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. 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". 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. 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." 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.
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. 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, As a result, New York District Attorney
Robert M. Morgenthau investigated the picture, establishing that it was a
hoax. 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. The FBI identified Reznor and the investigation ended when it was confirmed that Reznor was alive and the footage was not related to crime. 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. Author
Steve Lillebuen, who wrote a book on the Magnotta case, commented that
social media had created a new trend in crime where killers who crave an audience can become "online broadcasters" by showing their crimes to the world.
Fangoria commented that Magnotta's 2012 video, which showed him mutilating the corpse of his victim, was the closest thing in existence to an actual snuff movie, especially as Magnotta had done some crude editing and used a
song as a soundtrack, which amounted to minimal production values. However, it did not show the murder itself and was originally published to attract attention and not for monetary gain. In 2016, the owner of
Bestgore.com, the website that originally hosted Magnotta's video, pleaded guilty to an obscenity charge and was sentenced to a six-month conditional sentence, half of which was served under house arrest. In 2025, it was reported members of the Russian mercenary
Wagner Group were sharing graphic videos of war crimes via
Telegram, sometimes even behind
paywalls, prompting calls for an
ICC investigation. A confidential legal brief submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by legal experts at
UC Berkeley asserts Wagner has been distributing highly graphic videos—involving mutilation, torture, and even scenes implying cannibalism—on Telegram channels tied to their network. These videos were shared explicitly to terrorize civilians and dehumanize victims in
Mali,
Burkina Faso, and
Niger. The Telegram channel White Uncles in Africa, believed to be managed by current or former Wagner operatives, has reposted such content. Experts argue that even sharing these videos may itself be a war crime, constituting a violation of human dignity under the
Rome Statute.
The Vietnamese Butcher In late July 2025, graphic video and screenshot compilations of what became colloquially known as
"The Vietnamese Butcher" began circulating on
Telegram and other encrypted messaging apps. It was eventually leaked to the public through
shock sites and other platforms with an extended version, bringing into the light what is described by
Vice as potentially the first authentic snuff film. The video itself involved a willing male participant, who was depicted masturbating before being beheaded with a meat cleaver by a man wearing a plastic
Guy Fawkes mask. A montage shows body parts stacked up, intestines separated, followed by images of some kind of food containing an unidentified meat. a Vietnamese man who had multiple Facebook accounts expressing his
sexual desire of being beheaded. On 3 December 2025, the
Ministry of Public Security and Lạng Sơn provincial police released information that the suspect had been identified as a 57-year-old civil service worker named Đoàn Văn Sáng, and arrested under the charge of murder. ==In fiction==