Snuff (film)
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| Starring | Aldo Mayo Alfredo Iglesias Mirtha Massa | |
| Directed by | Michael Findlay Roberta Findlay Horacio Fredriksson | |
| Produced by | Jack Bravman Allan Shackleton | |
| Written by | Michael Findlay Roberta Findlay A. Bochin | |
| Released | 1976 | |
| Runtime | 80 min. | |
| Country | USA / Argentina | |
| language | English | |
| IMDB Info | 0072184 on IMDb | |
Snuff is a 1976 "splatter film" most notorious for being marketed as if it were an actual snuff film.
The film started out as a low-budget gore film titled Slaughter which was written and directed by the husband-and-wife grindhouse filmmaking team of Michael and Roberta Findlay. Filmed in Argentina in 1971 it depicted the actions of a Manson-esque murder cult. The film went unreleased for several years, though after the controversy that erupted when it was released in 1976, people claimed to have seen it before.
In 1976, the Findlays' distributor, Alan Shackleton, a low grade filmmaker and sometimes pornographer specializing in sadomasochism, added a new ending in which a woman is brutally murdered by a film crew, supposedly the Slaughter crew. Filmed in a "cinema verite" style, the new ending purported to show an actual murder. The new footage was spliced onto the end of Slaughter with an abrupt cut that suggested that the footage was unplanned and authentic, and the new version released under the title Snuff.
This was done as a marketing ploy so that the fake on-camera death could be promoted as being genuine. Shackleton even went so far as to hire fake protesters to picket the movie theaters showing the film. Soon this became moot, as the group Women Against Pornography began staging real protests, which received coverage by such outlets as the CBS Evening News.
The new ending was not organized nor shot by the Findlays. After realizing that their film Slaughter was being reused they threatened to sue Shackleton, later accepting an out-of-court settlement. Shortly thereafter, Roberta Findlay left her husband for Alan Shackleton, who taught her to make hardcore pornography.
The cast included Aldo Mayo, Alfredo Iglesias, and Mirtha Massa.
Snuff is believed to be one of the bases for the urban legend of snuff films.
Controversy
As a publicity stunt, distributor Shackleton reportedly hired fake protesters to picket movie theaters showing the film. According to his associate Carter Stevens, Shackleton was surprised when some genuine protesters also started picketing the theaters. Although the film was exposed as a hoax in Variety in 1976, it became popular in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Boston. Feminist groups started protesting Snuff, which influenced city officials in Santa Clara, Philadelphia, and St Paul to force theaters to stop showing the film. Twenty women protested the film's return engagement in Rochester, New York at the Holiday Ciné: four of those protesters were arrested after breaking the poster frame to destroy the film's poster. A theater owner in Monticello was prosecuted on obscenity charges. In most places, however, the protests failed to stop the theaters from showing the movie.
Rumors persisted that the film showed a real-life murder. "[P]rompted by complaints and petitions from well-known writers, including Eric Bentley and Susan Brownmiller, and legislators", an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the film's production was conducted by New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, who dismissed the supposedly "real" murder as "nothing more than conventional trick photography—as is evident to anyone who sees the movie". Morgenthau reassured the public that the actress apparently dismembered and killed in the ending of the film "is alive and well", has urged the police to trace her. He also found no basis for criminal prosecution related to pornography statutes, or to consumer fraud laws in regard to the film's advertising. However, Morgenthau stated that he had been "concerned about the fact that this kind of a film might incite or encourage people to commit violence against women".
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Among the most notorious cult films in American history, SNUFF is famous for promoting the urban legend of the "snuff film". In actuality, this is an Argentinean exploitation film loosely based on the Sharon Tate murder. The film follows the exploits of a bearded man named Satan who leads a gang of biker chicks in a series of killings. The footage that caused a fairly major furor over the film's release was a short sequence tacked onto the end that shows the director of the movie supposedly disemboweling the lead actress. Presented as reality, this footage caused a major uproar and has made the film the subject of endless speculation.
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