Surprisingly incoherent and boring

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Faces of Death II (1981) * 1/2 (out of 4)FACES OF DEATH became a huge phenomenon when it was originally released so it was only time that a sequel would follow, which would of course turn into more sequels and countless rip-offs from around the world. FACES OF DEATH II pretty much is the same film as the first one, although I think an argument could be made that this here is much darker in terms of its tone.I say that because the first film featured a lot of obvious fake or staged footage that wasn't fooling anyone. This one here contains some obvious fake footage like an incredibly stupid robbery sequence but there's a lot of real stuff here. Perhaps the goriest footage comes from scenes of dolphins being captured and slaughtered. Animal lovers will certainly want to skip a very long sequence where we see several creatures killed. This also contains real footage of various stunts gone wrong including a man who tried to jump over a one mile river. Another memorable sequence deals with boxer Johnny Owens who was killed in the ring.Is FACES OF DEATH II a good movie? Certainly not. Whereas the first film was somewhat original this one here is basically just an excuse to try and make more money. The scenes are poorly edited together and there's no question that the majority of them just aren't anything overly special. In fact, the entire series would be viewed as many people as being disgusting and I'm sure younger people would watch this and not understand what the big deal was back in the day.Even when I viewed these films as a teenager I knew they were mostly garbage but those who grew up in the 80s knew that it was something important to get to rent these and then watch them with your friends just to see how much you could take. It was a badge of honor if you could make it through the entire film and if one of your buddies didn't it meant he was being made fun of throughout the rest of the night.FACES OF DEATH II does feature an incredibly creepy music score over the credits though. Your entertainment level is certainly going to depend on what you're looking for.

After the huge success of the first Faces of Death film in 1978, John Alan Schwartz wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to capitalise on audience's unquenchable thirst for death and returned to the 'director's' chair in 1981 to make another collection of grisly events. Michael Carr returns once again as our host Dr. Francis B. Gross, this time sporting a shirt and jeans combination, rather than his doctor's jacket (he was fooling nobody). We have more animal slaughter, decomposing bodies, shoot-outs and executions, as well as a large focus on stunt accidents, a fatal boxing match, animal experimentation, and the aftermath of an avalanche.While the first entry was mainly a collection of badly-filmed and thoroughly unconvincing staged scenes, the sequel has much more real footage, and only the police shoot-out scene, where director Schwartz plays one of the criminals and proves himself to be as useless at acting as he is at directing, is seemingly faked. While the staged scenes was the main factor I criticised from the first film, the distinct lack of them takes the (should I say it?) charm out of the film. The clips are simply thrown in together, lacking the first's narrative structure, taking whatever 'meaning' the FOD series tries to convince us it has and coming across as simply low-rent exploitation.One of the longest scenes focuses on the boxing match between Welsh Bantamweight boxer Johnny Owen being knocked into a coma by Mexican champion Lupe Pintor. Gross' narration fails to really acknowledge Owen as anything other than a face of death, but knowing that Owen's statue stands in Merthyr Tydfil not far from where I live where he is fondly remembered (the statue was unveiled by Pintor), it hammers home how bad taste this film really is. So, certainly not as 'good' (I've never used so many inverted commas) as the first, which at least provided some unintentional laughs, but this series will still remain a curiosity to me, and will no doubt reluctantly seek out the rest of the series in time.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

"Faces of Death 2" is more serious than its predecessor.It has only one fake scene,the rest of the footage is real.The extensive padding includes a nearly ten-minute segment on the death(in the ring)of boxer Johnny Owens,a horrifying Japanese mass dolphin slaughter,a monkey on drugs etc.Some of the worst scenes in this film are actually real footage of corpses in varying degrees of decomposition.I can't recommend this title to anyone but exploitation cinema buffs.Check this stuff out,if you can stomach it.

Faces of Death, one of the most infamous movie series in existence, is nothing less than disturbing. This, the second movie in the series provides the viewer with heart stopping visuals, totally sick ideas, and best- exploitation of DEATH. What else could be scarier than this? Nothing. This is the type of movie that could make you sick to your stomach and even make you scared to go outside. This is a must see for horror fans. The movie DOES what horror movies try to do: SCARE YOU. It really makes you think. Could this be YOUR last day???