Films originated as urban legends about the violence of real films and even took directors to jail
Anyone over 30 must have heard of the series. Faces of death, a film that shot for rental shops with a somewhat legendary aura of prohibition that featured real-life scenes of murders, accidents and other atrocities that no one in their right mind would want to watch. It was an urban legend that time turned out to be a hoax, but which introduced many people to so-called snuff movies.
The term itself is best known to horror viewers and fans alike, but the truth is that everyone has a bit of this morbid curiosity to check out these banned films or even a scene where fictional or real violence she is confused. But do you know what these productions really are and, above all, how they were born?
What is a snuff movie
In very general terms, a snuff movie – or snuff movie, as many people still call it – are those productions that show scenes of (presumably) actual violence or death to shock the viewer or, as some legends tell, to satisfy a very specific. more sadistic public type.
The highlight here is precisely for the alleged. When the term came up, in the mid-1970s, there was really the idea that these films tortured or killed actors and many people took advantage of this generalized panic to profit by releasing shorts and feature films that abused violence and fueled the myth. .
The case of Faces of death it’s one of the most iconic, not least because everyone who grew up in a video store has heard of this tape. And the visuals around it were more terrible than the content in the footage, which was also pretty crude. Years later, the filmmakers confirmed that much of the film was fake.
But he was just one of many who took advantage of that cursed aura. Other cases like Cannibal Holocaust And Flower of flesh and blood they were so shocking in the past that they spawned a case of mass hysteria that forced their creators to come forward to give an explanation.
Over time, however, the naivety of the audience vanished and no one believed in the veracity of these hyper-realistic scenes of violence anymore. However, the movement has found refuge in a very specific niche within horror and there are still many directors who play with style when they play with the gore and violence of the genre.
Between reality and fiction
This confusion of reality and fiction that snuff film provides is a reflection of a very specific period not in the history of cinema, but in the American imagination itself. The urban legend of productions that had real scenes of murders and mutilations appears in the mid-1970s, in the wake of the satanic panic caused by the news around Charles Manson.
In 1969, actress Sharon Tate was murdered while pregnant by Manson and his followers. The brutal crime shocked the United States and helped build the imagery of the serial killer and the murderous monster himself that would translate into the horror classics of the following decades, from Michael Myers to Jason.
In addition, rumors began to circulate in the media that the criminals had recorded the murder and that it was footage circulating around. And although the recordings were never found, the book The family – The story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy attack battalionwritten by Ed Sanders, broached the subject and talked about the existence of these films where people actually died, using the term snuff for it – an old English expression to refer to a death by accident or disease.
Of course, as it could not be otherwise, the origin of snuff films is questioned within the world of terror and there are those who go to save a proto-project from the 50s or 60s by claiming that it served as a basis. for what it was we conventionally call the beginning of everything. However, it is almost a consensus that arose from 1971 with the disclosure of the urban legend by the book.
Commitment for shock
But the cinema itself created the snuff film only in 1976 with the release of snuffwhich not only helped naming this subgenre, but also took advantage of this image that hovered in American society to shock and thereby profit from the controversy.
A few years earlier, producer Allan Shackleton released Massacre, an attempt to ride the news terror around Manson to make a horror film full of blood and violence. But the bet didn’t work out very well and the project was a box office failure.
However, some of the criticisms leveled at the film have been reintroduced and served as inspiration for its bigger move. At the time, some viewers pointed out that many of the scenes appeared to be real and that’s when Shackleton took advantage of the urban legend about the alleged recordings and decided to incorporate it not just into the story, but into the marketing of the film.
He then re-recorded a few moments, changed the ending, and spread the rumor that people had actually been killed while filming in South America. with the name of snuff, Massacre took on new life and began to circulate attracting much more attention based on curiosity.
To make sure the fake controversy reverberated the way he wanted, Shackleton spread fake news about the protests in newspapers and even staged some rallies against his own film to fuel the myth. Eventually, the fake news spread and he got what he wanted.
And still a lot snuff it was rubbish like Massacre – after all, they were almost the same movie – the idea that people were actually dead impacted audiences as much as it delighted some horror fans. So much so that it didn’t take long for other films to follow a similar proposition, betting primarily on blood and sexual assault to shock.
beyond the cinema
But the idea of ​​these banned films or that cinema has gone too far is something that still lingered for a long time. With Cannibal Holocaustfor example, the mix of very realistic visual effects, the adoption of the aesthetics of movie found and a good deal of lack of ethical respect meant that director Ruggero Deodato had to publicly say that it was all fiction.
The 1980 Italian film featured a group of documentary directors who go into the jungle to film the natives. But, at some point, they are captured by a cannibal tribe, who begins to torture and eat them – and all this would have been filmed and the recording found by someone who, instead of calling the authorities, decided to rent a shop.
Hence, many people began to regard the film as a documentary, while others came to believe that there were people who were actually killed for the recording, due to the realism given in some scenes.
As a result, Deadato was arrested and had to ask the actors to come forward to explain that none of this was true. The case went to trial and was only exonerated when it was proven that no one was killed, impaled or quartered during the filming.
However, it was revealed that some animals were actually slaughtered to take advantage of the blood and make things more realistic. According to the director, it was snakes, monkeys, pigs and even a coati that ended up dead in the production and that were given to the tribes of the region to feed on. The revelation made Cannibal Holocaust prohibited in several countries.
Another snuff film that has yielded far beyond the production itself was Flower of flesh and bloodalso known by the original title, Guinea pig 2. The 1985 Japanese feature is part of a franchise that has always used cold blood and realistic violence to shock, but has gone a little further to the point of fooling even those who have worked with film.
In 1991, actor Charlie Sheen saw the film and believed the film was a real snuff, meaning that an actress’ breakup was real. That said, he called the FBI to investigate what he thought was a record of a crime, which was soon cleared up as a mere misunderstanding.
damn legacy
Over the years, audiences have become less naïve with the studios’ strategies and the notion that the violence presented in the films is real has been pushed aside. So, snuff movies are no longer in this field of urban legend that there are crazy people filming a real murder and they have become much more aesthetic.
You know that movie that takes great care to make a more violent scene seem real? That gore that goes beyond the bloodbath and borders on the grotesque and bad taste? Because that’s what modern snuff has become.
So much so that it will serve as the basis for the creation of the so-called torture porn, or those graphically explicit violent moments. Something at stake besides doque Deadly games became, for example, indicating how the subgenus evolved into something else over time.
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Source: Terra
Emily Jhon is a product and service reviewer at Gossipify, known for her honest evaluations and thorough analysis. With a background in marketing and consumer research, she offers valuable insights to readers. She has been writing for Gossipify for several years and has a degree in Marketing and Consumer Research from the University of Oxford.
