Snu lm

This article is about the genre. For the 1976 lm, see picket screenings.[10]
Snu (lm). For the 2005 lm, see Snu-Movie.
In the wake of Snu, numerous lms explored the idea of
snu lms, or used them as a plot device. They include
A snu lm is a motion picture genre that depicts the Last House on Dead End Street (1977), Paul Schrader's
actual murder of a person or people, without the aid of Hardcore (1979), Sidney Sheldons Bloodline (1979), the
special eects, for the express purpose of distribution and Ruggero Deodato lm Cannibal Holocaust (1980), David
entertainment or nancial exploitation.[1] Some lmed Cronenbergs Videodrome (1983), the Nine Inch Nails
records of executions and murders exist but have not been lm The Broken Movie (1993), the lm Henry: Portrait
made or released for commercial purposes.[2]
of a Serial Killer (1986), the Alejandro Amenbar lm
Tesis (1996), the lm Strange Days (1995), the Anthony
Waller lm Mute Witness (1994), the Johnny Depp lm
The Brave (1997), the Joel Schumacher lm 8mm (1999),
1 History
the John Ottman lm Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000),
the Fred Vogel lm August Underground (2001) and its
sequels,
the Mariano Peralta lm Snu 102 (2007), the
The very rst recorded use of the term snu lm is in
Sran
Spasojevi
lm A Serbian Film (2010), the Wes
a 1971 book by Ed Sanders, The Family: The Story of
Craven
lm
Scream
4, (2011) the Scott Derrickson lm
Charles Mansons Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. He alSinister
(2012)
and
the
Ridley Scott lm The Counselor
leges that The Manson Family was involved in making
[2]
(2013).
such a lm in California to record their murders.
The metaphorical use of the term snu to denote killing
appears to be derived from a verb for extinguishing a
candle. The word has been used as such in English
slang for hundreds of years. John Camden Hotten lists
the term in the fth edition of his Slang Dictionary in
1874 as a term very common among the lower orders of
London, meaning to die from disease or accident. The
word is descended (via the Middle English snuen or
snuppen[3] ) from the Old English snithan, meaning to
slaughter and dismember, from snide, meaning to kill
by cutting or stabbing, from snid, to cut.

Internet snu lms are alluded to in the Marc Evans lm

My Little Eye (2002), and the lm Halloween: Resurrection. The Showtime TV series Dexter features an internet
snu scene. Most recently the subject has been addressed
in British lm director Bernard Rose's lm Snu-Movie
(2005), the Nimrd Antal lm Vacancy (2007) and also
in the WWE lm The Condemned (2007) and the Gregory
Hoblit lm Untraceable. Rockstar Games, the controversial game publisher, released the snu-themed Manhunt
in 2003.

The Michael Powell lm Peeping Tom (1960) featured a

lmmaker who committed murders and used the acts as
the content of his documentary lms, although no real
murders are seen in the lm. The concept of snu lms
being made for prot became more widely known in
1976 with the commercial lm Snu.[4][5][6] A low budget
exploitation horror lm entitled Slaughter was directed by
Michael and Roberta Findlay. In an interview decades
later, Roberta Findlay said that the lms distributor Allan Shackleton had read about snu lms being imported
from South America and retitled the lm to Snu to exploit the idea;[7] he also added a new ending that depicted
an actress being murdered on a lm set.[8] The promotion
of Snu on its second release suggested it featured the
murder of an actress: The lm that could only be made
in South America... where life is CHEAP.,[9] but that
was false advertising.[8] Shackleton put out false newspaper clippings that reported a citizens groups crusading
against the lm[4] and hired people to act as protesters to

2 Recorded deaths
Some murderers have recorded their acts on video. Documentary lm makers and television news crews have also
captured footage of executions, suicides, and accidental
deaths. The resultant footage is not usually considered
to constitute a snu lm because the deaths were not enacted in a for-prot lm.

2.1 Documentary footage

The assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934
was one of the rst to be captured on lm. The sinking of
the HMS Barham in 1941 and the 1955 Le Mans disaster
were both captured on lm and have been widely shown
since then. The American public was gripped by the
Zapruder lm of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
1

