1.0 out of 5 stars
Cheap and misleading, February 3, 2012
This review is from: Snuff: a documentary about killing on camera. (DVD)
Man, what a piece of junk this documentary was. Being someone who has somewhat of a slight interest in the idea of the existence of snuff films, I watched this expecting something that would maybe talk about the legend, where the legend came from, what the idea of snuff films say about our society, the numerous instances in which the urban legend came close to being a reality, and perhaps an investigation on these so-called pieces of evidence. Instead, what I got was one of the most numbskulled documentaries I've seen in a while. I'm not sure whose idea it was to put out this cheap piece of sensationalism, but on the plus side at least this isn't as bad as Buried in the Sand.
The documentary starts off alright. The first big question is asked. "What is a snuff film?" the definition of which, people to this day have a difficult time understanding. A snuff film is a picture in which a person is killed for the film as a means of profit or commercial distribution. Before I get into what this film does wrong, I want to say that I do believe that snuff films exist. I don't think that they exist in the mainstream, and I think the idea of their possible availability in the world of underground pornographic films (like in the Joel Schumacher film 8mm) is very limited. I think that the Paul Schrader picture Hardcore features a much more realistic possibility of how a snuff film can exist. As cheesy as it sounds, I do think that somewhere in some small little screening room in some shady apartment building, a rich person is paying a high amount of money to have a snuff film screened, personally, to them. The reason why I think this is happening is simple. If pornographic pictures depicting bestiality, pedophilia, simulated rape and torture, and pretend murder and necrophilia can exist in this world, why can't a film depicting actual murder for the sole purpose of the picture somehow have slipped under the radar? The only natural conclusion I can come to is that it has, and while I don't have the guts to actually spend a good six to eight hour block of time searching online for a link to one, I do think that if I did and I were smart about it and I looked in the right places I would find one, or at least something that might resemble one.
What I was hoping for this documentary to do was to explore that aspect of the legend. Instead it proceeds to do the exact opposite. It talks a lot about gory, violent films and shows scenes from aforementioned films, it talks about serial killers and shows selected sections of their home movies, it talks about conflicts overseas and shows footage of the al-Qaeda executions, the Abu Ghraib tortures, firefights, soldiers getting sniped from afar, and then it briefly touches on possible instances that suggests the existence of snuff pictures through storytelling. I don't know where to begin with my problems with the film.
I guess I should first mention the fact that the first large scale film clip they show is a scene from the cheap piece of low budget trash titled Snuff, which is basically a South American retelling of the story of the Manson family up until the end of the picture in which the actors walk away and the script girl is videotaped being murdered by the director. This film is infamous, and I do mean infamous, for being one of the biggest examples of how a film can survive on publicity alone. The film was picketed by family groups who wanted the film to be destroyed due to it allegedly being a real snuff film. The picture made money as a result and the rest is history. It was discovered that the producer actually hired a lot of these people and wrote the articles in newspapers discrediting the film as an immoral piece of junk. This film not only manages to skimp over a lot of this information, but also plays the infamous scene from the picture telling the audience to "judge for themselves". What the hell does that even mean? The scene is clearly not real. The effects are laughable, even by Herschell Gordon Lewis standards, and everyone knows that the clip is fake. Lets move on! Please!
Then, the documentary talks about Cannibal Holocaust, one of the greatest horror films ever made in my opinion. To me, this film is a milestone in horror cinema. It's a deeply shocking, horrific, and bizarre film filled from start to finish with intensity, suspense, and gore. The film is almost literally an orgy of violence, almost rivaling The Passion of the Christ in explicit violence. This documentary doesn't go too into detail about the film, but instead mostly talks about it's controversial nature. Yes, the film is controversial. Yes the director Ruggero Deodato was accused of actually killing his actors and was put in jail for it until the actors came forward. However, why not talk about the film itself? There's a lot to talk about with this film. The film is a horror film first and foremost, but it also explores a lot of things like sensationalism, the media, conflicts overseas, trauma, how far one must go to find the truth, and the philosophy of entertainment in documentary film making. No, instead the interviewees talk about how controversial the film is and then move on. The filmmakers had a golden opportunity to talk about something really interesting and they blew it, but not before doing two additional things wrong.
