Faces of Death 3: The Final Assault (1985)

Want even more phony gator attacks, suicide jumpers, deadly shoot out’s and the like? Well, here you go friends. It’s “Faces of Death 3” time, hosted by the always eloquent and philosophical “Dr. Gross”, who’s actually more entertaining than half of the clips shown during the movie. Re-watching this series for probably the first time since I was in grade school, it’s sorta interesting to note how dated these films have become especially in light of today’s “reality television” craze. Nowadays a nine year old could watch this and easily see how staged/fake it all is. Now, don’t be a typical smart ass and say “man, that shit was fake even back then”, for while you may be right, there’s no denying these flicks packed a wallop upon their initial release in the early eighties. Even Dan Rather got into the act by condemning them on national television, no doubt giving the producers of these films a little help in the sales department.

“Faces 3” continues with the same approach as one and two, with various clips of supposed real snuff footage interspersed with narration by the legendary “Dr. Gross”. There’s a hilariously phony serial killer segment, a parachutist who lands in a gator pit (“shit…look what they done did to him!” proclaims a hillbilly witness), suicide jumpers, a segment on deaths on the autobahn…you get the idea. Notice the disclaimer reading at the end of the film, “some segments were recreations of actual events”. Makes sense since the director is the dude playing the rapist in the courtroom scene, and his victim was his at the time girlfriend! Or, how about the dude playing a cop in the several serial killer segments, with each segment taking place in an entirely different city! I guess he just got transferred a lot huh? Of course this shit is all fake but so what? These flicks still provide a cheesy, if somewhat sleaze filled sense of entertainment. Christ, it’s practically un-American for 12 year olds to have a sleep over and not watch these films, talking themselves to sleep while debating if a man’s eyeballs really bleed when he gets electrocuted. The only “real” footage in these films is the obligatory animal slaughterhouse footage; here we get a tour of rabbits and chickens lined up for slaughter. This is the really hard stuff to watch in these films, though the impact of it is gratefully reduced when in between the chicken killings we’re shown a wholesome family happily chowing down on a bucket of KFC! Now that’s good eating…