It's been decades since “Faces of Death” sparked panic among parents of teenagers marketing the 1978 VHS pseudo-snuff. The “video nasties” spawned a series of sequels, spin-offs and now a remake starring Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery that hit theaters this month.
But back in the 1980s, the original film caused a stir in Southern California schools.
Days before school ended during the summer of 1985, Escondido High School math teacher Bart Schwartz, then 28, used two free hours during finals week to show a movie with his class. Schwartz wanted to show the film because it was “interesting.”
According to the Times' coverage of the incident and the subsequent lawsuit, scenes shown in the classroom included autopsies, decomposing corpses, and live animals being slaughtered, mutilated, and tortured. The original “Faces of Death” also includes scenes of a man being electrocuted, a beheading, and an orgy during which a man is disemboweled by a carnivorous cult.
Although today's audiences may be more desensitized to such gruesome scenes thanks to the hyper-realistic special effects of modern horror films and the common spread of graphic clips online, audiences in the 1980s are said to have been traumatized and shocked. Not only was the film considered macabre, but it was also widely believed to be composed entirely of real footage.
“The ultimate taboo”, “100% real” and “banned in 46 countries!” were taglines from the original film. It was not until decades after the film's release that director John Alan Schwartz publicly confirmed that, while some footage was real and taken from news archives and autopsies, much of the film was staged and the documentary's host pathologist, Dr. Gröss, was an actor.
“Every new generation is discovering it,” Schwartz told New York Public Radio in 2012. “And as curious as things may seem now, there are still segments that people really believe are real that aren't.”
By comparison, the 2026 remake is clear about its fictional plot, but also includes real clips of deaths that were “carefully cut,” according to director Daniel Goldhaber.
Going back to 1985, Escondido High's Schwartz, who had previously been named “teacher of the year,” allegedly did not allow students to leave the classroom while the film was showing. One student, Diane Feese, then 16, said the teacher fast-forwarded the dialogue and forced the students to watch the film's most gruesome scenes. She covered her eyes, according to reports at the time, but was still subjected to the comments of other students and the audio of the deaths represented on the screen.
That fall, when the school was back in session, Feese sued the teacher and the school's principal for $3 million. Schwartz was suspended with pay for 30 days and then an additional 15 days without pay.
In 1986, another student in Schwartz's math class, Sherry Forget, did the same and took the math teacher to court for being subjected to the film. In 1987, the lawsuits were settled, with Feese receiving $57,500 and Forget, who asked for $1 million, getting $42,500.
Less than a decade later, a Los Angeles high school teacher was also sued by his students for showing “Faces of Death.”
Roger Haycock, a social studies teacher at Verdugo Hills High School, showed the film to his cultural awareness class in December 1993. Students Jesse Smith and Darby Hughes alleged in their lawsuit that they were required to watch the film and write a paper about it. The teenagers said they suffered nightmares, emotional problems and were harassed by other students for their reaction to the film.
According to The Times, Haycock showed excerpts from “Faces of Death” to five classes that day and gave the students the option of writing a paper for extra credit or going to the library if they did not want to see the film. Haycock said he showed only parts of the film that depicted animals being killed and did not show parts of the film that depicted human death.
“It basically had to do with the treatment of animals and the way we get our food, which was the lesson,” Haycock said at the time. “We go to the supermarket and get our meat, and we think it sanitizes us because it's wrapped in plastic. But someone else has to slaughter it for us. I was trying to show how other cultures provide food for themselves compared to the way we who live in the city do.”
The judge dismissed the lawsuit, siding with the district's argument that students should not be able to sue based on what they are taught in class.
