According to existing definitions, snuff films can be pornographic and are made for financial gain but are supposedly "circulated amongst a jaded few for the purpose of entertainment".
[10] The first known use of the term snuff movie is in a 1971 book by Ed Sanders, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion.
This book included the interview of an anonymous one-time member of Charles Manson's "Family", who claimed that the group once made such a film in California, by recording the murder of a woman.
[1][11] During the first half of the 1970s, urban legends started to allege that snuff films were being produced in South America for commercial gain, and circulated clandestinely in the United States.
[12][14][15] This low-budget horror film, loosely based on the Manson murders and originally titled Slaughter, was shot in Argentina by Michael and Roberta Findlay.
Several years later, Shackleton read about snuff films being imported from South America and decided to cash in on the rumor as an attempt to recoup his investment in Slaughter.
[13] Snuff's promotional material suggested, without stating outright, that the film featured the real murder of a woman, which amounted to false advertising.
[19] Shackleton put out false newspaper clippings that reported a citizens group's crusading against the film,[12] and hired people to act as protesters to picket screenings.
[12] Shackleton's efforts succeeded in generating a media frenzy about the film: real feminist and citizens groups eventually started protesting the movie and picketing theaters.
[25][27][28] The advent of the Internet, by allowing anyone to broadcast self-made videos to an international audience, also changed the means of production of films that may be categorized as "snuff".
The 2003 video game Manhunt sees the main character being forced to participate in a series of snuff films to guarantee his freedom.
Several horror films such as Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and August Underground (2001) have depicted "snuff movie" situations, coupled with found footage aesthetics used as a narrative device.
Purporting to be an educational film about death, it mixed footage of actual deadly accidents, suicides, autopsies, or executions, with "outright fake scenes" obtained with the help of special effects.
The sixth film in the series, Mermaid in a Manhole (1988), allegedly served as an inspiration for Japanese serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, who murdered several preschool girls in the late 1980s.
The FBI initiated an investigation but closed it after the series' producers released a "making of" film demonstrating the special effects used to simulate the murders.
[38] The Italian director Ruggero Deodato was charged after rumors that the depictions of the killing of the main actors in his film Cannibal Holocaust (1980) were real.
[39] Other than graphic gore, the film contains several scenes of sexual violence and the genuine deaths of six animals onscreen and one off screen, issues which find Cannibal Holocaust in the midst of controversy to this day.
[41] This trilogy of horror films, which depict graphic tortures and murders, is shot as if it were amateur footage made by a serial killer and his accomplices.