Rating: NR | Runtime: 105 minutes
Release Date: November 10th, 1978 (USA)
Studio: Aquarius Releasing
Director(s): John Alan Schwartz (as Conan Le Cilaire)
Writer(s): John Alan Schwartz (as Alan Black)

Death has no time schedule.

After decades of carrying the notion that Faces of Death was a compilation of snuff films (real or not) completely devoid of any connective tissue beyond each vignette’s gruesome loss of life, I learned something from finally watching it for myself:

No one at my middle school ever saw it either.

Who knew it would just be a faux documentary compiled of real archival crime/accident scene footage, culturally specific animal slaughter, and the goofiest fictionalized scenes you can imagine full of poor acting, sloppy edits to “mask” the artifice, and writer/director John Alan Schwartz inserting himself into a blood-smeared orgy as a cult leader? Capping things with that seance also makes me wonder if anyone ever saw the film considering how certain so many were about everything being authentic.

The scariest moment was eventually returning to Michael Carr’s Dr. Francis B. Gröss only to discover he put those tiny glasses back onto his face just as tilted and borderline unusable as they were before he took them off.

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A scene from FACES OF DEATH.