The self-immolation and death of Thich Quang Duc, a

monk who protested against the regime of Ngo Dinh
Diem during the Vietnam War, was not only one of the
most notable gures to have his death captured on lm,
but he was one of the rst individuals to have his suicide
recorded. The Passenger, a lm directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, includes lm footage of a ring squad
execution. The stabbing death of Meredith Hunter by a
Hells Angel at the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont
Speedway was captured and shown in Albert and David
Maysles' documentary lm Gimme Shelter. The 1995
documentary lm Executions showed several executions
of people condemned to death.
The 2001 Daytona 500 witnessed the death of Dale Earnhardt on the nal lap of the event after he was in an accident. The footage of the wreck was not shown on live television, as the camera was xed on race leaders, but was
shown afterwards in replays after the race was over. Although Earnhardt was not the rst NASCAR driver to die
in a wreck, he was arguably more famous than many other
drivers that have died. His crash forced NASCAR to implement new safety regulations, such as the Car of Tomorrow. NASCAR has not replayed Earnhardts wreck,
but many videos of the incident exist on the internet. In
1994 Ayrton Senna's fatal crash in the 1994 San Marino
Grand Prix was also shown on live television but he died
later in a hospital. Nodar Kumaritashvili's fatal accident
at the 2010 Winter Olympics luge event was televised live
to millions of viewers.

RECORDED DEATHS

bers of a Russian neo-nazi skinhead gang, were convicted with their partners for brutally assaulting and
murdering dozens of migrants in Russia while lming the incidents and posting the videos online.[11]
However, Ryno was only sentenced to ten years of
hard labour because he was considered a juvenile at
the time.[12] Rynos and Skachevskys lms sprung
copycat incidents by similar far-right groups in Russia that continue to circulate online.
Between 1983 and 1985, Americans Charles Ng and
Leonard Lake videotaped their torturing some of the
women whom they would later kill.[2]
In the early 1990s, Canadian serial killers Paul
Bernardo and Karla Homolka separately videotaped
some of their sexual assaults of victims. They did
not lm their murders.[2]
In 1997 the German murderers Ernst Dieter Korzen
and Stefan Michael Mahn recorded their torture of
two prostitutes whom they had kidnapped. They
killed one and the other woman escaped, leading
to the mens arrests. They were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Prosecutors claimed
there was an international market for such videos,
and that Korzen and Mahn intended to sell their lm.
Korzen and Mahn were the rst persons convicted
for making a snu lm, although their video was
never distributed.[13][14]

On September 11, 2001, hundreds of millions of people saw television news coverage after the attacks that in- 2.3 Video recordings of murder
cluded footage of people jumping to their deaths from the
In 2001, Armin Meiwes videotaped the killing of
burning World Trade Center in New York City.
Bernd Jrgen Armando Brandes. Brandes had met
News footage or intentional political records that capwith Meiwes to be willingly killed and eaten by
tured murders, executions or suicides, including those
him.[15]
of Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-il, Eugene Armstrong, Daniel Pearl, Inejiro Asanuma, Lee Harvey Os In 2008, a video (known as 3 Guys One Hamwald and Yitzhak Rabin, and the suicides of Ricardo
mer) surfaced on the Internet showing Viktor
Cerna, and Budd Dwyer have been posted on the Internet.
Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuck, known as the
Such footage was either of a real event and shot for docuDnepropetrovsk maniacs, torturing and killing a 48mentary purposes, or the assassins lmed a murder to use
year-old Ukrainian man. Sayenko and Suprunyuck
the record for political purposes. The resulting footage
were subsequently convicted of the murders of 21
cannot be called a snu lm according to its denition.
people.[16]
The Traces of Death video series presents archive footage
of various deaths, corpses, injuries and autopsies including car accidents, suicides, shootings (including the
press conference suicide of Dwyer) and other borrowed
footage.

2.2

Video recordings of battery

In several cases murderers and serial killers have recorded

aspects of their crimes, although they lmed their victims
while still alive. These include:
In 2007, Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, mem-

In the rise of reported far-right activity in Russia, the

Russian National Socialist Party released a video in
2008 titled Execution of Tajik and Dagestani, which
depicted the murders of Shamil Odamanov, a migrant worker from the Dagestan region, and an unnamed Tajik migrant. Accompanied with heavy
metal music, Odamanov was beheaded and the Tajik
immigrant was shot to death by two masked men
purported to be members of the group. Since its
release, the video has gained notoriety and has been
circulated in Russian ultra-nationalist websites.[17]
In May 2012, a video surfaced online titled 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick that depicted a man being attacked

3
with an ice pick and being subsequently dismembered. The video has been linked to the arrest of
Luka Magnotta.[18]

Faces of Death
Martyrdom video
Beheading video

False snu lms

3.1

The Guinea Pig lms

Main article: Guinea Pig (lm series)

