Wire report

Faces of Death review – rework of notorious video nasty turns horror voyeurism into moral panic fable

A retelling of the 1978 ‘video nasty’ follows an online content moderator faced with steadily more appalling footage but reverts to generic bloodletting Emerging amid the original 1970s home-rental boom, John Alan Schwartz’s 1978 film Faces of Death was an ultra-morbid extension of the so-called “ mondo ” genre. Mashing up gruesome footage – much of it faked, some of it legit enough to provoke ghoulish chatter – it achieved sleepover notoriety and then received a further publicity boost upon making the DPP’s “video nasty” list. What comes now, nearly half a century later, is less a reboot than postmodern rethink. Daniel Goldhaber, who broke through with 2022’s tense social-activism thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline , has patched some of the original’s images into a more conventional digital-age horror narrative that initially resembles an American equivalent of Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censo

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A retelling of the 1978 ‘video nasty’ follows an online content moderator faced with steadily more appalling footage but reverts to generic bloodletting Emerging amid the original 1970s home-rental boom, John Alan Schwartz’s 1978 film Faces of Death was an ultra-morbid extension of the so-called “ mondo ” genre. Mashing up gruesome footage – much of it faked, some of it legit enough to provoke ghoulish chatter – it achieved sleepover notoriety and then received a further publicity boost upon making the DPP’s “video nasty” list. What comes now, nearly half a century later, is less a reboot than postmodern rethink. Daniel Goldhaber, who broke through with 2022’s tense social-activism thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline , has patched some of the original’s images into a more conventional digital-age horror narrative that initially resembles an American equivalent of Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censo

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According to The Guardian’s source item, Faces of Death review – rework of notorious video nasty turns horror voyeurism into moral panic fable, A retelling of the 1978 ‘video nasty’ follows an online content moderator faced with steadily more appalling footage but reverts to generic bloodletting Emerging amid the original 1970s home-rental boom, John Alan Schwartz’s 1978 film Faces of Death was an ultra-morbid extension of the so-called “ mondo ” genre. Mashing up gruesome footage – much of it faked, some of it legit enough to provoke ghoulish chatter – it achieved sleepover notoriety and then received a further publicity boost upon making the DPP’s “video nasty” list. What comes now, nearly half a century later, is less a reboot than postmodern rethink. Daniel Goldhaber, who broke through with 2022’s tense social-activism thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline , has patched some of the original’s images into a more conventional digital-age horror narrative that initially resembles an American equivalent of Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censo

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The development sits in VINI’s Culture file for readers following arts, entertainment, fashion, film, music, celebrity, and the business of culture. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-09-04T06:00:01+00:00.

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Primary source: Faces of Death review – rework of notorious video nasty turns horror voyeurism into moral panic fable via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.

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