Faces of Death, the cult faux documentary released in 1978, is being rebooted by Legendary Pictures with the goal of launching a new horror franchise.
Cam filmmakers Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber are set to write and direct, respectively, while Angry Films' Susan Montford and Don Murphy will produce.
The original movie followed a pathologist studying the most horrific ways to die, and presented what was purported to be actual footage of people and animals being brutally killed. Most of it was staged, of course (there were some real slaughterhouse and morgue shots), but it fooled a lot of people back in the day, and ended up being banned in several countries - though not 46 as the poster claimed.
It spawned several sequels, and is considered one of the very first "video nasties."
This new take on the concept "revolves around a female moderator of a YouTube-like website whose job is to weed out offensive and violent content and who herself is recovering from a serious trauma, who stumbles across a group that is re-creating the murders from the original film. But in the story primed for the digital age of online misinformation, the question is: Are the murders real or fake?"
Despite the premise and the grim legacy of the notorious original, Legendary reportedly "hopes to make something more in the psychological horror field than in the slasher mold."
What do you guys make of this news? Have you seen any of the Faces of Death films?
About The Author:
Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.