Take a very mediocre movie. Apply an ‘edgy’ and highly questionable marketing campaign to try and sell it to the public. Step back and see what happens.

Starlet Terry London and her producer visit a country in South America. Unfortunately, they cross paths with a female junkie biker gang who kill the starlet and several of her inner circle. The gang is led by a Manson-esque figure called (wait for it…) Satan! Who knew that someone with such a name would be a wrong un.

Snuff was released to an unsuspecting public in 1976 and caused controversy right from the get-go. A producer who was distributing the film under it’s original title of Slaughter had read about ‘snuff’ movies which were rumoured to being made in South America. Hence, to capitalise on this (!) he had a new ending shot for the film which implied that we were actually seeing someone being killed on screen. An investigation was launched to establish whether this sequence was real or not. 

After seeing this sequence, if you honestly think that someone was killed on camera, you’re either stupid, have never experienced a film before or you’re Mary Whitehouse and want to ban the film without having seen it. I could make a more realistic ‘death’ scene with a garden hose and a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup.

The rest of the film is a snoozefest. It’s boring and feels like the filler (pun not intended) material in a 70’s porno cinema but with all of the sex cut out. I kept thinking of Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver throughout the majority of the film.

It just goes to show that even if you have the kind of things that normally endear a film to me (bad acting, terrible editing, camp turned up to 11), if you don’t have a plot, you don’t have a film.

I’m glad I’ve seen this film as I now know that I will never have to see it again.

1 out of 5 stars