The
programme kicked off with a mention of Charles Manson. There is a
theory that Manson and his family were the originators of the Snuff
movie, by allegedly filming the terrible murder of Sharon Tate, the
then wife of director Roman Polanski. Rumours that the tapes got passed
round is said to be the first example of a want for Snuff videos.
The
documentary went on to review the first film regarded to be akin to a
Snuff movie, which was called Cannibal Holocaust. The film was littered
with beheadings, castrations and a girl impaled on a huge stake. The
film was shot in a haphazard 'documentary style' which led many to
believe that the film was filled with "real killing and torture".
Uproar and outcry inevitably followed, but looking back, it was plain
to see that it was no more than a B-Movie (complete with fantastic Moog
soundtrack).
The
notoriety of the film made it a huge success, which led to another
'video nasty' called Guinea Pig 2 - The Flower of Flesh and Blood. The
clips shown in the documentary were indeed difficult to stomach. One
scene included showed a Samurai hacking a young girl's hand off. The
thing that set this apart however was the overt sexual nature of the
film, which 'climaxed' with a shot of the murderous Samurai licking
blood from a decapitated head. Many believed the film to contain
genuine murder and torture (which is still believable even now) but
alas, it was a sophisticated special effects bonanza.
The
main difference between a video nasty, like for example, A Clockwork
Orange, and what is deemed to be a snuff flick is the nature of the
killings involved. Murder scenes don't make a snuff movie. It would
seem that the main thing that defines a snuff film is not just the
barbaric and unnecessary murder of someone, but the sexual nature
involved. It isn’t a case of, like one copycat murderer sentenced to
death in Japan in the early eighties, that a snuff movie should only
fulfil one person’s bizarre gratifications, but have some kind of
production value.
However, with the development of home video cameras,
it would become increasingly difficult for the police and censors to
determine which videos were fake, and which were real events.
Germany
saw the first real sign that snuff movies are not a thing of fiction.
Two German men kidnapped a prostitute and filmed the gruesome torture
and abuse of her. The victim had “suffered the most agonising pain
possible”. Hans Dieter Kausen and his accomplice were convicted and the
evidence needed was all on tape. This has sinister links to Mrya
Hindley and Ian Brady, who, if the means were possible, would have made
a snuff film of their moors victims, and when they made their tapes,
they had made “snuff audio”.
The
internet has seen an increase in snuff, as it has made the genre so
much easier to distribute and view. Daniel Pearl’s decapitation in Iraq
is a perfect example of the ease in which death can be distributed over
the web. ‘Happy Slapping’ is the latest link to snuff, and David
Morley, the first death in the craze that has apparently swept across
the nation.
The
programme doesn’t really confirm the existence of snuff films. It
certainly seems that there is a lack of evidence to support the claim,
but the makers have missed films such as ‘Der Todesking’ which contains
real death, and “Executions” a self explanatory film, which was briefly
on sale in Woolworths up and down the country.
It
would seem that deciding what defines a snuff movie is quite difficult,
but it has become the stuff of urban myth. Regardless of the lack of
proof or expose, ‘Does Snuff Exist’ was a fascinating look into the
darkest most despicable area of cinema.
The
Dark Side of Porn is a documentary series that examines the Adult
Entertainment Industry. It is produced for Channel 4 in the United
Kingdom. As of June 2006, it is in its second season.
This
episode gives an insight in the lives of newcomers to the adult
entertainment. From the initial approach to a glamour agency and the
first sexy photo-shoot to the HIV test, the audition and the first
hardcore shoot, it shows the gritty reality of what working in the porn
industry means in Britain today.
A search for the secrets behind the legendary porn movie Debbie Does Dallas, with the mysterious entrance and disappearance of the main star Bambi Woods. Featuring interviews with Robin Byrd,
female actress in the movie and Bill Kelly, a former FBI agent once
working on an undercover operation to bust porn producers.
This episode examines the mystery surrounding the death of Lolo Ferrari. Featuring candid interviews with Lola's mother, her plastic surgeon and her husband
This episodes is centered around "Rick", a BDSMDominator
who wants to quit the job after doing it for 25 years. Over a period of
more than a year, Rick talks intimately about his life.
Looks into the story behind the bestiality porn movies, and reveals how Animal Farm saw the light.
As
of 2009, neither the Motion Picture Association of America, the Federal
Communications Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, nor any
U.S. law enforcement agency have put forth legislation or terminology
that would define the term "snuff film" authoritatively.
Some
possible definitions include a number of acts (killing of animals,
faked deaths, suicides and murders) which are filmed and only later
distributed. In most cases the only motive to risk any exposure of the
filmmakers' involvement is commercial. Some definitions state that
snuff films must be pornographic in nature.
The
first recorded use of the term is in a 1971 book by Ed Sanders, The
Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion, in
which it is alleged that The Manson Family might have been involved in
the making of such a film (although no film has ever been found).
