Real or fake?

[Fiyero]

The Faces of Death films.

[DU Ute]

Boooooo!!!!!!!!

Very misleading!

[Art Vandelay]

The Faces of Death films.

I have been trying for 30 years to unsee what I saw over at Andy Marlette's hose on Betamax. Thanks for restarting the nightmares Fiye. I don't really need to watch a monkey die and have its brain served for dinner on BlueRay.

[scottie]

About 10 years ago I rented a Faces of Death video for the first time. I couldn't find it at either Blockbuster or Hollywood Video so had to go to a mom and pop type place then had to go behind the red curtain into the adult section to get it. I had to cover my eyes when we started watching it, I couldn't even watch it for 2 seconds. Based on the reaction of my wife and her brother I'd say the deaths were real.

[falafel]

How can this be a Blu-ray offering? How can they enhance 30 year old video to meet people's expectations of how a Blu-ray video should look? I think they should just scrap it all and find some really hi-def death videos for the 30th anniversary.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I have been trying for 30 years to unsee what I saw over at Andy Marlette's hose on Betamax. Thanks for restarting the nightmares Fiye. I don't really need to watch a monkey die and have its brain served for dinner on BlueRay.

My friend's dad was the head of the homicide in the police department where I grew up. In the early 90s there was, on average, over 100 murders a year that the department handled. He was seemingly immune from all the crap he saw to the point where he didn't have an issue showing us photographs from the crime scene. I was told he would willingly show these photos to anyone that asked. My curiosity peaked at some point during my junior year in high school, so I asked him if I could see a few.

Holy. Hell.

These were images that you just can't extract from your brain. Prostitute kills a guy and leaves his corpse at the side of a bed. She lives in a second story apartment. The corpse starts rotting to the point where some foul fluid coming off the decomposing corpse seeps through the floor and through the ceiling belonging to the apartment of the first floor. The people that live on the first floor call the cops. I saw the pictures and it was horrific. The suicide pictures were possibly worse.

Meanwhile, my friend's dad would lightly chuckle when he presented the pictures. "Hey, check out this one..." This guy was also my bishop (and a very good one at at that). After his calling as a bishop he was called to do the special temple prep meeting you get right before you go into the temple.

[LiveCoug]

Fake... The director has even said as much.

[SoCalCoug]

Fake... The director has even said as much.

Some are faked. Some were not.

[falafel]

Some are faked. Some were not.

From the writer/director:

http://www.sptimes.com/News/102600/Weekend/Lifting_the_mask_from.shtml

Is any of Faces of Death real? What does the man who made it say?

"I'll never forget: All of a sudden on the news one night they're talking about Faces of Death!" says John Schwartz, who directed and wrote the movie and its sequels I through IV (there are now eight Faces of Death movies). The flick was intended as a Japanese-only release in 1979, but found its way to the United States, and the national news, a couple of years later.

"I almost fell out of my chair," says Schwartz in a phone interview. "Dan Rather on CBS was talking about these "incredibly horrible videos.' 'Cause everybody thought they were real!"

If anybody thinks Faces of Death is footage of actual deaths, it's because it says so on the video's box, right under the cheesy drawing of the hooded skull with the forked tongue and fangs. Schwartz and company did film real footage of slaughterhouses and autopsy rooms, but any other "real" deaths came from file footage.

"We traveled to all these different film libraries to see what we could find about death and disaster," says Schwartz. "I found this footage of this woman jumping off a building, and it was just incredible footage. But the part of the footage we didn't have was the aftermath. So we (filmed) inserts into the actual footage to match it."

Then how did Schwartz and company acquire the more bizarre footage? "I was the leader of the flesh-eating cult," Schwart admits. "I had scenes in each of these movies. . . . I'm the crazy, drugged-out killer. . . . I play this freaky rapist in the courtroom scene, and they show the rape on video, and it just so happens that the girl (in the rape scene) was this girl I was dating at the time."

You mean, the famous electric chair scene was fake? But the guy was foaming at the mouth and everything!

"We built a cell in a friend's loft, and we lined the guy's mouth with toothpaste," says Schwartz, laughing. "My research material for that: I happened to pick up a Hustler magazine and there was this great article about electrocution that really detailed how a person is executed. . . . And that's what I used as my basis."

[SoCalCoug]

From the writer/director:

http://www.sptimes.com/News/102600/W...ask_from.shtml

I didn't say how much was real.

For instance, the skydiver was probably real. There was a real plane crash in there.

And even if the woman jumping from the bridge had the aftermath faked, the actual jump may have been real.

I think there was also a beheading that had one real shot (from far away) with a bunch of staged close-ups.

[falafel]

I didn't say how much was real.

For instance, the skydiver was probably real. There was a real plane crash in there.

And even if the woman jumping from the bridge had the aftermath faked, the actual jump may have been real.

I think there was also a beheading that had one real shot (from far away) with a bunch of staged close-ups.

I agree. But most of it was fake.

[SoCalCoug]

I agree. But most of it was fake.

Yes, but disturbing.