Artur Ryno
Pavel Skachevsky

5 References

The rst two lms in the Japanese Guinea Pig series are Notes
designed to look like snu lms; the video is grainy and
unsteady, as if recorded by amateurs. In the late 1980s, [1] Snu lms false. October 31, 2006. Retrieved Decemthe Guinea Pig lms were allegedly one of the inspirations
ber 2010.
for Japanese serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki's murders of
preschool girls. The Guinea Pig lm he owned was Mer- [2] Barbara Mikkelson, A Pinch of Snu, Snopes.com, 31
Oct 2006, accessed 8 April 2007
maid in a Manhole.[19]
After viewing a portion of Flower of Flesh and Blood,
the actor Charlie Sheen thought that the murder depicted
was genuine and contacted the MPAA, which contacted
the FBI. FBI agent Dan Codling informed Sheen and the
MPAA that the FBI and the Japanese authorities were already investigating the lm makers, who were forced to
prove that the murders were fake.[2] While the Guinea
Pig lms are not snu lms, two were purported to be
based on snu lms. The Devils Experiment was supposedly based on a lm sent to the Tokyo police showing a
group dismember a young woman. Although Flower of
Flesh and Blood was supposedly made after manga artist,
Hideshi Hino, received snu materials, it was based on
his own manga.[2]

3.2

Cannibal Holocaust

Main article: Cannibal Holocaust

[3] Bible in Wyclif tr. (i.e. 1384) Exodus xxv.38 where the
snoes ben quenchid extquotedbl; cf. xxxvii.23
[4] Scott Aaron Stine, The Snu Film: The Making of an
Urban Legend, Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 23.3, May /
June 1999, accessed December 13, 2010
[5] Do snu movies exist ? extquotedbl, Documentary, part
1, YouTube
[6] David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in The
Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, page 233 (University
of California Press, Ltd., 2000). ISBN 0-520-23265-8
[7] The Curse of Her Filmography : Roberta Findlays grindhouse legacy, New York Press, July 27, 2005
[8] Martina Lees, Death robe of secrecy hangs around snu
lms, reprinted from Beeld, October 18, 2003 (originally
in Afrikaans), Martina Lees Website, accessed December
13, 2010
[9] Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and The Horric
Avant-Garde, page 136 (University of Minnesota Press,
2000). ISBN 0-8166-3413-0

The Italian director Ruggero Deodato was charged after rumors that the depictions of killings in his 1980 lm
Cannibal Holocaust were real. He was able to clear him- [10] Snu, Britannica Online Encyclopedia
self of the charges.[20]

[11] Young Russian skinhead pleads guilty to killing 37 people,

from Pravda, May 25, 2007

Other than graphic gore, the lm contains several scenes
of sexual violence and the genuine deaths of 6 animals
[12] Skinhead teens jailed for Moscow racist murders. The
onscreen and one o screen, issues which nd Cannibal
Irish Times. December 12, 2008.
Holocaust in the midst of controversy to this day. It has
also been claimed that Cannibal Holocaust is banned in [13] Does Snu Exist? extquotedbl, The Dark Side of Porn,
Season 2 Episode 4, Channel 4 documentary, April 18,
over 50 countries,[21] although this has never been ver2006
ied. In 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named
Cannibal Holocaust as the 20th most controversial lm
[14] Frew, Callum (April 13, 1999). Perverts murdered
of all-time.[22]
woman for snu movie. The Daily Record.

See also
Crush lm

[15] German 'cannibal' tells of regret. BBC. November 23,

2003. Retrieved August 20, 2010.
[16] Ilyinskaya, Marina. Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs hear verdict (in Russian). blik.ua.

[17] Video Draws Attention to Growing Violence Against Minorities in Russia. nytimes.com. June 12, 2008. Retrieved September 25, 2014.
[18] Luka Rocco Magnotta: Online reaction to video reveals
a disturbing appetite for gore. TheStar.com. May 31,
2012. Retrieved July 12, 2012.
[19] Serial killer inspired by Guinea Pig lms. guineapiglms.com. Retrieved June 17, 2008.
[20] Ruggero Deodato (interviewee) (2003). In the Jungle:
The Making of Cannibal Holocaust (Documentary). Italy:
Alan Young Pictures.
[21] Cannibal Holocaust 25th Anniversary Edition (Media
notes). Ruggero Deodato. UK: VIPCO (Video Instant
Picture Company). 2004. p. back cover. VIP666SE.
[22] The 25 Most Controversial Films of All-Time. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved September 14, 2006.

Further reading
David Kerekes and David Slater. Killing for Culture:
Death Film from Mondo to Snu (Creation Cinema
Collection). London: Creation Books, 1996.

External links
Snu lm at DMOZ

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1

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Snu lm Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_film?oldid=628852539 Contributors: AxelBoldt, Mav, Bryan Derksen, The Anome,
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7.2

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7.3

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