Review of Faces of Death (1978) by Chris D — 12 May 2008

First of all, yes, some of these scenes are REAL, and yes some are obviously FAKE. But of the real scenes of death/ tribes hunting and killing in Africa/ autopsies/ cryogenic freezing are mostly made to look like a documentary. The fake ... er, excuse me, 'reenacted' scenes are less convincing: as said here in earlier reviews, complete with multiple camera angles and editing etc. are not necessary, detract from the overall effect, and hurt this movie's credibility.

The scene involving an alligator attack featuring an interviewer from "channel 9" is obviously fake: No other identification is given as far as, let's say, "Channel 9 News in Miami" or a station id, something like "WXXX Channel 9 News". It doesn't display the interviewer's name or the names of the people he's interviewing, and they keep editing away from the actual gator attack.

The portions of the movie dealing with real slaughterhouses, cryogenic freezing and rioting, again, are fairly graphic, but again they're done in a documentary type of way, not trying to be a splatter movie like some of this movie's ripoffs ("Traces of Death" immediately comes to mind).

This isn't for those with a weak stomach, but watch it in the same frame of mind you would watch "National Geographic" on safari in Africa or something like that and it doesn't seem as terrible as some have said. (Note to the producers: in one scene the narrator refers to 'the country of Africa' - Africa is not a country it's a continent).