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Snuff: A Documentary About Killing on Camera

Many years ago I went with a young woman to see The Bridges of Madison County, the love story of a whorish farm wife named Francesca (Meryl Streep) and a National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood). Towards the end of the film, there is a scene where Francesca and her husband are in their pick-up truck and come to a stop light. Ahead of them is Eastwood's character in his vehicle. Streep looks at the back of his head through the window and her hand inches toward the truck's door handle. At that moment, the girl I was with wanted in the worst way for the two lovers to be together and she blurted out, "Open the door." Tears running down her face, she looked at me. Dumbfounded, especially because the whole over the over topness of the movie was about to make me vomit, I looked at her and said, "You know its a movie. They cannot hear you. It is all pretend... I am never going to see you again, am I?"

When it comes to movies, in order to enjoy them, there needs to be a little suspension of disbelief. On one level, you know that these are actors repeating lines given to them by a writer. They are being told what to do and how to act by a director. There are make up, special effects, and lighting crews on hand to capture a certain look. Then music and sounds are added to evoke certain feelings from you. It is all prepackaged and cut months, years or sometimes decades before you see it. But on another level, it has to be real for you. You have to get inside of yourself and pretend that what you are watching is true life. You have to care about these characters. Identify with what they are going through. Let the story take you where it might. Have you ever had the experience where something jars you from this pretending, this fooling at least a part of yourself. The boom microphone falls into the shot because the projectionist screwed up, or the make up person did a lousy job, or the lipstick on the male character looks like it has been smeared on by a clown, and for a moment you are fully conscious that it is all pretend and you cannot enjoy yourself for a few seconds. Every once in awhile, when I am watching an old film, I suddenly realize that everyone I am watching is dead, and they have been dead for a long, long time. Hard to laugh at Groucho Marx when you realize he has been taking the dirt nap for over 30 years now.

Marilyn Monroe has to be young and sexy. This pretending is why, even though we know Tom Hanks and Jimmy Stewart are playing a character, it is important to us that Hanks and Stewart be that nice guy in real life. Arnold, is that larger than life action figure. Steve McQueen, is cool. It is why I doubt we will ever see a major leading man come out of the closet. Even though it is a movie and straight guys can play gay and gays can play straight, there is a part of us that has to believe that our leading man, heart throb, is really romancing the leading lady, and she is not more interested in the script girl. We cannot watch those Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies the same way audiences did in the 1960s because we know something they did not. This fragile connection between reality and fiction has been stretched even further with reality television, which is just badly written sitcom material, with even worse production values, masquerading as reality. These reality stars are coached on what to say, how to react and given a plot to follow.

I know Gene Simmons is a wacky guy, but somehow I doubt he is going to be running around Las Vegas with a dildo glued to his hand. And what about that darn Carrot Top! Hulk and Linda Hogan drive up and down South Beach, panicked, looking for their lost daughter. If Brooke was really missing, you would think someone would suggest they call the cell phone of one of the film crew following her around. The Bachelor, please. Politics have also stretched this boundary. Past a certain level, every action, word, backdrop and piece of clothing is more choreographed than a routine from Dancing With The Stars. Barack Obama might have a wit but even those off the cuff remarks are the work of a speechwriter. Bill Clinton gets himself into a little Monica problem and suddenly he is walking around with a Bible in his hands and the press just happens to be in the right place to capture a private, loving moment between his wife and him. The only thing that seemed to grow on George W. Bush's ranch was brush.

The gingerly connection between make believe and reality is why it does not surprise me that people want to believe that there is such a thing as snuff films floating around, films that show real people dying for the entertainment of others. Don't get me wrong. There is film of real deaths captured. John F. Kennedy's assassination, the Zapruder film, is one such example. Millions of Americans jumped on the Internet to watch the beheading of U.S. contractor Nick Berg by his Al-Queda captors (one of moments that made you so proud to be an American). The film of those individuals jumping to their deaths on 9/11 still haunts me in many ways. I am also sure that somewhere, right now, a nut job serial killer is watching a video of himself killing an innocent person. But a snuff film is something else. A snuff film is a movie that, for the purpose of financial gain and entertainment, has been made that shows an actual death. In other words, the person dying on film would still be walking around, alive and breathing, if someone did not want to make a buck and there was someone who did not want to shell out a few Benjamins to see it. It is a commercial enterprise. The term snuff comes from the euphemism of snuffing or extinguishing a flame. Human life in prose has been compared to the flame of a candle.)

In the 1970s, the notion that snuff films existed became a part of popular culture. It is easy to see why such an urban legend would arise during that time period. Rumors circulated that the Manson Family had filmed the murder of Sharon Tate and four others. Ed Sanders's 1971 book claimed the "Family" had made such films, although no one had seen them. People wanted to believe such allegations because the "Family" had stolen a large amount of film and cameras from NBC. The social fabric that united this nation seemed to be tearing apart. Vice and crime were splashed across the newspapers and television screens of this country. Snuff films proved that the nation was going morally downhill. Never mind that their parents and grandparents packed a picnic lunch and made it an outing to watch people being hung publicly, and Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit tells of communal events that we would rather forget. Kids and the world are worse today. There was (and still is) a need to believe there are large networks of individuals engaged in kidnapping children and young people off the street, killing them, filming it, and circulating that material to a hungry, wider public. The world is getting worse you see. The heathens are taking over and storming the gates. Never mind that capturing a murder on film, especially if you intend to distribute it to numerous people, is a pretty good way to make sure you do jail time. Prosecutor, may I hand you the smoking gun?

Also, horror special effects artists were getting better at their craft. It was, and still is, a source of pride of for who can produce the most realistic murder on screen, and young people still eat it up. The Production Codes which prohibited such depictions had vanished. It is easy to believe that young audiences that thrilled to these realistic fake killings would want to see real murders. In 1976, Monarch Releasing Corporation, as part of its marketing campaign for its film called Snuff, claimed that some of the film was real life footage of an actress who had been kidnapped and murdered in Argentina. It caused a furor until audiences actually saw how cheesy it looked. Other films, like Faces of Death, which does have actual accidents, suicides and executions featured in it, Guinea Pig and Cannibal Holocaust have claimed to have snuff footage in them, but the film cutting and flaws in their special effects have proven their assertions false.

Even though numerous investigators have looked into the subject matter and repeatedly stated that no such films exist, how can I claim that such film does not exist? I believe in the power of the almighty dollar, and Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine and all around smut hound, has offered one million dollars to anyone who can come forward with such a film. Al Goldstein and his ilk are scum but they are scum who want to protect their little kingdom of scumdom with every ounce of energy they have. If a real life smut film was out there and it came to light, the government would come down on it, and then them, like a ton of bricks. The best policemen are those in the skin trade themselves.

Much like how every few years a rumor flies around that some major Hollywood actor and actress actually had sex on camera for a film, like for example it was rumored that Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone did the nasty while making Basic Instinct, it is always clear they did not because the sex looks too good. Almost every murder and killing on film looks too good. What I mean is, in real life, death is shocking, disconcerting, and never pretty. You can play video games for hours and watch thousands of horror films and they will never prepare you for the death rattle. I have seen too much death in this world, more than 99 percent of those of you reading this column will see in a lifetime (and probably more movies than Roger Ebert). A real person's death is painful, brutal, and private, never something you want to watch on film if you can help it. The best we can do is make gentle the night and know the difference between reality and fantasy.

Verdict: A Slight Miss