"Death Scenes 2" (1992) d/ Nick Bougas

Just to let you know, rather than really exploring the depraved depths of my usual brand of black humor, I took the highest possible road where the screenshots are concerned for tonight's review, as is usually the case with every "real death" documentary there's plenty of opportunity for hardcore bleeeech, and director Nick Bougas' follow-up to his 1989 epic direct-to-home-video release takes full advantage of every single friggin' one here, lovingly serving up notorious famous death footage not just once, or even twice in slow-mo, but  frame by brutal frame detail of the carnage in one particular case... I can still remember the night they stocked this one on the shelves at one of my local video haunts on 'the Ave', I snagged it, and when I returned it, I ordered an original copy for myself straight away, having been much more of a serial killer/real death/shockumentary completist kinda guy back then, as unsettling as that probably sounds to some of you. I say 'some', because Death Scenes remains one of the top ten most viewed reviews of all-time here at the Wop. Go figure...


Show me all the horrible footage and pictures you want, just don't let Anton sing 'Golden Earrings' again...
After a gruesome recap of the first video for those that missed it, it isn't long before the screen is engulfed with the horrors of war, and WWII is well represented, as usual, with photographs of battle-maimed soldiers and footage of smoldering corpses hanging out of tanks as the norm. Next, the focus is 1950s-era death, with teenage hot rodders, drunk drivers, and road hogs meeting fiery ends in several graphic high school driver's ed films of the day. Death doesn't bypass Tinsel Town either, as we soon find out, and the deaths of Hollywood stars like Tyrone Power, Bela Lugosi, Marilyn Monroe, Lenny Bruce, and Elvis Presley are touched upon, usually accompanied by grim morgue table, crime scene, and/or casket photographs. Dying naked on a bathroom floor with a syringe still in your arm hardly constitutes "glamorous" in my book... During the segment on the tumultuously groovy decade that followed, after some Vietnam footage and race riots, we're introduced to the crimes of Albert DeSalvo, Richard Speck, and the Manson family, with crime scene photos and autopsy slab shots of all of the Tate-LaBianca victims included.


"B.W. is my favorite movie reviewer on the internet, and my favorite candy is barbiturates."- Marilyn Monroe 
While the focus remains on serial killers, John Wayne Gacy is discussed, and even the sickening contents of Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer's bathtub and refrigerator are shown briefly. Then it's back to Hollywood where actor Vic Morrow and two Asian child actors tragically lost their lives on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie during the night filming of one of director John Landis' segments, when a helicopter loses control due to misfired pyrotechnics, and spirals down, killing all three instantly. If the horrible accident was difficult to make out from the initial camera angle, rest easy, there's two more to choose from, including a close up that's slowed down to frame by frame analysis. We close with a well upsetting montage of gore from the video era that includes suicide jumpers, mass bombings, Pa State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer's televised .357 suicide in it's entirety, gory color Mexican newspaper photos and footage, and even a late-term abortion. Stay classy, Death Scenes 2...


Get those kids to safety, Vic, in case that helicopter is forced to make an emergency Landis...errr, landing. Sorry.
As nauseating as this series can be (and usually is), tonight's review in particular, they've been long since surpassed by internet access, where you can sate the most morbid of your curiosities, and watch mankind outdo itself in terms of brutality and violence, worldwide, on a daily basis, if that's your bag. It certainly isn't everybody's, and those who are easily affected by such imagery and subject matter should obviously steer as clear of this one as possible. On the other hand, it stands as a frank reminder of how unchanged we remain as a species, despite our self-awareness and general belief that we occupy a higher rung of the scala naturae than the other life forms on the planet. If you share in that particular belief, watching Death Scenes 2 just might force you to reconsider your position. Four Wops.


"For my next trick, I'm going to put an embezzler's brain to sleep..."

"Death Scenes"(1989)d/Nick Bougas

Due to the overwhelming sales/rental success of the "Faces of Death" series, the mid to late eighties saw the release of a gaggle of direct-to-video death-related shockumentaries, most being detritus of the fifth generation ghosts variety, padded with staged sequences, stock WW2 concentration camp footage, and unthrilling primitive tribal ceremonies.That is, until Wavelength Video entered the sweepstakes at the end of the decade with its 'Death Scenes' series, and raised or lowered the bar, depending on your personal perspective of the admittedly ghoulish sub-genre.The pioneer effort enlists the persona of one Anton LaVey, of The Church of Satan fame, as host/narrator, as the camera peruses vintage crime scene/morgue table photographs from a morbid scrapbook kept by a retired LAPD homicide detective.That the snapshots are black and white does not lessen the visceral impact on the viewer in the slightest.Like a visualization of the most explicitly brutal goregrind song titles one could fathom, the worst crimes humanity could possibly commit unflinchingly pass before the lens.I gotta tell you, no matter who you think you are or how insensitive you might think you are towards real death, there are some images here that'll send your very soul running for the dry cleaners.For serious.

