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Can anyone please define for me what the heck a snuff movie is? I've heard people talk about them but have no idea what they are.


THIS I COMMAND!

My mother told me, and I wish I didn't ask.

A "Snuff" movie  is a movie where an actor is murdered on film as a part of the plot (saving money on special effect, doncha know.)  It comes from the movie Snuff which the makers claimed to have a person's death recorded expressly for the film.  Turns out that was a lie, as I recall.

dear Luke, it's interesting you bring up this topic. a snuff film is basically a documentation of a person really being killed/tortured, whatever in front of the camera. urban legends constantly surface they exist but the for the longest time the F.B.I. hasn't been able to prove it. a lot of people believe they exist in Latin America, since the cost of living is so low there. Dennis Hopper claims he saw one when he was there filming the Last Movie. apparently they wrote a book on the subject: Gods of Death, but a friend of mine wasn't able to find it in print. some good films that deal with the subject are Videodrome, Thesis (a recent great Spanish film, i'd highly recommend this one), and 8MM, (this one got a lot of negative criticism, but i didn't think it was too bad). hope this info. is of interest. oh an Snuff basically mean to kill, "to put out, to snuff someone." hope you never have to sit through one.

Snuff is also a pretty cool English punk band.

Pete

I saw GODS OF DEATH years ago, when it first came out.  I remember glancing at it...it's almost like a fictionalized account, with zero documentation or anything.

Once again I asked a question without being prepared for the answer. I feel sick...

Don't worry, they don't exist. The publisher of Screw magazine put out a $1,000,000 reward to anyone who could turn in a copy of one; the offer still stands. What it comes down to is that anyone who'd be competant enough to film a murder for distribution would be competant enough to realize that'd be a really, really dumb idea.

Oh, yeah, and the term was around before the movie "Snuff"; IIRC, it was coined by an anonymous member of the Manson family in an interview, describing a movie he'd heard about (but never seen).

yeah, i read a review of it on amazon.com, it didn't sound to hot, not based on much fact also.

KILLING FOR CULTURE is a good read about the whole "snuff movie" phenomenon, also a good overview of Mondo films.  It's one of my favorite film books.

There's a short video clip floating around the net that shows a girl sitting in a chair with a guy holding a gun to her head. She cries "Snuff films do not exist", then she gets her brains blown out. I assume it's a fake although it looks pretty real to me.

Just have a look on a french site: x.imavision.fr.

It is quite interesting. I'm not sure they really know what they have found...

The whole thing gets a good treatment over at Straightdope.com:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?
s=5c813b4e49479fd61ff8b358e9dcf1bf&threadid=133495

(sorry for the long URL, if you go to http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/
and click on  Comments on Cecil's Columns you'll see it.  The debunking of snuff films is done by Cecil himself)

John in that film of the girl getting her brains blown out they used a cabbage that had been soaked in red food coloring for a week i used the same trick for a spook house

I don't know about the cabbage, but for those who are curious to see the video I mentioned, you can find it  here (http://www.alexanderjason.com/videoanalysis.htm), along with a detailed analysis of why it's fake.

That site with the detailed debunking of that clip was really interesting, and I must say that if I stumbled across that clip without seeing the site first, it would have creeped me out quite a bit.  Hell, it still does, and I know it's faked.  I'd like to think I would have noticed the bit about the blood doing all the wrong things, but the shock value is enough to keep you from thinking about that too clearly, at least for a while.
That French site looks like it has something cool on it, but I can't read the bloody thing.  What's it about?
Incidentally, my dog's name is Snuff.

Brother R

>if I stumbled across that clip without seeing the site first, it would have creeped
>me out quite a bit.

It did me when I first saw it a few years ago.

>That French site looks like it has something cool on it, but I can't read the bloody
>thing. What's it about?

Try plugging the URL into Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com) and select French to English.

I think that goes all the way back to the ancient Romans, when they'd do stage plays and have captured prisoners (or maybe Christians) actually be killed in the sword fight scenes.  The actor would leave the stage and a stand-in would come and get killed.  They may have done those in the colisseum as a prelude to the games, or just as regular entertainment.

Well from what I have read in a book called "mind hunter" (Its a biography of a guy called John Douglas, one of the guys who helped develope serial killer Profiling)
There is a mention of one guy who supposedly would kidnap children and take them down to Mexico and sell them to be used in Snuff movies, unfortunately I cant remember the guys name, its been a while since I read that book, I'll try and find it.

Actually I recomend that book, some damn scary stuff in there.

I think it is likely at some point a snuff movie has been made, but it bears repeating that not a single one has been found.  

