Faces of Death - 1978

 I was going to go on some tirade about this genre, went to Wikipedia, and apparently these are still being made, even with a "re-imagining" coming out this year.  Also known as The Original Faces of Death.

What this was was nearly inconceivable at the time.  This is almost the pure definition of exploitation.  Real footage of actual dead people, real dead bodies, purportedly "real" deaths live on screen, animal abuse and cruelty, and so on.  On screen, at your theater.  Banned from a reported 46 countries, do they get crazier than this?

We start with a super gruesome surgery scene, and you have to admit, like this is a fucking challenge.  The insanity of the surgery scenes in these movies are really something to me as a take away 25 films into this.  That's my count?  I hadn't done inventory in a while so that's kinda nice, but yo, the surgery scenes are legit disturbing.  In my youth I would have watched with the type of morbid curiosity people speak of when they say in stupefied awe "it's like watching a car crash".  I can genuinely say, partially from experience, not interested.  I don't watch, I look away.  And in the case of this movie, I don't watch, I look away.

Animal cruelty and sadistic acts don't bother me, tribal exploitation doesn't bother me, as well as supposed "eating brains" and other exploitative material.  But real footage of the aftermath of a car accident or a very recent plane crash, one cannot help but to grimace a little bit and take in a breath.  Maybe wince or look away, even. Which is to say, in my classic film review way, if its effective nearly 50 years after it's release, it works....just like, does that mean its good?

I watched the movie "Into The Wild" recently after just recently asking my girlfriend "if a movie is affecting emotionally does that mean it is a good movie?"  Into The Wild has extremely self indulgent, irrelevant moments and it is just not a very good movie about a really compelling and emotionally engaging subject.  This movie is sort of the same.  Its almost impossible to not be effected by something like this, but does that mean its good?  No, and that's the bizarre thing about art.  

I do get what this is trying to do.  It's trying to blend fact with fiction, for both shock value but also a provocateur of thought.  It'll have a detached narrator witnessing something barbaric and it'll say "Despite being the most intelligent creature, mankind is also the most inconsistent" and it's kinda like, you're not wrong, I get that.  It is interesting the fragile and tenuous link between life and death, and we are pretty inconsistent with whether we value or don't value existence.  Suicide, death sentences, cult rituals, many other examples of things in every day life in which life is either near over-valued or thrown away in casual disregard.  We cannot necessarily say right or wrong...we are just to take note, and move on.

What else would a documentary about death look like?  Well, it might not be trying to provoke, one might suggest.  But I don't say that in an argument that this is "wrong" morally or otherwise.

A strong argument "For Video Nasty"

I give this a 10/10 on the Nasty Meter.  

I guess I'll give it a 2.5?  I have absolutely no idea what to rate this.