I have been reading The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western, written by Jon Tuska and published in 1985. Tuska is concerned with seeing how the images of the West presented in Western writing and in Hollywood films (specifically) are true to history.
Unsurprisingly Tuska finds that the films are rarely accurate, with this reflecting a lack of research and/or the deliberate obfuscation of truths about ‘how the West was won,’ namely through violence, treachery, and genocide.
Then, in his conclusion, Tuska mentions the snuff film, which he views as actually existing, but apparently without bothering to undertake any research or fact checking.
An ironic instance of ‘printing the legend’...
Showing posts with label Snuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snuff. Show all posts
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
The meaning of Snuff?
I received a call for papers for a conference on the Snuff film, which I’m thinking of sending in a proposal for, around snuff aesthetics in Argento's The Card Player.
How do you think Snuff is defined, or what meaning do you attach to the term?
My own understanding would be something like the deliberate killing of another person on camera for personal gratification and/or profit. But I don’t know where that places, say, jihadist execution footage in that it is politically motivated.
Thoughts?
How do you think Snuff is defined, or what meaning do you attach to the term?
My own understanding would be something like the deliberate killing of another person on camera for personal gratification and/or profit. But I don’t know where that places, say, jihadist execution footage in that it is politically motivated.
Thoughts?
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Snuff / The Slaughter / American Cannibale / El ángel de la muerte
First things first: Snuff is not an actual snuff film.
If we define a snuff film as one in which someone is deliberately killed on camera with the intention of releasing the resulting footage for entertainment purposes, then no such thing has been found or proven to exist to date.
There are certainly films which trade on the myth of snuff - like this one - or which incorporate real-life death footage. But even in the marginal case of the mondo film Africa Addio, which features actual on-camera executions, there is no evidence that the presence of the film-makers and the camera was the decisive factor behind these killings.
What Snuff did, however, was connect the idea of the snuff film back to its origin, in rumours around the Manson family; present what snuff footage might conceivably look like; and generally popularised the form in a way that the far more disturbing Last House on Dead End street had failed to do.
The origins of the film lie in a 1971 horror film made by notorious exploitation couple Roberta and Michael Findlay, The Slaughter. Made in Argentina and post-synchronised into English, Slaughter depicts a Manson-like guru named Satan who compels his female followers to commit murder. Two of their victims are a sleazy independent film producer, Max Marsh, and his Sharon Tate-styled leading lady, Terri London, who have come to South America to make a film.
The bargain basement, utterly inept production was redeemed only by a Steppenwolf-esque rock soundtrack; some gratuitous breast exposure; and the naming of one of the characters as Horst Frank, presumably not in reference to the German actor even though there is a strange discussion of the ethics of the West German arms industry equipping Israel to indicate that nationality did have some bearing here. (We all know about The Boys from Brazil and Adolf Eichmann hiding out in Argentina, after all)
Later exploitation distributor Alan Shackleton bought the film and, realising what a dog egg he had on his hands, had a new coda filmed in which another actress, who looks nothing like her Argentinian predecessor in the main film, is supposedly killed by her director and crew.
The effects within this sequence are unconvincing as is the way in which the camera 'just happens' to run out of film at the climactic moment. But, bolstered by Shackleton's clever promotion of the film, as he himself orchestrated a campaign of outrage against it, it didn't matter.
If someone went to see the film for themselves then Shackleton had already made his money off them, no matter what their response to it.
If Shackleton couldn't lose, nor could the feminists who put their hearts before their heads in supporting his campaigns and not bothering to research the subject. Basically, it seems the truth just didn't matter all that much when the legend was so much better to print.
Co-director Michael Findlay later died in a helicopter accident on the then Pan-Am building. He was on his way to demonstrate a new 3D camera. Part of me cannot help wondering if there is footage of his death extant and that it would thus make a suitably ironic inclusion in a Faces of Death entry.
If we define a snuff film as one in which someone is deliberately killed on camera with the intention of releasing the resulting footage for entertainment purposes, then no such thing has been found or proven to exist to date.
There are certainly films which trade on the myth of snuff - like this one - or which incorporate real-life death footage. But even in the marginal case of the mondo film Africa Addio, which features actual on-camera executions, there is no evidence that the presence of the film-makers and the camera was the decisive factor behind these killings.
What Snuff did, however, was connect the idea of the snuff film back to its origin, in rumours around the Manson family; present what snuff footage might conceivably look like; and generally popularised the form in a way that the far more disturbing Last House on Dead End street had failed to do.
The origins of the film lie in a 1971 horror film made by notorious exploitation couple Roberta and Michael Findlay, The Slaughter. Made in Argentina and post-synchronised into English, Slaughter depicts a Manson-like guru named Satan who compels his female followers to commit murder. Two of their victims are a sleazy independent film producer, Max Marsh, and his Sharon Tate-styled leading lady, Terri London, who have come to South America to make a film.
The bargain basement, utterly inept production was redeemed only by a Steppenwolf-esque rock soundtrack; some gratuitous breast exposure; and the naming of one of the characters as Horst Frank, presumably not in reference to the German actor even though there is a strange discussion of the ethics of the West German arms industry equipping Israel to indicate that nationality did have some bearing here. (We all know about The Boys from Brazil and Adolf Eichmann hiding out in Argentina, after all)
Later exploitation distributor Alan Shackleton bought the film and, realising what a dog egg he had on his hands, had a new coda filmed in which another actress, who looks nothing like her Argentinian predecessor in the main film, is supposedly killed by her director and crew.
The effects within this sequence are unconvincing as is the way in which the camera 'just happens' to run out of film at the climactic moment. But, bolstered by Shackleton's clever promotion of the film, as he himself orchestrated a campaign of outrage against it, it didn't matter.
If someone went to see the film for themselves then Shackleton had already made his money off them, no matter what their response to it.
If Shackleton couldn't lose, nor could the feminists who put their hearts before their heads in supporting his campaigns and not bothering to research the subject. Basically, it seems the truth just didn't matter all that much when the legend was so much better to print.
Co-director Michael Findlay later died in a helicopter accident on the then Pan-Am building. He was on his way to demonstrate a new 3D camera. Part of me cannot help wondering if there is footage of his death extant and that it would thus make a suitably ironic inclusion in a Faces of Death entry.
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