SNUFF

The history behind SNUFF is the stuff of legend. Shot in Argentina in four weeks with a budget over about $30,000, SNUFF began life as SLAUGHTER, a cheap and dirty roughie based on the Manson family murders. When the film was completed, a print was shown by the directors, Michael and Roberta Findley, to exploitation maverick Allen Shackleton. After languishing on the shelf for a few years, Shackleton removed the credits, changed the title and added a new ending to the picture.


Max gets off easy.

The plot makes little sense. There's a group of drugged-out hippy chicks who follow the Manson-esque Satan (pronounced SA-TAHN. Clever, huh?). They're not beyond killing for fun, nor are they beyond torturing each other for various petty things. While our murderous hippies lounge around and fornicate, a pretty actress, Terri, and her producer husband arrive in town to shoot a movie. He's a prick and she's been cheating on him with a spoiled and rich playboy named Horst. But Horst already has a girlfriend, Angelica, who is secretly a member of Satan's group. Seems Satan wants Angelica to get pregnant so he can have a child to sacrifice. Thirty minutes later, Horst has kicked Angelica out, Max is dead, Terri is knocked up, about five people are shot dead at some mom and pop store, and Satan declares that "the time has come for slaughter!". The group advance on the Horst residence and kill everyone on the premises. Then they move inside and get to Terri. She screams in protest but to no avail. The knife rises up and...


Here's where SLAUGHTER, the cheap, lousy Argentina-shot roughie becomes SNUFF, the movie of legend. We suddenly cut to a movie set. We're watching them film the scene we were just watching. The director sends the actors away and turns to a young, pretty production assistant and tells her how turned on he is. She reciprocates and they make their way to the bed (with a bunch of people, including a cameraman and a boom operator still in the room!) and begin making out. She doesn't like it. He doesn't care. He wants to get a good scene. That's when he produces the knife.


The fake ending.

The add-on footage shot by Carter Stevens proved to be the real attraction for many people and also the source of SNUFFs success. Word had gotten out about a little film, shot in South America, that featured footage of a real murder. Anyone who had seen the movie would likely disagree. The supposed murder footage is on par with FACES OF DEATH (another movie that many people, for some reason, mistook as being factual) and is about as realistic as a H.G. Lewis set-piece. But quality is besides the point. The word had gotten out and SNUFF was doing great business because of it.


Feminists protested and investigations were launched. Shackleton himself never denied the authenticity of the footage, once saying if it were real "I'd be a fool to admit it. If it isn't real, I'd be a fool to admit it". But soon, facing pressure from all sides, Shackleton admitted the hoax. And what a hoax it was. Whole cities and states were banning the movie, people picketed theater after theater when it showed, and people, curious to see the unmentionable, spent their hard-earned cash to buy a ticket for what is, in all honestly, one of the worst films ever made.


But that isn't the point. It doesn't matter that SNUFF was a bad film. It doesn't matter that the ending was fake. It proved a point. People would pay money to see a snuff film. It never occurred to the people who flocked to the theater that there was no way in hell that a movie that included the actual murder of a crew member would ever show up in Times Square. It should have been recognized by everyone as a hoax, a fake, a fraud. But the level of protest and the supposed interests of government and the F.B.I. (another good bit of unsubstantiated rumor) in the film helped push it into the public eye. People went to see this movie to see if it was true, if someone actually was murdered in the film. They went to see someone die.


In our Internet age, when we have access to scores of horrifying news footage of suicides and accidents, where we can download a video of someone being decapitated overseas, there's no need for a film like SNUFF to satisfy our curiosities. We have the real deal at our fingertips. Whether or not you ever choose to explore the Dark Side of the Search Engine is up to you, but many do. Some of them are very, very sorry they were ever curious enough to look. I think most of us have in ourselves some desire to see these kinds of things and I believe it to be perfectly natural. We slow down to look at car accidents. Why? What are we expecting to see?


What do we really want to see?


Behold Satan.

Now, in 2008, we can watch SNUFF without all the controversy and recognize it as the travesty it really is. It's appallingly shot, terribly acted, and utterly unconvincing. The story is so convoluted (amazingly so given it's short running time and meager cast of characters) that nothing makes sense and what does actually make sense is so ridiculous that it can't be taken seriously at all. This is a film that many talk about but few have seen and now, without the controversy to make the whole thing interesting, that seems appropriate. The only reason to see this film is to say you've seen it. I can't honestly think of any other reason.


It's just that bad.


Recommended only as a way to get unwanted guests to leave your house.