtube.

Was the scene of the man getting snatched by an alligator real or not ?

I haven’t thought about these films in years (I think it’s a series). They held a cachet in my high school, and watching them proved you were tough. This was in the late ‘80s. Obviously you had to seek out the tapes and finagle a way to obtain and watch them; now all of it and worse is available to anyone, anytime, online.

See for yourself what all the fuss is about.

Anyone remember a scene of older women jumping from a window? A fire broke out at a hair salon; they showed the bodies on the roof of the building next door.

That was in New Orleans in the 60’s or 70’s.

It's not shocking or scary.

Just kind of ugly and gross.

Didn't it show a woman getting hit by a train? That was shocking; in a second she was splattered in pieces.

Wasn’t there a scene where they bash a monkeys head with hammers and eat it’s brains?

Some real, most fake , staged or reenactments. There were several tapes IIRC, like Faces of Death I, II, III, IV, V etc.

So many gore sites these days — makes FoD seem quaint.

The monkey scene is referenced in the linked article

I'm pretty sure this is the favorite movie of DL's Serial Killer In Residence.

Most of it was fake. I mean, the ridiculous "acid is groovy, kill the pigs"-type cult sacrifice thing? Please. Faces of Death was like the only one of those movies where they tried to make it look like it had "artistic merit" instead of just gratuitous death scenes...I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse.

I haven't seen any of it, but the fact that it used footage of the carnage from PSA Flight182 haunts me a bit. That traumatic plunge from the sky and then to be robbed of any shred of dignity in death.

reminds me of that website consumption junction, whatever happened to that..

I saw it many years ago and it fucked with me for a long time. I remember: people eating live monkey brains, flight crash/body parts everywhere, people ran over by trucks and buses and people ran over by trains. Gruesome shit that stays with you forever.