recommended

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

rosen, who probably was in charge of coffee runs on several film sets, reads a news article and describes something that probably never happened.they include a crime-scene photo of sharon tate and jay sebring. i can understand why- the whole myth of manson family movies.video store clerks as experts and old A&E American justice footage doesn't make this a documentary.it is an interesting movie though.work harder next time.also, when someone proclaims that hard that something really happened, it probably didn't happen.

After seeing the trailer on Youtube, I wanted to track this down and see it for myself; since the subjects and topics like this interest me. And this was pretty good. It doesn't only talk about snuff; but touches on topics of serial killers, war and the media; and includes two parts with Mark Rosen's stories; about a disturbing thing he seen and a case about porn/snuff industry.We have a lot of interesting people taking part in this. Former FBI agents, cinephiles and others that know their sh!t when it comes to the history of snuff films. A few things I noticed that a few things were left out. One of which was Tsutomu Miyazaki,who was a Japanese child murderer who reenacted the dismemberment scenes on his victims. That was never mentioned. Websites like rotten and ogrish were also not mentioned either. And the last thing that could have been included,but wasn't because of the time schedule were the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs. If you don't know them by name,you'll know of their infamous video thats been mentioned a lot across the internet; which was the "shock" video, 3Guys1Hammer that depicts the violent murder of Sergei Yatzenko.[ From what someone told me,the video found its way to the internet about six months after this was filmed ] If this waited a few months,and got mentioned then it would be the cherry on the top of this bloody sundae. Great documentary on its own.

Man, were my hopes crushed after watching this 'documentary.' It's supposed to be discussing the existence of actual snuff films (films of murders produced for profit), but it fails so miserably at this that it basically turns into a group of random people talking about gory movies (like Flowers of Flesh and Blood, Cannibal Holocaust, Henry, Trouble Every Day, etc.). Also, the 'professional' views seem more like they're just fa group of friends hanging around talking in front of the camera. I mean, their key 'witness' is a 'cinephile and filmmaker' with no real credentials other than he's watched some movies. His role as a filmmaker? He wrote one movie 10 years ago that has 74 votes on this site. So, literally, a single-film maker, I suppose.Anyway, it could've been an in-depth and intelligent look at the snuff film 'industry,' but ends up being just a bunch of people without real reason talking about gory movies, war, and serial killers. Interesting subjects turned boring by uninteresting speakers on them.Oh, also, I don't think I could get more annoyed than I do when I hear someone say, "It is very unlikely that ever in the history of cinema was a person killed on a camera for the purpose of profit." Really? Unlikely? Of the billions of people in the world and the many million that could've afforded to pay someone to do that, you have to assume that at no point did some rich guy have a murder fetish and paid someone, say, $100,000 (or more) to film someone getting killed? The odds that that NEVER happened are extremely slim just by the fact that EVERYTHING is done. Rant over.Final Verdict: 5/10. Simply for the gore scenes and occasional bit of info.-AP3-

A pretty good documentary. I had a few problems with it. I had trouble remembering who some of the interviewees were, as they are only captioned once. It's said The Skeptical Inquirer called King Kong vs. Godzilla and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre "snuff movies." Not true: the article says there were urban legends about these movies; that two endings of the former were shot, one with King Kong winning and the other with Godzilla winning, and that The Texas Chainsaw was really based on a true story. It also gives the impression Lake and Ng murdered their victims on camera: they did not. The case of Dmitri is discussed using a single article from The Observer, and the case sounds pretty fishy. Then, the longer of the two trailers included in the special features has Jennifer Bahe saying the filmmakers received a tape in the mail that appeared to be a snuff film, which they turned over to authorities. That sounds pretty fishy too: it's not mentioned in the documentary at all, it's not discussed further anywhere on the DVD. It sounds like something they made up to help sell their movie.The commentary track is worth listening to, though it's not really a commentary on the movie, it's just further discussion of snuff. The filmmakers and some of the interviewees are gathered panel style. There are some microphone problems at one point.Viewers of this film might like to check out The Dark Side of Porn: Does Snuff Exist? and J.T. Petty's S&MAN.