BTW, has anyone seen that video where the guy is stabbed in the throat and eventually decapitated?  I've heard it was fake from one place, and real from another.  Whatever the case, it disturbed me a bit.  Not a snuff film, in either case.

>BTW, has anyone seen that video where the guy is stabbed in the throat and
>eventually decapitated?

Is that the one with the soldier on the ground and another soldier sticks the knife in his throat? I heard it was real. Or are you talking about the footage of the guy kidnapped by terrorists a couple years ago? If so, that was real.

>>>The publisher of Screw magazine put out a $1,000,000 reward to anyone who could turn in a copy of one; the offer still stands


Does anyone else find that awfully enticing?  :-P

But seriously, I'm surprised that somebody hasn't actually made a snuff movie in order to claim the $1,000,000.  It bears the question would you kill somebody for a million bucks?  Someone, somewhere would say yes, and it's that possibility that makes the whole Snuff idea something I'd say is real.

"Don't worry, they don't exist. "

Oh yeah?  Tell that to Daniel Pearle's widow.  A snuff film doesn't necessarily have to be made for financial gain.  Islamic Extremist terrorists have tried to use them to intimidate we of the "less civilized and more inferior cultures of the world."

What is the movie snuff about?

>A snuff film doesn't necessarily have to be made for financial gain. Islamic
>Extremist terrorists have tried to use them to intimidate we of the "less civilized
>and more inferior cultures of the world."

Actually, I though part of the definition of a snuff movie was that it was done for money. I mean, over the years, many deaths have been filmed.

"But seriously, I'm surprised that somebody hasn't actually made a snuff movie in order to claim the $1,000,000. It bears the question would you kill somebody for a million bucks? Someone, somewhere would say yes, and it's that possibility that makes the whole Snuff idea something I'd say is real."

I think what prevents people from doing that would be the fact that they would be handing over evidence that they committed a murder to someone who would undoubtedly surrender it to the authorities once they had a proper warrant (if not before).  They'd have you connected to the film by virtue of your turning it over, they's have a victim to try to connect you to geographically and chronologically, and they'd have a seven-figure motive.  A million bucks will buy you some protection in prison, but that's about it.

JohnL - I didn't know profit motive was a part of the definition of a snuff film.  I had assumed that it was any murder committed for the camera qualified (i.e. most deaths caught on film, such as the ARVN colonel shooting the VC kid at point blank range wouldn't qualify as he didn't know he was being filmed).

>JohnL - I didn't know profit motive was a part of the definition of a snuff film.

Maybe it isn't, but that's what I always thought,

I think the mere fact that the movie would have to have been made after the offer renders it void in any case. I see what your saying Dean but these points I do not think make up the rules for a snuff film because then you can account all the Faces of Death type movies that are out there. I think the reason Mexico makes so many snuff film is that peoples families need money and these people are usually dieing already of diseases and hunger so they make a packed with a director to be killed for the special effect and then after the effect has been made and the movie makes money the families are paied.

Profit motive is essential.  Otherwise, snuff would definetly exist.

I should probably mention I would not be at all suprised if a snuff film had been made at some point.  Likely, some private collector or rich pervert in south America has one.  But of course, he would never share it with anyone, would he?  So we'd never know.  Then again, if you paid to have one made, how would you know it was real?  There are some REALLY good faked deaths - I remember Charlie Sheen (I think it was him) getting all indignant and uppity after seeing Guinea Pig 2, which some people thought to be real, but is really just a very well made fake.

>>>I think the mere fact that the movie would have to have been made after the offer renders it void in any case. I see what your saying Dean but these points I do not think make up the rules for a snuff film because then you can account all the Faces of Death type movies that are out there. I think the reason Mexico makes so many snuff film is that peoples families need money and these people are usually dieing already of diseases and hunger so they make a packed with a director to be killed for the special effect and then after the effect has been made and the movie makes money the families are paied


Isn't that Mexico situation a similar one to mine? both are making money by being killed.  So let's use that theory: some poor family needs money to survive, one member is really sick and can't be saved so they decide to do a snuff film, and then hand it in for their million dollar reward [of course they aren't going to implicate themselves, so it shouldn't be obvious who was in it]

Either way the family is getting paid.

On another note, people involved in this business would have to be pretty desperate, pretty disturbed, or both, and I'm sure that there either has been or was somebody out there who has taken someone against their will and killed them on camera, maybe not specifically for making money, but they sell it anyway.

It's that incredibly morbid thought that makes this whole snuff movie thing so disturbing.