They forget to do a lot of things in this film's "exploration" of Cannibal Holocaust, but one thing they don't forget to do is to show us the live animal slaughter of a Coati featured in the film. There is no reason for this clip to be in this film except to briefly talk about how future serial killers kill animals, and how wrongheaded was it to actually feature that clip in a section about serial killers? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense and it's not something that I necessarily want to see, but don't worry. This soon proves to a continuing habit this film has. Personally, I think that the inclusion of that clip in this film is more exploitative than anything in the films that these people talk about, but whatever. And of course, the other mistake this documentary makes is including footage of 'The Long Last Road to Hell' segment featured in Cannibal Holocaust. It's not it's inclusion in the picture that bothers me, it's more the fact that the filmmakers here didn't do their research. They include it in the documentary thinking that it's faked footage. I regret to inform them that the footage they showed was, unfortunately, real.
Throughout the next fifteen or so minutes of the documentary, they show various clips from films like Faces of Death, Emmanuel in America, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Trouble Every Day, and Bowling for Columbine. Sometimes the interviewees have some very interesting, insightful things to say about these films, but most of the time they say things that have already been said a million times. The most interesting part is probably when they talk about Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, although once again they miss a golden opportunity to actually explore what the film was saying, which is a shame because I would have loved to hear what these people have to say about it. They talk about the most infamous scene in the film in which Henry and Otis film their slaughter of an entire family and then bring it home and watch it and then start to rewind it so that they can watch it again.
The thoughts of these people when it comes to Faces of Death is particularly strange. A lot of them act like this film did something groundbreaking and significant by showing real death on screen for the viewer, but they're dead wrong. These kinds of films have existed for a long time now. Nobody ever mentions Mondo Cane here, though they do mention the book Killing For Culture, which is something I would recommend HIGHLY over watching this film. Even Cannibal Holocaust did it before Faces of Death did it, so why even bring it up? Faces of Death is simply one of the more shocking (and popular) in a growing series of death films. Of course this film gets a lot of facts wrong throughout, although I was personally more offended by this documentary's self-righteous high and mighty attitude throughout. The interviewees, throughout much of this film, look at the audience with disgust and disdain. They even accuse Michael Moore of "playing the snuff card" and then proceeding to call Bowling for Columbine a snuff film (which it is far from) and then criticizing Michael Moore for showing the video footage of the Columbine massacre. My favorite part is when they say that "Michael Moore could have easily made his point without showing that footage" while they are proceeding to show footage of the Columbine massacre. To me, it's fairly clear that Michael Moore's reasons for showing the footage are infinitely more relevant and sensible than these filmmakers' reasons.
Then the film totally decides to go for shock value by showing us the home movie footage of Charles Ng and Leonard Lake scattered throughout an exploration of their crimes. One thing these filmmakers fail to tell us, however, is that they never actually recorded their murders. They only recorded their victims and their tormenting of them. So basically, the existence of all this footage in this film is thus muted. I don't really particularly want to see this footage and I doubt very much that the families of these victims would appreciate this footage being reproduced and put in this exploitative and sensationalistic documentary, but hey it's not like this film is offering to educate anyway. By this point, the film has gone far off track as to what snuff films even are. None of this stuff really relates all that much to the original subject. It decides to go even further off track by then talking about the conflicts overseas and then showing us what amounts to a montage of death featuring soldiers getting executed on...
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5 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
misleading, boring, publicity stunt by no-talents, September 18, 2008
This review is from: Snuff: a documentary about killing on camera. (DVD)
A "snuff film" is a film where an actor WILLINGLY dies during a scene in a film (as seen in the Nicolas Cage film 8MM). The definition has been around for decades and the producers try to re-define it by "interviewing" some unknown filmmakers, film "historians", and one jerk that is so annoying you wish he would become a subject of what they are talking about. No one you know and they have nothing interesting to say.
ZERO research went into making this. Although they show a few scenes from "the devil's experiment" from the GUINEA PIG series there is no mention of the huge controversy and investigation by the FBI (probably because it was found to be fake and that snuff films don't exist). If you're going to make a documentary at least present some information and not just lame talking heads. Even the Russian-mob snuff film ring mentioned has never been supported by any evidence and that's why they are not in jail.
This seems more like an attempt at publicity for these unknown filmmakers than actually being informative. Although one producer has ONE credential, his story about viewing a "real snuff film" is hard to believe and really annoying to watch him tell it.
Those that are familiar with this subject have seen this all before and this is a waste of your time while others will be misinformed on the subject.
Real snuff films do not exist and this dreck just wants to add fuel to the urban legend. 8MM is far more informative and easier to watch than this poor publicity stunt.
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