SNUFF (1976)
Article 3681 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-28-2011
Posting Date: 9-12-2011
Directed by Michael Findlay
Featuring Margarita Amuchastegui, Ana Carro, Liliana Fernandez Blanco
Country: Argentina / USA / Canada
What it is: Manson inspired gore film

Female bikers follow a charismatic leader who plans to have them break into an estate and slaughter everyone there.

Though it’s not strictly kosher to judge a movie by its ad campaign and publicity, there are times where it’s very tempting, and this is a definite example. Director Michael Findlay had made a Manson-inspired film called THE SLAUGHTER which was so bad that it sat on the shelf for five years before he pulled it out, edited in a four minute sequence at the end in which the camera shows the crew shooting the movie engaged in the torture, murder and disembowelment of another crew member; the publicity then claimed that the sequence was film of a real murder. This was certainly the most cynical and crass movie marketing campaign in history. As for the movie itself, it’s easy to see why THE SLAUGHTER sat on the shelf; it’s aimless, pointless, dull and irritating, and it never gets more stupid than when it tries to be meaningful. When you get right down to it, the footage from the earlier movie only serves as seventy-five minutes of filler to lead in to the last scene, which was shot only for the marketing to have something to play with. In the face of this, criticism seems beside the point. My main reaction ultimately is that I’m glad I did not go the movie theater and sit with an audience of people hoping they were going to see a real-life murder; I think this would have creeped me out more than anything in the movie itself.

I’m glad this one is out of the way.