4. Snuff (1976)
A film that really got the Moral Majority going, Snuff is in fact a pile of steaming pooh which wouldn't fool my two week old nephew. The manufacturers had the bright idea of advertising it as an actual snuff film and audiences, who had eagerly paid their money to see celluloid mayhem, exited the theatres in disappointed droves. But just for its very name - Snuff - the film still gets knickers in a twist. The main bulk of the film features a Manson-esque cult who are under the thrall of their leader- Satan (pronounced Sat-ann for some daft reason). There seems to be some sort of drug war going on and people gets killed. They target an actress and her man. Sound familiar? A tacked on ending sees the 'director' of the film toying with a girl and then killing her while the crew idly stands back and films. This is a thoroughly crap and embarrassing piece of cinema. The special effects are HG Lewis standard but at least Lewis had the grace to make his films funny and entertaining. Snuff just stinks to the highest heavens. I can't even see hardcore crappy film fanatics getting excited by this dross. It is laughably bad - the concept, the directing, the acting and production values are uniformly awful. It was a silly joke played on the film industry, but one that some weird people took seriously and thus it raised Merry Hell. Controversial because: some eejuts thought it was real and kicked up a panic.