A snuff film, snuff movie, or snuff video is a type of film, oftentimes defined as being produced for profit or financial gain, that shows scenes of actual homicide committed or orchestrated by the filmmakers.
The concept of snuff films became known to the general public during the 1970s, when an urban legend alleged that a clandestine industry was producing such films for profit. The rumor was amplified in 1976 by the release of a film called Snuff, which capitalized on the legend through a disingenuous marketing campaign. However, that film, like others on the topic, relied on special effects to simulate murder. The existence of a snuff movie industry has never been proven: horror film magazine Fangoria later described the very concept as a "myth" and "a scare tactic, dreamt up by the media to terrify the public."
In 2025, Vice published an article documenting what they described as the first actual snuff video, known as The Vietnamese Butcher, depicting the killing of a willing participant. Video clips and images from this murder have been sold since February 2025 on the dark web and through Telegram channels.
Definitions A snuff film is a movie in a purported genre of films in which a person is actually murdered, though some variations of the definition may include films that show people dying by suicide. 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". The Collins English Dictionary defines a "snuff movie" as "a pornographic film in which an unsuspecting actress or actor is murdered at the climax of the film"; the Cambridge Dictionary defines it more broadly as "a violent film that shows a real murder".
Fangoria defined snuff movies as "films in which a person is killed on camera. The death is premeditated, with the purpose of being filmed in order to make money. Often times, there is a sexual aspect to the murder, either on film (as in, a porn scene that ends horribly) or that the final project is used for sexual gratification." Films featuring deaths that are authentic but accidental "are not considered snuff because the deaths were not planned. Other death on video, such as terrorists beheading victims, are done to fulfill an ideology, not to earn money."
Some filmed records of executions and deaths in war exist, but in those cases the death was not specifically staged for financial gain or entertainment. There have been a number of "amateur-made" snuff films available on the Internet. However, such videos are produced by the murderers to make an impact on an audience or for their own satisfaction, and not for financial profit. Some specialized websites show videos of actual killings for profit, as their shock value will attract an audience; but these websites are not operated by the perpetrators of the murders.
According to Snopes, the idea of an actual snuff film "industry" clandestinely producing such "entertainment" for monetary gain is preposterous because "capturing a murder on film would be foolhardy at best. Only the most deranged would consider preserving for a jury a perfect video record of a crime they could go to the executioner for. Even if the murderer stays completely out of the camera's way, too much of who the killer is, how the murder was carried out, and where it took place would be part of such a film, and these details would quickly lead police to the right door. Though someone whose mania has caused them to lose touch with reality might skip over this point, those who are supposedly in the business for the money would be all too aware of this. It doesn't make sense to flirt with the electric chair for the profits derived from a video."
History of the concept
Origins of the urban legend The noun snuff originally meant the part of a candle wick that has already burned; the verb snuff meant to cut this off, and by extension to extinguish or kill.Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed, 1913 The word has been used in this sense in English slang for hundreds of years. It was defined in 1874 as a "term very common among the lower orders of London, meaning to die from disease or accident".John Camden Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, 5th edition
Film studies professor Boaz Hagin argues that the concept of films showing actual murders originated decades earlier than is commonly believed, at least as early as 1907. That year, Polish-French writer Guillaume Apollinaire published the short story A Good Film about newsreel photojournalists who stage and film a murder due to public fascination with crime news; in the story, the public believes the murder is real but police determine that the crime was faked. Hagin also proposes that the film Network (1976) contains an explicit (fictional) snuff film depiction when television news executives orchestrate the on-air murder of a news anchor to boost ratings.
