SNUFF (1976)

"The film that could only be made in South America... where Life is CHEAP!" shrieks the poster tagline. Not as cheap as the bid for credibilty in this notorious video nasty which only pinged on the British censors' radar when it was cynically marketed as an actual snuff movie. The atrocious dubbing, editing and performances in this grimy, bad porn-style offering are so bad as to defy anyone to believe anything on screen. Michael and Roberta Findlay directed the original footage (titled SLAUGHTER) back in 1971 but the distributor Alan Shackleton shelved it and tacked on a new ending four years later directed by Simon Nuchtern to capitalise on the vogueish urban myths about South American snuff movies - those rumoured to feature real on-screen murder. We'll get to that, but the first ninety percent of the movie is so incoherent and laughably inept that it takes a true horror film buff to wait that long.

The establishing scene of hippie chicks on a motorcycle underscored by a rock riff riding  cheekily close to Steppenwolf''s 'Born to be Wild' tells us the creators were fans of Dennis Hopper's EASY RIDER. The obvious influence of that counter-culture masterpiece is further felt by the later juxtaposing of Chile carnival footage with crude intercuts of two principals spectating unconvincingly as if taking part. In Hopper's movie he grabbed guerilla-style footage of the main cast genuinely immersed in the excitement of New Orleans Mardi Gras. His raw approach is part of EASY RIDER's gripping capturing of the zeitgeist. SNUFF's reality is that of hackwork.

The basic plot is an unsubtly welded cut-and-shut job of two disparate stories that eventually collide like kiddies' go-karts. One the one hand there are the two-timing machinations of glamorous actress Terry London (Argentinian beauty contest winner Mirta Massa) behind the back of her sleazebag producer Max (Aldo Mayo) "All he's interested in is big bosoms" spits her rich playboy lover Horst 

Meanwhile we also follow a bargain-basement Manson cult with a female harem led by Enrique Larratelli's Satán (emphasis on the second syllable please). "I will change men's destiny," he declaims. The portentousness of his statements is constantly undermined by many of his lines sounding like they were post-dubbed in an echoey public toilet. 

After Max's murder by the cult at the aforementioned carnival,Terry is interviewed by a local cop whose office is literally a desk placed in the doorway of a warehouse - production values and setting amusingly reminiscent of PLAN 9.

The rest is tawdry nonsense until we get to the infamous footage that caused all the censorship problems. In an epilogue filmed with noticeably better technical quality, a film crew has just finished a scene that both director and actress feel went well. He then suggests a little filmed celebratory nookie on the bed. Inexplicably the actress is happy to comply (!) until gradually things takes a sinister turn; he proceeds to snip off fingers and disembowel her in unflinching detail. As he brandishes her entrails in the air like a demented high priest, the picture cuts, leaving the hurried audio of the cameraperson blurting  "We got it all. Let's get out of here..." in an effort to simulate the risk of recording genuine horrific transgressiveness on camera. 

Come on now. The sequence is patently fake in its execution and could only fool hysterical reactionaries who are ignorant of movie effects and gullible enough to swallow admat materials on face value. Step forward former MP Sir Graham Bright: his first Private Members Bill in 1983 led to the wave of insane seizures of VHS tapes (as damagingly all-encompassing as the capturing of dolphins in tuna fishermens' nets) along the way to the Video Recordings Act of 1984. Interviews I've seen with him appear to confirm that he really believed that the murders in films like SNUFF actually took place. Thank goodness he never served on the BBFC board as a reviewer. 

As the film's earlier history showed, he wasn't the only fish reeled in. On its U.S. theatrical release in 1976, Shackleton pulled off a marketing trick worthy of lovable 1950s huckster producer William Castle by employing people to picket cinemas in a fake protest at the film's cinema vérité inclusion of real homicide. Their private delight at reports of feminists making real protests as a result were tempered though by SNUFF's eventual exposure as a hoax.