SNUFF
DVD Region 0. Blue Underground

No, it's not real.

Snuff began life as Slaughter, flirted with the title Daughters of De Sade (a GREAT title it must be said) and finally wound up as Snuff in the hands of scam-merchant distributor Allan Shackleton.

Slaughter was shot by husband and wife team Michael and Roberta Findlay, already veterans of the sleaze scene by the time they lensed this movie in 1971. Inspired by the Manson Family killings, they cobbled together a story which retold the events in the most simplistic way, changed names to avoid lawsuits and scurried off to South America, where film crews - if not life - were certainly cheap. telling the story of a hippy cult leader who inspires his followers to murder, the finished film was somewhat lacking in many areas. Sound for instance, as the movie had been shot without sync sound and had to be dubbed later. Any sense of watchability being the other main missing ingredient.

Back in the 70's with drive-ins, grindhouses and flea pits across the world eager for product, your movie had to be especially poor not to get a release. But no-one wanted Slaughter, and so it sat on the shelf for the next five years. Until Shackleton, exploitation film distributor and jovial sleaze merchant, decided to cash in on newspaper stories about so-called 'snuff movies' - porn films in which the performers were actually murdered.

There's a certain irony in the fact that Shackleton picked up on Slaughter to craft his snuff-scam. After all, it was Ed sanders' exhaustive book on the Manson Family that first coined the term 'snuff', and perhaps it was the rumours that some Family killings were filmed that made Shackleton see potential in this no-hoper film. Who can say?

Shackleton immediately removed the end of Slaughter and hired porn director Carter Stevens to film a new climax. The new version ends with the camera pulling back to reveal the film set. An actress who bears no resemblance to the woman previously seen on screen talks to the 'director' about how 'turned on' she is. They start making out, he pulls a knife, cuts off her hand and disembowels her. The film runs out.

After removing the film credits, planting press stories about a 'snuff movie' being seized by US customs and hiring protesters to picket cinemas where the film was playing, Shackleton has a surefire hit with the newly titled Snuff. Inevitably, dumbass feminists soon started REAL protests about the film, and it was briefly examined by the police who quickly realised that the only death involved here would be from audience members expiring through boredom.

As it stands now, Snuff is a VERY dull film which will frustrate the handful of people who actually find the story interesting by finishing before the end. For all the notoriety, it has scant sex and violence - even the tacked on ending is pretty tame - and as these are the only possible elements that would make it interesting, the movie stands as a real test of stamina for viewers. I'd suggest that if you DO watch it, skip straight to the last five minutes, check out what all the fuss is about and then find something better to do.

Blue Underground's DVD sticks with the scam tradition, presenting a remarkably bare-bones edition of the film - no extras, no chapters, no menu and no label credit. I appreciate them making an ironic reference to the mythology of the movie, but hopefully we'll eventually get a reissue with one of BU's definitive documentaries telling the story of Snuff. It'd be a hell of a lot more interesting than the movie itself.

DAVID FLINT