Stuntman Ormer Locklear and his copilot died in an airplane crash that was included in the final print of the 1920 film The Skywayman. The deaths were used to promote the film. Pendo, Stephen. Aviation in the Cinema. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1985. , pp. 5-6
According to film critic Geoffrey O'Brien, "whether or not commercially distributed 'snuff' movies actually exist, the possibility of such movies is implicit in the stock B-movie motif of the mad artist killing his models, as in A Bucket of Blood (1959), Color Me Blood Red (1965), or Decoy for Terror (1967) also known as Playgirl Killer." (April 22 issue), n.1. Likewise, the protagonist of Peeping Tom (1960) films the murders he commits, though he does so as part of his mania and not for financial gain: a 1979 article in The New York Times described the character's activity as making "private 'snuff' films".
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. However, the interviewee later added that he had not watched the film himself and had just heard rumors of its existence. In later editions of the book, Sanders clarified that no films depicting real murders or murder victims had been found.
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."Cashing in on rumors that a 'snuff' film had been smuggled into the United States from South America, Schackleton retitled his movie Snuff and released it in late 1975, advertising its faked evisceration as the real thing", David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in The Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, page 233 (University of California Press, Ltd., 2000).
Snuff controversy (1976)
The idea of movies showing actual murders for profit became more widely known in 1976 with the release of the exploitation film Snuff. This low-budget horror film, loosely based on the Manson murders and originally titled Slaughter, was shot in Argentina by Michael and Roberta Findlay. The film's distribution rights were bought by Allan Shackleton, who eventually found the picture unfit for release and shelved it. 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.
Shackleton retitled Slaughter to Snuff and released it with a new ending that purported to depict an actual murder committed on a film set. Snuff'''s promotional material suggested, without stating outright, that the film featured the real murder of a woman, which amounted to false advertising. The slogan read: "The film that could only be made in South America... where life is CHEAP". Shackleton put out false newspaper clippings that reported a citizens group's crusading against the film, and hired people to act as protesters to picket screenings.
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.David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in The Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, page 233 (University of California Press, Ltd., 2000). As a result, New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau investigated the picture, establishing that it was a hoax.Charles Lyons, The New Censors: Movies and the Culture Wars, Temple University Press, 1997, pages 64-70 The controversy nevertheless made the film financially profitable.
Rumors related to serial killers and other controversies In subsequent years, more urban legends emerged about snuff movies. Notably, multiple serial killers were rumored to have produced snuff films: however, no such videos were proven to exist. Henry Lee Lucas and his accomplice Ottis Toole claimed to have filmed their crimes, but both men were "pathological liars" and the purported films were never found. Charles Ng and Leonard Lake videotaped their interactions with some of their future victims, but not the murders. Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris made an audio recording of their encounter with one victim, though not of her death. Likewise, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka made videos of Bernardo sexually abusing two victims, but did not film the murders. In all those cases, the recordings were not intended for public consumption and were used as evidence during the murderers' trials.
Over the years, several films were suspected of being "snuff movies", though none of these accusations turned out to be true. A similar controversy concerned the filming of the video for the 1989 song "Down in It" by Nine Inch Nails, in which Trent Reznor acted in a scene which ended with the implication that Reznor's character had fallen off a building and died. To film the scene, a camera was tied to a balloon with ropes. Minutes after filming started, the ropes snapped and the balloons and camera flew away, eventually landing on a farmer's field in Michigan. The farmer later handed it to the FBI, who began investigating whether the footage was a snuff film portraying a person committing suicide.Welcome to the Machine (transcript). Industrial Introspection (June 1991). Retrieved 2011-06-18. The FBI identified Reznor and the investigation ended when it was confirmed that Reznor was alive and the footage was not related to crime.Huxley (1997), p. 40
Around 2018, a conspiracy theory called "Frazzledrip" and related to Pizzagate and QAnon, purported the existence of a snuff video where Hillary Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin murdered a young girl as part of a Satanic ritual.
Internet age 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". There have been several cases of murders being filmed by their perpetrators and later finding their way online. These include videos made by Mexican cartels or jihadist groups, at least one of the videos shot by the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs in mid-2000s Ukraine, the video shot by Luka Magnotta from Montreal in 2012, the video shot by Vester Lee Flanagan II in 2015, as well as cases of livestreamed murders, including videos made by mass shooters.