As a young boy coming of age in the era of VHS, I was acutely aware that certain movies were so forbidden the simple act of plucking them off the shelves at the local video store seemed like an act of transgression that may well be the first baby step towards a life of sin, crime, and moral corruption. Faces of Death was one such video. The oversized box that barely fit on the shelves; the bold proclamation that it was “Banned in 43 Countries;” the hideous skull face with the serpentine tongue and glowing eyes; the foreboding Gorgon Video logo: everything about it seemed so vile and horrible that the prospect of actually putting the videocassette in the VCR and watching the movie was almost a rite of passage – a true test of my ability to confront my greatest fears. By the time I did finally work up the courage to walk up to the counter and slap down my $3.00, I was nearly quaking in my KangaROOS.

Flash forward approximately two hours later, and I was locked in a paralyzing state of pre-adolescent shock - an unwitting victim of my own compulsive curiosity. What the hell had I just witnessed? It was strikingly similar to the news footage I would see every evening when my dad arrived home from work and sat down in front of the television, though in here the camera seemed to linger on those horrible and disturbing images with a perverse joy that gave my gag reflex a true workout.

It all felt so real, but it couldn’t be – right?

Years later, I would discover that the answer to that question was complicated. While some of the footage was in fact real, a substantial portion of it was staged – an elaborate hoax, seamlessly perpetrated by clever filmmakers and resourceful special effects artists. If their mission was to shock me into confronting my own mortality, it had worked. I always hated Faces of Death for that. My psychology textbooks had always told me that teenagers thought themselves to be immortal, yet here I was thirteen years old and fully aware of the fact that I was little more than a sloppy bag of guts stiffed into a flimsy skin casing that could be split wide open at any moment, and in any number of horrible ways.

Now, for those who always wondered precisely how this remarkable ruse was carried out, the original Faces of Death arrives on DVD in a thirtieth-anniversary special edition featuring all new extras that demystify the film in no uncertain terms. Moderated by Michael Fletcher and featuring director Conan LeCilaire, the feature-length commentary track aims to, in Fletcher’s words, “Unmask a lot of the truths, half-truths, and out-and-out deceptions that have surrounded the film over the last few decades.” And it does so with relish. It’s a lively track that touches on every controversial beat while also taking into consideration the remarkable influence that the film had over the past few decades.

Clocking in at approximately fifteen minutes, the “Choice Cuts with Editor Glen Turner” featurette reveals just how LeCilaire and his crew were able to match existing disaster and crime scene footage with more graphic original content produced by the Faces of Death crew to achieve a morbid atmosphere of pure necrosis. At the time Faces of Death was being produced, Turner has worked primarily on documentaries. It’s fascinating to hear his perspective on the project, as his expertise in the area of documentary filmmaking played a crucial role in making the film so convincing. Not only that, but Turner makes no attempt to hide the fact that he nearly had to quit the project while sifting though the graphic newsreel footage that producers had purchased from a nearby news station. An additional featurette entitled “The Death Makers” lasts roughly twenty minutes and offers viewers the chance to hear special effects artists Allan A. Apone and Douglas J. White discuss how they were able to achieve such realistic effects on such a tight budget. It’s plain to see that they both had a blast flexing their creative muscles, and from the infamous “monkey brain” scene to the alligator attack and the desert beheading, few stones are left unturned as Apone and White reflect cheerfully on their experiences creating some of the most repulsive effects ever captured on film.

A theatrical trailer reminds viewers just how effective the marketing campaign that drove The Faces of Death’s success truly was, ten minutes of outtakes offer a lingering look at the corpse that washed ashore during filming, animal processing, and some behind-the-scenes photographs, and a deleted scene showcases a gas chamber death that was omitted from theatrical prints yet included in the home video release.

So did seeing the mechanics behind the single-most notorious shocker of all-time finally make me impervious to its stomach-turning charms? Not exactly, I still get queasy during he scenes of animal cruelty, and odds are good that I’ll never watch the film in its entirely again. Considering the film’s near mythical reputation, however, it did provide me with a better understanding of how easily media can be manipulated in order to have a certain intended effect on the viewer, and that’s a valuable life lesson that’s well worth the cost of a couple dry heaves.