Back in the 1960s, Italian duo Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacoppeti made their infamous Mondo cane (1963) and virtually invented the ‘shockumentary’, that demented ‘upmarket’ predecessor of the entirely mythical snuff movie. Purporting to feature genuine footage of actual death, carnage and mayhem (most of them were actually faked), the unofficial Mondo series proliferated at the end of the decade. In quick succession came such oddities as Mondo nudo (1963), Mondo balordo (1964), Mondo Bizarro (1966), Mondo Rocco (1969) and a million other Mondos too dull to mention. Reveling in all too obviously faked orgies of kinky sex, bizarre religious rites and intermittent bouts of torture and animal mutilation, the Mondos and their imitators proved surprisingly popular, their successes bolstered by salacious and usually quite misleading ad campaigns.
By the end of the 1960s, Mondo mania was all but over, the public’s appetite for outrageous sensationalism suitably jaded by product overkill. During the 70s there were but a handful of Mondos on release, none of them with the footage to match the raw shock value of Mondo cane (pretty tame really by today’s standards but a real eye opener at the time) or its immediate contemporaries and sequels; Mondo Magic (1975), Mondo candido (1975), Catastrophe (1977), Days of Fury (1978) and Brutes and Savages (1982) were just sad, pale imitations. The days of the ‘shockumentary’ seemed numbered.
But then, from the States, came “Conan Le Cilaire”, actually writer/director John Alan Schwartz, though to label him a “director” is to do that profession a grave disservice. He’s less a director as such, more a jumped up editor with pretensions. He’s clearly a big Mondo fan, however – either that or he just recognised the profitable potential of the form. Whatever its source, he found suitable inspiration to try starting the whole Mondo thing all over again. And with the much banned Faces of Death he came damn close to succeeding.
Introduced by some joker named “Francis B. Gross” who spends his on-screen time lurking behind a pair of impenetrable spectacles, Faces of Death rapidly assumes the ‘style’ and allure of a guided tour around an abattoir. Gross, who turned out to be actor Michael Carr (best known, if at all, for his string of supporting turns on various TV westerns and a role in Flying Disc Man from Mars (1950)) is meant to be a pathologist which is at least quite fitting. As host, he guides us around a grainy collection of allegedly real footage of an autopsy; a prisoner’s execution in the electric chair; dead bodies lying about in various states of decomposition (strangely, we’re allowed to see their internal organs being bloodily removed, but all shots of genitalia are ‘fogged’ out) and numerous other tasteless titbits. Inevitably, the worst is saved for the footage of apparently real animal cruelty – Umbert Lenzi would probably approve. The graphic koshering of a cow and the beheading of a chicken would have even the most ardent of carnivores rushing to the nearest vegetarian health food store; seals are shown being battered to death on the ice floes; and a monkey has its brains bashed out in an Eastern restaurant to allow horrified tourists to sample the local cuisine. If the previous paragraph seems little more than a series of atrocities loosely strung together, then my only excuse is that the film itself is like that, a parade of cruelty loosely held together by Gross’ pretentious monologue. It’s all very much like the audio-visual analogue of the British tabloid Sunday Sport newspaper and its American inspirations, the ones that seem to specialise in ‘Midget Nun Raped by Communist Bigfoot from Outer Space!” type exposes.
But how much of this is for real and how much of it is just reel? Certainly some of the animal torture seems authentic, though close examination of the monkey scene reveals that the actual blows are never seen and the moment of the animal’s death occurs off camera. Some of the footage, most noticeably the ‘crocodile-eats-TV-newshound’, the attempted assassination, the corpse molesting Satanists and a bunch of boring snake worshippers are very clearly fake, however. So what happened? Did “Le Cilaire” run out of stock footage? Or is even the real thing sometimes not enough, so the proceedings have to be spiced up with naff gore effects and a motley crew of eccentrics?
Amidst all this carnage and chaos strides the unlikely figure of the good (?) Doctor Gross, dealing out pretentious platitudes, whinging about “the ultimate end” (how many other kinds are there?) and bemoaning the fact that “We have developed a world that refuses to recognise our own destiny.” No, I haven’t got a clue what he’s on about either. If some of this footage wasn’t so repulsive, this could have been a camp classic. But it isn’t. It was popular enough, particularly in Japan it seems, to warrant a whole string of sequels and lookalikes.
The EOFFTV Review 