Do the so-called snuff films actually exist?

3.05.2011 | By: Antonio B

This time we will talk about the so-called snuff films, that is, private porn videos where a woman is supposedly killed at the end.

It’s typical of infamous snuff films that women are tortured and actually killed after sexual intercourse. (PhotoXpress)

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Let’s start with the film Amateur Porn Star Killer

A dark night, a young girl by the road and a stranger who invites her into his car. As she is stupid, she accepts the invitation and enters into hell. In front of the camera of a psychopath who wants to make the so-called snuff film. The film where an actress also dies in reality. Just after sexual intercourse, or even better, during intercourse. Without any special effects and tricks. Truly and live. And the guy did it in reality. He hid his films in the boxes of original videos in various American video rental stores. In the boxes of older and less known films rented by a very small number of people. His stuff became cult and some video rentals stores still rent them under the counter. If the aforementioned is true, that’s another matter, and if his videos were real, it also remains a mystery. Snuff films are problematic because it’s difficult to prove that they’re real. You never know if they’re in fact only a trick. Only special effects and role play.

Actor Charlie Sheen found a snuff film

Just ask actor Charlie Sheen, a great fan of porn films, who reported one of the supposed snuff films to the police, but it turned out that it was only a very convincing episode of the cult Japanese series The Guinea Pig Films. Very masochistic videos about butchering women, where it’s very difficult to see that these are only special effects. Or director Rugger Deodat, who even had to go to court over his film Cannibal Holocaust and, of course, also proved that the film included effects and that they didn’t really kill or injure anybody. This was a cannibalistic film which showed live how a man’s penis was cut off as well as a woman’s breasts.

Are snuff films only a hoax?

Are snuff films therefore only a fabrication, urban legend, sick desire of individuals that would actually enjoy it? For now, there’s still no concrete proof, while film effects are so sophisticated that they easily blur the distinction between reality and fiction. Maybe I would believe the famous pornographer Larry Flynt who bragged several years ago that he had a genuine snuff film. Larry, on the other hand, is also a person who knows how to manipulate the media and he made everything up for his own publicity. For many horror films, particularly those with the cannibalistic and sexually explicit content, which were filmed in large quantities in Italy, people actually think that they are real; that someone’s penis was truly cut off and a woman was in fact killed or raped, but in the end it turns out that it’s only a film. A clever provocation. If you saw a film by Herschell Gordon Lewis, you also suspect that things really happened; that a psychopath in fact brutally killed his victims, the bowels were genuine, no special effects were used, and that Lewis should have been imprisoned long time ago.

Japanese porn massacres

And then there are the infamous films titled Guinea Pig for which people also hardly believed that they are only films; that all the Japanese girls were truly never cut up or brutally raped and killed. The same is also thought about the films made by Takashi Miike, where violence is so graphic that it seems almost impossible to be acting. A knife and needles cut into a woman’s body in such a realistic way that it hurts you. However, these are only films. Only fiction. Only wild fantasies of directors that know how to do their job. Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees are nothing compared to them. Special effects are obvious there, but in the Guinea Pig films you don’t see them. People are literally taken aback and can’t believe what they’re seeing. It’s so powerful that you really think no tricks were used.

Notorious murderer Charles Manson

The first snuff film was made by infamous Charles Manson. As the film was never found, the matter is of course only an urban myth. And since Manson, snuff films became interesting. So interesting that some people might have made them and hid them in a similar way as the hero in the aforementioned film. There are surely videos from the war in the former Yugoslavia. Videos showing how soldiers slaughtered and raped women, or videos from Africa where black people had to endure racism and perversity. However, I wouldn’t call that snuff, but I would call it vile behaviour. Snuff is a carefully planned porn film where a woman is brutally tortured and killed at the end. Well, not necessarily a porn film, but definitely torture and death without the possibility of rescue. Of course, to make money and distribute a film. Likewise, the infamous murder of president John F. Kennedy, or if you will, no less infamous murder of Sadam Husein, aren’t snuff films, even if a victim is in fact killed in front of a camera. Videos of murders that were taken by serial killers for their own purposes also couldn’t be defined as snuff films. Snuff films are made for other purposes. For buyers who order them to enjoy in watching torture and sex.

Snuff in a film

Of course, snuff was also interesting to many filmmakers who dealt with the topic in different ways. The most infamous films are Peeping Tom, Hardcore, Cannibal Holocaust, Videodrome, 8mm, Vacancy, Hostel, Tesis, Strange Days and Urban Legends: Final Cut. But these are only films and they aren’t the evidence that things also exist in reality. The closest to the truth were Russian private videos of child pornography and rapes that the police also tried very hard to find. There was of course no hard evidence, which means that nobody was completely certain if it really happened or if it was a sick idea of wannabe filmmakers. And then there’s also the series Faces of Death that showed real accidents of various people. This was very close to snuff films, although it later turned out that many of the most shocking scenes were only tricks. A skilful manipulation of audiences. There hasn’t been any proof of a genuine snuff film yet, which is of course good because I cannot imagine how could someone be truly turned on by such films and they would go like hot cakes. However, I’m very concerned about the trend of increasingly more violence in pornography. More and more brutal sequences bordering on torture. And if this is such a turn-on for potential buyers, genuine snuff films are of course not very far from being made.