The Michael Powell film Peeping Tom (1960) featured a filmmaker who committed murders and used the acts as the content of his documentary films, although no murders are seen in the film. John Camden Hotten lists the term in the fifth edition of his Slang Dictionary in 1874 as a “term very common among the lower orders of London, meaning to die from disease or accident.” The word is descended (via the Middle English “snuffen” or “snuppen”) from the Old English “snithan”, meaning to slaughter and dismember, from “snide”, meaning to kill by cutting or stabbing, from “snid”, to cut. The word has been used as such in English slang for hundreds of years. The metaphorical use of the term “snuff” to denote killing appears to be derived from a verb for the cutting short of a candle wick. He alleges that The Manson Family was involved in making such a film in California to record their murders. The very first recorded use of the term “snuff film” is in a 1971 book by Ed Sanders, The Family: ” The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion”. Some filmed records of executions and murders exist but have not been made or released for commercial purposes. The existence of for-profit snuff films is generally considered an urban legend. A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation.
0 kommentar(er)
