Snuff Film

Basic Information

A snuff film is a movie that depicts the actual death of a person or of people for the entertainment of it's audience. It is not uncommon for real death to be caught on film — sometimes accidentally, sometimes for documentary purposes — and fictional death is an integral part of drama. In the snuff film, however, the killing is real and deliberately done for entertainment.

Purportedly, Charles Manson and his notorious "family" were involved with making such a film. The controversial film Faces of Death (1978) combined documentary footage of war and the killing of animals with staged footage of human death.

See Also

• Moroccan "snuff film"

Sources

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia article: Snuff film

Game and Story Use

• A psychopathic movie-maker out to create a snuff film would make an appropriately vile adversary.
  • Or perhaps a psycho-killer who just likes recording his murders. That would be vile too.
• This is not a way the PCs will enjoy finding their missing witness/agent/dependant. That is no reason not to use it.
• Don't overlook a Saw-like gameshow (or even something like The Running Man or The Price of Peril) as a basis for an adventure, with the PCs as either contestants or hunter force.
• Likewise, video footage of capital punishment or gladiatorial combat would also fit into this category if distributed for entertainment purposes.
• As would sufficiently prurient 'war reporting'.
• In the right kind of setting, these would make a solid origin for an undead creature and/or attract other kinds of unclean spirits - several horror RPGs and related tools such as Pelgrane Press's Book of Unremitting Horror include both, including at least one highly predatory entity that (usually) preys on producers and consumers of this sort of thing.
• Speaking of which, how about a Ringu style snuff movie - either a mundane one where the creators hunt their customers, or something more supernatural.