Mondo madness

Death Scenes
by Christer Persson


Nick Bouga's hard-hitting series about the different faces of death are not like anything else in this subgenre to documentaries. Forget that foul taste you get in your mouth after seeing the likes of Faces of Death, Traces of Death, Africa Addio or Sweet and Savage. I know that these kind of films are not for anyone, but they don't come better, or worse, than this. At the end of this millenium, these films kind of summon up the evil of mankind under the twentieth century, thanks to the invention of the camera. Since the actions and pictures depictured in these films usually don't get any coverage on national TV, this is also the source to look at if you are interested in collecting violent actions caught on tape. When you're older and think back on your life, these films can be a cruel reminder that not all things where better in the past.

In Death Scenes part one we're introduced to the horrors by nonetheless but the late Anton Szandor La Vey, former headcheese of thee Church of Satan in San Francisco, who before he became the face of evil in America, supposedly worked as a crime photographer. And that's what part one is all about. It contains the lifework of some crimephotografers in Los Angeles, who between the 1920's to 1940's captured the lifeless bodies of people who had committed suicide, been murdered, been involved in freak-accidents or just died in some strange way. Thankfully, in my opinion anyway, all of the photos are in black and white. The face of death we're used to see i.e. the death in motion pictures can never, not even in the graphical splattergenre, live up to the grotesque face of real dead people. And thanks to the pictures being in b/w they almost look like twisted paintings from Francis Bacon or Salvador Dali. We're exposed to people that have put sticks of dynamite in their mouth and blown their cap off, one guy has neatly shot half of his head off with a shotgun, people sliced and diced in countless ways, babies mutilated beyond recognition and so forth. After one and a half hour you feel kind of empty inside, and the hope for mankind is definately nowhere in sight. But in some strange way director Bougas gets away with it all without being a cynical son-of-a-bitch. That is if we speak about part one. In the two 'sequels' that followed things get even worse and even though Bougas tried to have the same approach to the subject matter, it sometimes gets a bit too cynical and exploitive.

Part two and three of Death Scenes are now moving pictures, and this time there is no way to get the same distance to the pictures that was given in the first part. War atrocities are well dokumented. Here is one point with this kind of films, which in some way can excuse their existence in the history of motion pictures. If the director can create a context to show these horrible crimes towards other human beings, they could be used to educate young people of what has happened thoughout history, which is the only way to really control what will happen in the future. Like the way Drivers Ed movies was showing young American drivers that speed really kills. In my opinion, Nick Bougas does it better than everyone else in this dirty business, whatever that means, but as mentioned earlier some of the foul taste produced by other death or mondo pictures are floating up to the surface in the two sequels. So part two and three shows the horrors of the nazicamps, massacres and freak accidents, racial riots in America in the early sixties, rare photographs of the Tate murder victims committed by the Charles Manson gang, a man are being brutally stoned in Africa ( I hate this sequence. A kid is witness to the horror and the idiot holding the kid is laughing while the kid is terrified and crying like, well, a kid), the infamous suicide of R.Budd Dwyer and the tragic death of Vic Morrow and the two kids on the set of Twilight Zone - the Movie. All sickening and real. And if that was not enough, included for our viewing pleasure are a full length Drivers Ed film, Signal 30, as well as an autopsy.

One accuring theme that returns in all three pictures are gangsters, a subject that seems to be Nick Bougas favorite one. For American TV he did a series of programs called Murders, Mobsters & Madmen focusing on gangsters. These kind of films have been produced for quite a while now, and with the Internet growing bigger and bigger each day and sites like Rotten.com and Russian Necro Related Pages and its likes, the graphical death of other people will continue to shock, thrill and to some sick fucks, amuse for many years ahead. But if you're curious about this genre, forget Faces of Death and its likes and get the Death Scenes installement instead, cause even if the genre utilise the same footage in many ways, Death Scenes are for real, no fake footage or re-enactments has been used. To conclude this review I want to present to you the opening text for Signal 30. It pinpoints the essence of Death Scenes part 1-3:

»This is not a Hollywood production as can readily be seen. The quality is below their standards. However, most of these scenes were taken under adverse conditions, nothing has been staged. These are actual scenes taken immediately after the accidents occured. Also unlike Hollywood our actors are paid nothing. Most of the actors in these films are bad actors and recieved top billing only on a tombstone. They paid a terrific price to be in these movies, they paid with their lives.