Faces of Death II
Brief scenes of death related material: mortuaries, accidents and police work are filmed by TV crews and home video cameras. Some of it is most likely fake, some not as much.
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- Cast:
- Michael Carr , John Hinckley Jr.
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Reviews
Thanks for the memories!
Perfect cast and a good story
People are voting emotionally.
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Faces of Death 2 (1981) C-85 min. D: John Alan Schwartz. Hosted by Michael Carr. Having not seen the original FACES OF DEATH or any of the sequels, it allowed me to keep an open mind when viewing this. Carr plays Dr. Francis B. Gross, who presents in documentary style the various aspects of death, trying to come across as informative and scientific but we as the viewers all know it's just an excuse to show grisly images & footage of monkeys on drugs, dolphin slaughters, public executions, deadly stunts, leprosy, autopsies, funerals, corpses, etc. Cheesy, yet adequately disturbing lacks in the technical aspects (most footage is horrible quality and the late 70s-early 80s production values border on pathetically lame) but this kind of film just aims to shock and repel. The entire FACES OF DEATH series has a big cult following, like any film of this nature. All in all, adequate for what it intends to do. RATING: 5 out of 10.
Comments based on the US version, which is missing the footage of the attempted assassination of Reagan. . Not as good as the first one, but still worthwhile. The first movie was a mock documentary about death and the ways that various different cultures around the world and throughout time have dealt with, and prepared for, death. This one is more focused on "death defiance": Evil Kenevil type of stunt men, sports-related injuries and deaths, bomb defusers, etc. Some of the footage is good, and some of it is just overlong. The boxer who died as a result of the brain injury he sustained in a fight was good, but needed to be edited down to 2 or 3 minutes, not the nearly 10 minute scene that it is. That's really the biggest problem with this movie: it's overlong, and it puts its two longest, least interesting scenes at the very end: a ten minute scene about whale poachers, and another lengthy scene involving a public execution in the Ivory Coast (Cote D'Ivoire), which drags on for nearly the last 15 minutes of the movie, even longer than that in the European version. That scene never climaxes, it just changes to slow motion, drags on during the end credits, and then that's it- the film ends. Poor attempts at camp humour are detrimental also, such as puzzling intro footage of Dr. Gross playing with a bunny rabbit and searching for Easter eggs, leading to slaughterhouse footage, while people eating chicken at the dinner table concludes the segment.
Okay...this sequel does have more of the same graphic violence and gore as the first one...and all but 1 scene is real, not faked, but still as a connoisseur of this type of thing, I didn't "enjoy" this one as much, and I use the term enjoy loosely. These things are not enjoyable viewing, but more of curiosity pieces, and as that I found the first one to be a lot better, even if several of the scenes in it were faked. Still, there is animal slaughter, a shootout, an execution by firing squad, some stunts gone awry, and a boxing match that ends in tradgedy, and alas, the filmmakers cashed in even more, as this is not the last entry in the "popular" series. "Fans" of gore and violence will still have plenty to look at in this one and marvel in the brutality.
I was relatively kind in my review of the first "Faces of Death" movie. Sure, it was utter trash, but I could see at least a reason for its exsistence: to scare the hell out of people. The sequel's only goal is to make more money off the original's infamous reputation. What kind of inspiration is that? The idea of a film comprised of footage of real people and animals getting killed in front of the camera is sick and disturbing. The first time around, there was merit, the idea of making more, just for the sake of making more is totally wrong. (F) Not Rated, but equivalent to an NC-17 for continual graphic carnage and gore from man and beast.