The Devil = Crabby Appleton.
An intro monologue about death given by host Anton LaVey, trying his best to look ominous in a foppish chapeau in front of what looks like the same stone finish wood paneling my mom had up in her kitchen in the seventies leads us into the tattered catologue of crime scene and morgue table photographs dating as far back as the 1920's and finishing up in the 1950's.LaVey kicks the tour all off with some nice suicides.One to the temple from a handgun.As we move into post-depression Los Angeles, we're shown countless shotgun headwounds(and a few where there isn't much head left to wound).Young and old alike seek refuge from the tribulations of daily life with a well-placed bullet or scattershot cartridge.We then move to hangings, both self-imposed and backwoods justice-style, as evidenced by one particularly powerful shot of a lynched black some twenty feet off the ground and what looks to be an entire town of people underneath to coldly bear witness.Then there's ritual disembowelment(Harakiri), opened veins, ingested rat poison, and starvation.Murder-suicides are examined next with several examples of crimes of passion followed by grief-stricken self-murder.Blood splashed cadavers in the bathtub.Faces blown off by point blank shotgun blasts.Bodies chucked into the ocean and drowned.Wives eviscerated by carving knives and mothers-in-law beaten to death with meat tenderizers.An ex-law officer kills and dismembers his unfaithful wife, hiding her severed head and hands in his own home to look at them whenever he liked.One woman dices her best friends up and ships the body segments across the country via train in steamer trunk and luggage(and is later released back into society, wow.)."Bluebeard" Watson kills twenty-five of his forty wives(!), douses them with flesh-eating acid and buries or tosses them into nearby rivers, and is later discovered to possess both male and female genitalia(!!), a true hermaphrodite(!!!).Death comes to the Latino community as several husbands cite marijuana usage as the reason behind slaying their wives in domestic disputes(c'mon now!).

Medical prognosis: Wind knocked out.
A woman's throat is slashed and her powerful assailant drives a carving knife into her trunk with such force, her body is nailed to the hardwood floor.Guttings by broken wine bottles.Coroners piecing together dismembered corpses.A dead pimp on a morgue slab reveals an endowment like a length of black garden hose.Axe murders.A montage of brutal violence against women.The bloodless gunshots of Hollywood westerns.Celebrity death.Thelma Todd, Jean Harlow's husband's suicide( her own death would come as a result of his vicious cane beating on their wedding night when she found out he possessed "the genitals of a small boy"!), the rasor bissection of the "Black Dahlia" murder, Marie Provost(partially eaten by her dachshund!), Lupe Velez's secanol slumber, Three Stooges straightman Ted Healy's deadly drunken brawl, and a sampling of mugshots of the day, with the crimes etched underneath: child neglect, sodomy and carnal abuse(!), "sale" marijuana(I prefer HG nuggs myself), attack "sex", and even... mental case(!).A man's entire skin found at the city dump.Bloody shootouts between gangsters and coppers.Gangland executions.Dillinger.Bonnie and Clyde."Pretty Boy" Floyd."Babyface" Nelson.Death by elephantiasis.Accidental gas leaks.Car accidents, plane crashes, and fires all see some lens time.Sex crimes and despicable child slayings.The Lindbergh baby kidnapping/murder.More unspeakably ghastly remnants of the murder of children follow.When you're sure it couldn't get more savage, the crime scenes of rape-murders are depicted.Finally, we end with the casualties of war.Phew, that wasn't easy.

The handiwork of "Steve the Ripper".Don't look at me, I wasn't even born yet.
Bougas, who dropped vocals on LaVey's 'Satan Takes a Holiday' cd(personal fave of mine), as well as copping a research consultant credit on Nikolas Shreck's Charles Manson, Superstar(1989), went on to helm the equally gross-but-far more entertaining 1992 follow up, the cleverly titled 'Death Scenes 2', which boasts(?) of color Manson crime scene and morgue table photography, frame-by-frame Vic Morrow death, and super slo-mo R. Bud Dwyer footage, as well as the third installment the year after.And if that weren't enough, a coffee table book of the same name featuring all the same grim photography was collaborated upon by Katherine Dunn and retired detective Jack Huddleston and released by Feral House in 2000.I've held the thing in my hands with intent to purchase about five times since, but the selection of dead infants and children always seems to put the kibosh on that.I've always prided myself on my titanium constitution when it comes to any type of gore, real included, but brutalized kids of any age is a fucking drag and not high on my list of favorite things to see.Still, Scenes is unparallelled in its delivery of the shockumentary goods(and bads) and remains a necessary puzzle piece in the oft-gruesome subgenre.Four wops.

Stewed, screwed, and tattooed.