The
metaphorical use of the term snuff to denote killing is derived from a
verb for the extinguishing of a candle flame, and can be traced to
several decades before Sanders's book; for example, in Edgar Rice
Burroughs's fifth Tarzan book Tarzan and The Jewels of Opar (1916).
"Snuffed it", meaning dead, was used repeatedly in the novel A
Clockwork Orange (1962).
The
Michael Powell film Peeping Tom (1960) featured a killer who filmed his
victims, but the concept of a "snuff movie" became more widely known in
1976 in the context of the film Snuff. Originally a horror film
designed to cash in on the hysteria of the Manson family murders, the
film's distributor tacked on a new ending that depicted an actress
killed on a movie set. Promotion of Snuff created the illusion that an
actual murder had been captured on film, with the producer writing
angry letters of complaint to the New York Times and hiring phony
protestors to picket screenings.
In
the wake of Snuff, many movies explored similar themes, including the
Paul Schrader film Hardcore (1979), the Ruggero Deodato film Cannibal
Holocaust (1980), David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), the Arnold
Schwarzenegger film The Running Man (1987), the Nine Inch Nails film
"The Broken Movie" (1993) the film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
(1986), the Alejandro Amenabar film Tesis (1996), the film Strange Days
(1995), the Anthony Waller film Mute Witness (1994), the Joel
Schumacher film 8mm (1999) and was featured in the John OttmanUrban
Legends: Final Cut (2000), Fred Vogel's film August Underground (2001)
and its sequels. film,
Online
internet snuff movies came into play in such movies like the Marc Evans
film My Little Eye (2002), the Showtime series Dexter and the Rick
Rosenthal film Halloween: Resurrection. Most recently the subject has
been addressed in British film director Bernard Rose's film Snuff-Movie
(2005), the Nimród Antal film Vacancy (2007) and also in the WWE film
The Condemned (2007) and the Gregory Hoblit film Untraceable.
Recorded murders
Some
murderers have in various instances recorded their acts on video;
however, the resultant footage is not usually considered to be a snuff
film because it is not made for the express purpose of distribution. In
the early 1980s, Charles Ng and Leonard Lake videotaped their torturing
of women they would later kill. Serial killers Paul Bernardo and Karla
Homolka videotaped some of their sex crimes in the early 1990s. Though
their crimes ended in murder, the actual murders were not videotaped.
Only a select few people have ever seen this footage, as viewing was
restricted to lawyers and other courtroom personnel. The footage has
since reportedly been destroyed. Another example is the video taken in
2001 by the German Armin Meiwes of the killing of Bernd Jürgen Armando
Brandes. In 1995 the documentary film Executions showed the actual
executions of various people condemned to death, but again, these
deaths were not intended for entertainment.
In
1997, the Germans Ernst Dieter Korzen and Stefan Michael Mahn kidnapped
a prostitute and recorded her torture. The two men were sentenced to
life imprisonment. Prosecutors involved in the case claimed there is an
international market for such videos
As
early as the 1940s, Weegee found fame for his photographs of victims of
street crime in New York City. In later decades, the American public
was fascinated by the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F.
Kennedy; the Zapruder film has since been featured in Oliver Stone film
JFK, among other fictional works. Similarly, Professione: reporter, a
film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, contains a sequence that
depicts an actual execution by firing squad. Earlier still, in 1901 the
Edison company released a film of a re-enactment of the execution of
Leon Czolgosz, assassin of U.S. President William McKinley.
In
the Maysles' documentary film Gimme Shelter, Meredith Hunter is stabbed
to death on screen by a Hells Angel at the Rolling Stones concert at
Altamont Speedway.
The
Faces of Death film series found popularity in the 1980s on
videocassette, and even on broadcast television, shows like World's
Wildest Police Videos have been successful (though for broadcast
television, more gruesome footage is usually censored).
In
the Internet age, it is possible to download videos depicting actual
murders or deaths (e.g. the filmed deaths of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg,
Saddam Hussein, Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-il, Eugene Armstrong, Jack
Hensley, Kenneth Bigley and a Russian sergeant, the shooting of Yitzhak
Rabin and the gun suicides of Ricardo Cerna, Ricardo Lopez and Budd
Dwyer).
Recently videos depicting suicide bombings and attacks on U.S. military in Iraq have been posted on video sharing website YouTube
by extremist groups, which has become an increasingly difficult problem
for the U.S. as replacement videos can be uploaded just as quickly as
they are taken down.
However,
it is not clear that the fascination engendered by these records would
extend to filmed murders carried out expressly for the purpose of
filming a murder (actual snuff films). Since it is trivially easy today
to produce a film that simulates a murder in a completely believable
way, there is little commercial incentive to risk the legal
repercussions of producing a film in which a murder is actually
committed (much less documented on film).
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