Written & directed by: Michael & Roberta Findlay
Starring: Margarita Amuchástegui, Ana Carro, Liliana Fernández Blanco, Alfredo Iglesias, Enrique Larratelli, Mirtha Massa, Aldo Mayo, Clao Villanueva
Taglines: “A film that could only be made in South America, where life is CHEAP!”
“The picture they said could NEVER be shown”
“The Bloodiest thing that ever happened in front of a camera!!!”
SYNOPSIS
A satanic cult in Chile set their sites on people they want to murder, including a famous American actress who has just arrived in the country for her latest film.
REVIEW
Urban legends are funny things. They spread like wildfire, and thanks to their “friend of a friend” style of telling, they often persist for many years after they’ve been proven 100% fictional. From hypodermic needles in coin slots to that guy with the hook who always terrorises teens on lonely roads, they often not only make for good camp-fire stories, they can also make good movies.
The urban legend that’s relevant for this review is, as the titles might suggest, the snuff movie. These are movies where a real-life murder has been committed purely for the purpose of capturing it on camera. The resulting movies are then passed around group or in underground black markets, for the sick pleasure of whoever wants to watch such a thing. It’s a scary thought, but thankfully one that’s not true.
The story starts with the Manson family, who supposedly captured some of their killings on 8mm film. None of these films have ever been located, but it’s a strong idea that sparked the imagination of a few people. One of these people, apparently, was producer Allan Shackleton. He obtained this 1971 movie, originally entitled Slaughter, shortly after a short run in Argentinian cinemas. The American directors, Michael and Roberta Findlay, had been inspired by the Manson murders to produce, like many before and after them, a horror movie featuring a satanic hippy cult with a Manson-like leader. It was sleazy and exploitative but not the stuff of major financial success.
However, one of Shackleton’s staff supposedly saw the film and mistook one scene for real-life violence. I’m not sure what that scene could possible have been from the evidence left in this version of the film, but the seed was planted. Shackleton started rumours and sent fake notifications about a “real” snuff film that had been uncovered. The press took off with it, and one the headlines were all screaming about snuff movies, Shackleton released advertisements for his new movie, now entitled Snuff, with the tagline “a film that could only be made in South America where life is CHEAP!”. To complete the package, he also shot a new ending for the movie, where the camera switches to a set and an actress gets murdered “for real”.
Of, course, no such thing actually happened. Nevertheless, the movie was a big success based on its marketing, while rumours persisted for many years about “real” snuff movies having been found. Some of those rumours were amusingly and quite obviously repeats of the very same rumours put out by Shackleton to promote this movie. Other famous examples include Cannibal Holocaust, which actually had director Ruggero Deodato in front of an American court and forced to summon his cast members to prove he didn’t actually kill them on screen, and Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood, over which Charlie Sheen called the FBI because he thought it was real.
Snuff movies continue to inspire modern works (such as 8MM and Snuff Movie) and rumours continue to persist. However, no such film has ever been found.
So, there’s the background to this movie, what about the movie itself? Unfortunately, it’s not particularly good. The “snuff” portion only occurs in around the last 3-4 minutes of the film so we have 80 minutes to get through before then. Of course, this is the actual film that was meant to be shown, but the hype can’t help but make it seem like filler. We follow around 2 sets of characters. One is the cult led by Satahn, the only male member of the group. The women in the group spend their time torturing each other and attacking each other over drugs. The second group of people consists of the actress Terry London and her affairs with both her director and a younger man living nearby whom she met recently in the US.
Sadly, none of this is particularly interesting. First of all, there’s a lot of padding. At one point the characters go to the local carnival, and we’re “treated” to interminable stock footage of the carnival, inter-cut with footage of our characters “enjoying” it there (although they’re clearly nowhere near the stock footage). The movie is also dubbed, and dubbed atrociously. It’s not always bad, but between the echo chamber voice used for Satahn and the way that the lips don’t match up even remotely with the dubbed voices, it’s distracting at best. During one rape sequence, I actually found myself rather inappropriately giggling because the dubbed voice was so bad.
The editing and direction are also fairly inept, but for my money not any worse than hundreds of similar movies during the 70s. This all, of course, leads to the ending, which is unsatisfying for numerous reasons.
First of all, it’s abrupt and nonsensical, almost inevitably by its design. The camera literally cuts during a murder sequence to a “set” (clearly not the same place as the previous shot). The director then seduces the actress in front of the camera, only to start attacking her with a knife when she notices that the cameras are still rolling. Inevitably, it actually goes way too far to be a real snuff film. The actress is first tortured, with the arm being almost severed, one of her fingers cut off and finally her guts being pulled out. Whereas a simple stabbing or something similar may have been made to look realistic, the effects for these more elaborate sequences are simply not up to the task. The illusion is further spoiled by a few continuity errors that make it rather unconvincing. It may have been rather shocking to less attentive audiences who hadn’t been exposed to such things in 1971, but modern audiences will not be convinced.
The other problem is that it doesn’t really end the movie. I have no idea how Slaughter would have ended, but it was clearly leading up to something, be it a vengeance against the cult or a simple “yeah, the bad guys won this time” revelation 30 seconds later. But, here we have an entire movie leading up to an ending that has nothing to do with it. As ineptly written and directed as much of the movie is, it’s extremely frustrating to get no kind of wrapping up of the movie we’ve invested 75 minutes into before the footage we paid to see!
So, as far as we can tell from the remaining footage, the original movie Slaughter would have been a vaguely passable but extremely forgettable time-waster, with enough blood and boobs to keep you awake even as the film-making left you cold. With the footage added, it becomes something else, and it ain’t pretty.
CENSORSHIP
Almost inevitably, given its history and the snuff legend, Snuff found its way onto the video nasties list. As with so many of the old “video nasties”, Snuff has now been passed uncut by the BBFC in 2003, though at present no official UK DVD seems to have been released.
TRAILER
This film is one of the dreadful cannibal film I ever saw. I saw this a couple of years ago but it still remains on my mind. The scenes are really obscene. I am glad to found this post in here. Great review indeed.
the entire concept of snuff was a brilliant way to screw with peoples moral compass. I am not sure how ethical it was.