Also released as
- Big Snuff
- American Cannibale
- El ángel de la muerte
- スナッフ SNUFF
- Снафф
- Snuff is My Game
Filed under
Snuff
Snuff is a 1976 American horror film directed by Michael Findlay and Simon Nuchtern. It is one of the 72 films on the Director of Public Prosecutions' video nasties list, and it was successfully prosecuted for obscenity.
A dull Manson knock-off with a fake murder stapled on the end and a marketing campaign of hired protesters.
Sign in to track what you have survived.
Michael and Roberta Findlay shot a film in Argentina in 1971 called Slaughter and nobody wanted it. Distributor Allan Shackleton shelved it, then in 1975 noticed press speculation about snuff films and had four minutes shot in New York in which the crew apparently turns on an actress and kills her.
The seam is obvious. The lighting changes, the film stock changes, and the sequence begins mid-scene with no setup. Nobody who watches it attentively believes it.
It worked anyway. Shackleton hired people to picket his own screenings, the New York District Attorney investigated and confirmed the actress was alive, and the film made a great deal of money. The word "snuff" entered general use because of this marketing campaign, and the moral panic it created has outlived every frame of the film.
Banned, seized, prosecuted
DPP 72 · successfully prosecuted
The distributor hired people to picket his own American screenings. The New York District Attorney investigated, established that the actress was alive, and the film made money regardless. The word snuff entered general English usage because of this marketing campaign.
Elsewhere
- Australia banned · 1976 onward. Banned on the strength of the marketing rather than the film, which is the pattern for this title everywhere.
Rate this film
No ratings yet. Score it on the five axes and yours will be the first.
Sign in to rate this and add it to your shelf.
Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Canada
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
Written about
- Cannibal Holocaust and the fifteen seconds still banned
Cannibal Holocaust carries an 18 certificate in Britain with fifteen seconds still cut, one slow animal killing held out under the 1937 animal cruelty Act.
- The video nasties panic, 1982 to 1984
How a gap in British licensing law produced a moral panic, a list of 72 films and two video executives in prison.
Discuss with AI
Open a chatbot with a question about this already typed out. Useful for a second opinion, a plot detail, or working out which cut you are holding.
Adjacent
WATCHcultIsland of Death
Mastorakis watched Texas Chain Saw, counted the perversions and wrote a list. It shows.
WATCHcultSS Experiment Camp
Notorious in Britain almost entirely for its poster. The film is inert.
WATCHobscureExposé
The only British film on the DPP list. A novelist, a typist and Fiona Richmond in a farmhouse.
WATCHcultAlucarda
Mexican nunsploitation with an actual argument, and everybody in it screams for eighty minutes.
WATCHcanonThe Substance
Body horror about how the industry treats women over fifty, with Demi Moore doing the bravest work of her career.
WATCHcanonBattle Royale
A class of Japanese schoolchildren are dropped on an island and made to kill each other. Kinji Fukasaku's last major film.
- Next in Extreme / Transgressive: Exposé (1976) →