Snuff (1976)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

An Exercise In Nonsense

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Snuff is one of that small group of movies where the story surrounding its production and release supersede its contents by some margin. Exploitation directing duo Michael and Roberta Findlay made a Manson inspired flick in Argentina in 1971 called the Slaughter. Due to its low quality it did little business but was nevertheless bought by the producer Allan Shackleton who left it on a shelf for several years not sure what to do with it until he heard the rumour about the existence of snuff movies; to this end he put some money together and filmed a new five minute ending which showed a woman being viciously murdered by the film crew responsible for making the film we have just watched, the idea being that this was a real killing. The movie was released to great controversy with publicity generated by protesters and investigators, some of which were hired by the producers themselves on the correct assumption that bad publicity is still good business. Needless to say the gamble paid off and the film made a lot of money. And despite being a hoax, it only furthered the idea of the existence of snuff movies.Ultimately, for better or for worse, the end scene is what defines this film. A lot of the comments I read downplay the ending somewhat and say its laughably unconvincing, etc. Don't get me wrong it is an obvious fake with professional editing and all that. But I honestly found it to be an actually nasty and uncomfortable viewing experience. The murder of the woman is brutal and sleazy accentuated by the quite decent gore effects for its day. This material would be strong anyway but it is made pretty grotesque on account of the objective of the movie which was essentially to draw people in to the cinema on the promise of seeing a woman being viciously murdered for their viewing pleasure. Obviously from the point-of-view of today we can look back on it as an example of extreme bad taste cinema but you have to remember that at the time of its release its selling point was it was real murder on offer and quite a lot of people believed it, which is obviously a pretty low way of getting punters through the door; the very fact that so many of them did hoping to see a woman be killed before them is a very disturbing facet of human nature that's for sure.There is one thing that you can say for sure about Snuff and that is that it certainly provokes a reaction. It's an overwhelmingly negative reaction it seems, yet it appears to offend people in two very distinct ways. There are those who are appalled at the whole tastelessness of the concept of the last five minutes, while there are others deeply irritated by the awfulness of the first 70 minutes. Going by all other reviews I have read, I have to accept that my view on this movie is a massively unpopular one but, dare I say these words…I actually enjoyed the main story, The Slaughter. I get the feeling that there is more shame attached to that, than someone liking the snuff bit! I am under no illusions about the technical ineptness here as this is certainly a Z-grade production with ropey camera-work, chopsocky level dubbing, a police station situated in a car-park, and on and on. But I have seen lots of poor quality movies and, frankly, this one is a lot more interesting that a lot of them. Admittedly, my fascination with the whole Manson murder case and all that that entailed makes the contents of this story-line get immediate plus points from me, as its parallels are so utterly blatant, after all the plot focuses on a group of female killer hippies led by a cult leader called Sat-an, who eventually wind up entering the grounds of a mansion and kill everyone there culminating in the stabbing of a pregnant film actress, who it hardly needs stating is a Sharon Tate substitute. It's essentially an exploitation movie with sex, drugs, violence and acid rock. It was ropey stuff sure but the bad girls were good to watch and anything with a counter-cultural vibe gets pass marks from me. Additionally, some of the dialogue scenes were laugh-out-loud funny in an unintentional way and the murder scenes were mostly heroically daft. There is neither title card nor credits for The Slaughter, those having been removed by Shackleton in his objective of passing this off as an actual criminal undertaking. The DVD distributor Blue Underground recently tried to find an original cut of the film to no avail. It may be lost and I for one think that it is a bit of a shame that it nowadays is only inextricably linked to Snuff. So there you go, I like The Slaughter!In the final analysis, Snuff is both historically important and extremely notorious, while essentially being very strange. Its legend goes before it. Enter with caution would be the best advice.

Oh boy … They warned me this movie would be beyond terrible, but obviously I refused to listen again. Of course, they were right… "Snuff" is a dreadfully amateurish and annoyingly boring film with the world's most incoherent screenplay, retarded characters, incomprehensibly merging story lines and really tacky make-up effects. Don't expect an actual movie dealing with the topic of snuff, as you will be sorely disappointed. The first 75 minutes haven't got anything to do with snuff – the term isn't even vaguely mentioned or hinted at – and then suddenly out of the blue there's an unconnected film-within-film climax that is outrageously depraved and sickening. This movie is about murderous Charles Manson hippie cults and B-movie actresses acting all lewd in the Buenos Aires film industry. It's a road movie with a continuously repeated song that sounds too much like "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf and there even are extended political discussions, but there's nothing remotely resembling to snuff! Nearly three quarters of the film is irrelevant padding footage, like the tremendously overlong sequences as the carnival. The sleaze factor lies quite high, but the film is never arousing or sexy. The worst of the worst … with a unique ending.

