What is a snuff film, exactly? The phrase has been a part of the American vernacular since 1971, when Ed Sanders used it in his book on the Manson Family murders, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. It was alleged that Manson and his “family” had filmed the murders of their victims using stolen television equipment, with that film subsequently buried in the California desert (although to date no film has ever been found of the murders).
Law enforcement does not currently provide a common definition for what a snuff film is. Microsoft’s online encyclopedia Encarta, for instance, defines a snuff film as a “pornographic movie … that allegedly ends with the murder of one of the participants in a sex act.” The Random House dictionary also defines a snuff film in similar terms. While different sources may disagree on what makes for a snuff film, the one thing the sources agree on is the fact that a human being is killed on camera for the purposes of entertainment.
Minneapolis director Paul von Stoetzel tackles the world of snuff films in his provocative film Snuff: A Documentary About Killing On Camera. In interviews with retired law enforcement officers, film historians, writers, directors, and producers, von Stoetzel probes the origins of the snuff film and examines the sub-genre of death cinema (actual deaths of human being captured on film/video, taken from news footage and other sources).
In 1976, film distributor Allan Shackleton took a film that had been on the shelves for five years (called Slaughter, written and directed by the husband and wife team of Michael and Roberta Findlay) and came up with a stroke of marketing genius: he had several minutes of new footage filmed and tacked it onto the end of Slaughter. The new footage is supposed to be the film crew of Slaughter, finishing up their work, and subsequently a woman is killed, presumably for real, on-screen. Shackleton removed the credits from Slaughter and released it as Snuff with the famous tagline, "A film that could only be made in South America, where life is cheap!" The film sparked the usual protests and it was perhaps from this start that people began to believe that snuff films were a reality.
Snuff films are now regarded as an urban legend. But are they? Has anyone actually seen a real snuff film? The interviewees in Snuff, with one exception, say they have never seen an actual snuff film: the law enforcement officers, film historians, and filmmakers von Stoetzel interviews are all familiar with what a snuff film is supposed to be, but are not aware of the existence of such a film.
Snuff: A Documentary About Killing On Camera runs at a brisk 76 minutes, broken down into segments that deal with the history of snuff films, American cinema and snuff films (from the infamous Italian cannibal film Cannibal Holocaust to the popular Faces of Death series) as well as a segment on serial killers, including an examination of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, who police discovered in the mid-1980s had filmed the rape and torture of their victims.
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