1978’s Faces of Death is a controversial cult horror, but its use of “real” footage makes the news that the mockumentary is being remade shocking.
The infamous cult ’70s “horror” mockumentary Faces of Death is set to get a remake from the creators of Cam, but why was the original movie so controversial and what does this mean for the remake? Released in 1978, Faces of Death was a seminal mockumentary that earned a place in horror history despite its amateurish production due to its shocking content. In fact, the film’s low-budget production and shady details are what laid the foundations of the rise, fall, and eventual current resurgence of the found footage genre. With the Faces of Death remake in the works, some horror fans are wondering what the original controversy was about.
Essentially plotless, Faces of Death is a pseudo-documentary in which a fictional (and unsubtly named) pathologist “Francis B Gross” presents “real-life” footage of human and animal deaths, fatal accidents, and gruesome rituals. The mockumentary is essentially a mondo movie, an exploitative documentary sub-genre that was something of a progenitor to the found footage craze, with what’s real and what’s fake being left to viewers’ imaginations. Popular during the ’60s and ’70s, mondo movies waned from relevance in the ’80s.
A massive hit during the VHS era, Faces of Death was a quintessential mondo movie alongside the earlier, less staged Mondo Cane and the more racially-charged Africa Addio. Every Mondo movie featured some real violence and some staged events, although Faces of Death notably featured more staged than real violence. Found footage and screen horror movies today are much the same. That said, according to David Kerekes and David Slater’s book “Killing for Culture,” the footage of a fatal cycling accident featured in Faces of Death is actually real and culled from an unused newsreel. Other sources claim that only the footage of a drowned man’s corpse on a Californian beach is authentic. Regardless, the broadly-held belief that the movie was created specifically to profit from publicly displaying actual dead animals and humans caused a scandal at the time, landing the movie on Britain’s infamous video nasties list. Today, the movie’s morally complicated cultural legacy may harm the prospects of the Faces of Death remake.
Is Faces Of Death Real?
Some parts of Faces of Death are real. Allan A. Apone, who did special effects and make-up for Faces of Death, says that 40% of it is fake, while other sources estimate that only 30% of the deaths are simulated. In one of the ’70s most clever applications of practical effects for gruesome violence, the crew used cauliflower and a trained monkey to fake a banquet wherein attendants supposedly ate a live monkey’s brain from its skull. Through creative editing, two playing pups were turned into what seemed like real footage of a vicious dogfight.
Much of what made the movie noteworthy was the impossibility, pre-internet, of debunking its claim to authenticity. At the time, many viewers were convinced that the mockumentary was a real snuff film, rather than a compilation of staged events and opportunistically acquired newsreel footage that television stations deemed too gruesome to air. By cleverly juxtaposing real and simulated deaths, the movie blurred the lines between what’s real and what’s not, laying the foundations for the rise of modern found footage horror movies.
Faces of Death Controversy and Legacy Explained
Faces of Death has a legacy of sequels and ripoffs, such as the soundalike Traces of Death series, which only further complicated the controversy surrounding the original movie. The ripoff series became infamous for featuring non-simulated onscreen deaths, like the unedited televised suicide of R. Budd Dwyer – a decision that was at best ethically questionable and at worst illegal. Also, there were nine sequels bearing the original name released throughout the ’80s and ’90s that contained more real footage of violence. Some exclusively featured real deaths.
Notably, in 1985, a school district had to pay the family of two students a total of $100,000 after mathematics teacher Bart Schwartz showed the original in class, traumatizing the students and resulting in Schwartz’s suspension. A year later, 14-year-old Rod Matthews bludgeons a classmate to death with a bat, claiming to be inspired by the movie. The problems with modern found-footage movies pale in comparison to the controversies surrounding Faces of Death‘s true story and morally questionable legacy.
Everything We Know About The Faces Of Death Remake
The upcoming Faces of Death remake will be helmed by Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber, who respectively wrote and directed the psychological horror film Cam. It’s currently unclear when the remake will be released, but according to the creators, the plot will follow a heroine who recently suffered a trauma working as a moderator for a YouTube-style site. Her job of flagging and removing potentially offensive content takes a dark turn when she encounters a group recreating the deaths featured in the original 1978 movie— but are the killings real or simulated?
The reboot will aim to be a clever, meta take on the material that will likely look more akin to the mainstream, web-based psychosocial horrors Unfriended: Dark Web or Megan Is Missing than an actual mondo movie. However, the remake’s association with a brand famous for claiming to profit off real-life death may prove problematic for development. Since the advent of the internet, the proliferation of shock sites makes the movie’s surrounding controversy seem tame in comparison, but a conventional mainstream remake of this distinctly countercultural mondo movie will likely struggle to recreate the original’s outsized cultural impact and may prove unable to escape the morally dubious shadow of its predecessor.
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