Snuff is set in Argentina where American actress Terry London (Mirtha Massa) has just landed with film producer Max Marsh (Also Mayo) where they intend to make a film with Terry the star. Terry wants to keep Max sweet as it's her big break but she meets up with her lover Horst Frank (Clao Vaillanueva) who has two girlfriends on the go, both Terry & weirdo cult member pothead Angelica (Margarita Amuchástegui) who is in fact under the complete control of cult leader Satan (Enrique Larratelli) & has been sent to seduce Horst & have his baby for no real apparent reason. Eventually the cult members under instruction from Satan himself decide to dish out some justice to Horst & his adulterous friends...This notorious Argentinian American co-production was written & directed by the husband & wife film-making team of Michael & Roberta Findlay & the vast majority of the film was shot in 1971 in Argentina under the title Slaughter which apparently played a few theatres & disappeared to awful reviews & business. To be honest this 70 odd minute chunk of the 80 odd minute run time is total crap with some of the worst dubbing, writing, acting, production values, pacing & dialogue one is ever likely to suffer. It really is that terrible as we have to suffer a pseudo real life Charles Manson style cult murder, scenes just come & go, I mean who was that bloke in the airport Angelica killed at the start? The dialogue is laughably bad as it tries to be deep with stories of child abuse & silly histrionics from that Satan bloke & everyone seems to be having an affair with everyone else. Just to add insult to injury the film doesn't even finish as a few years after Slaughter was filmed in 1976 American producer Allan Shackleton brought the rights & cut the ending completely choosing to shoot & add the final few minutes himself & thus a legacy was born. These final few minutes edited onto the end of Slaughter comprise the film crew yelling 'cut' at the end of a violent shot & then killing the real life actress who played Angelica as the violence has all turned them on or something like that. All that Shackleton then had to do was change the title to Snuff & get as much bad publicity as he could. Needless to say the actresses don't match up, the special effects work is crude & doesn't convince & it's just a very odd viewing experience that isn't enjoyable but may be of curiosity to exploitation fans like myself but nothing more.The film has the most atrocious production values with quite simply the worst dubbing job ever in the sense that every single line is badly dubbed rather than just the odd one or two. There's a bit of gore here, there's a cut foot, a few bullet wounds, a few stabbings & of course the fake looking 'real' murder at the end which features a chopped off finger, a chopped off hand & a woman's guts being pulled out. The middle part of the film features an extremely long & tedious sequence set at a carnival & the stock footage used is of awful quality & is used to pad the run time out & the same shot is repeated several times. Banned as a 'Video Nasty' here in the UK for many years Snuff passed uncut as an 18 a few years back but nobody bothered to release it. The Findlay's film-making style doesn't add too much but there is one bizarre moment where Terry is questioned by a policeman (actually played by director Michael Findlay) who sits at a nice polished wooden desk outside in the middle of a giant set of doors to a warehouse or factory of some sort which is just a totally random moment that I have no idea what the filmmakers were thinking when they shot it. Director Findlay was killed in an accident in New York in 1977 where he was decapitated by helicopter rotor blade as it crashed.Filmed on location in Argentina with local actors the 'snuff' bit at the end was shot in New York several years later. Snuff is quite possibly the worst, most shabby film I have seen with rock bottom production values & no redeeming qualities at all.Snuff is one of the most successful film hoaxes of all time as the promise of a real murder committed on screen for all to see made this piece of crud a box-office smash, such a shame as there are so many better horror films out there that deserved success over this piece of crap. I'll give it one star for the Slaughter part of the film & one star for the Snuff part, all in all this is one to avoid although I can't deny it's historic significance.

I vaguely remember the outrage over this one, but finally seeing it years later, I'll embarrassingly admit it was kinda fun. The real movie is a pretty disjointed Manson cult movie called "Slaughter" with a gang of pretty girls who worship a dude named Satan (suh-TAHN). He makes them kill for drugs and money. The gang of hotties is pretty brutal to a girl named Ann. An American actress comes to Brazil to make a movie, takes a lover and gets pregnant. Satan says the child is supposed to be a sacrifice, and from there on out, nothing makes a lot of sense, but we do get some shots of Carnival. But you don't care about the real movie. What brings you to rent the infamous "Snuff" is, well, the infamous snuff sequence. SPOILERS FOLLOW As the main movie ends, the camera pulls back to reveal a film crew. A guy and a girl are making out on a bed and it turns out it's a snuff film! Her arm is cut, a finger is chopped of with pliers, her other hand is cut off with a ripsaw - wholesome stuff. Then she's cut open and her guts are played with for a while. The screen goes blank and you can hear the crew talk about how they ran out of film. How conveeenient. It's not very well done, or even all that shocking. In fact, all the tacked on snuff sequence did was make me want to see all of "Slaughter." But you live and learn.