Hardcore (The Movie)

For the uninitiated: A snuff film is a porn film where the actress is killed on camera for the gratification of the viewer.

Such films have long been a staple of law enforcement propaganda. Gotta ban all pornography because of them! Gotta fight porn’s terrible spread because, you know, it’s one small tiny step from browsing MET-ART to becoming a producer of the latest and greatest snuff flick.

A snuff film even featured as the main plot point in the 1979 Hollywood film Hardcore. In that, Geroge C. Scott plays a Midwestern businessman who heads to San Fransisco to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a demonic snuff porn business. Here’s the trailer:

Apparently, the more recent film 8MM is “inspired by” (i.e. it’s a rip-off of) Hardcore, also having a plot that centers around a snuff film.

But as the esteemed sex doctor Marty Klein points out, snuff films probably don’t exist. He hasn’t seen one. And he doesn’t know anyone who has seen one. And he doesn’t know anyone who knows anyone who has seen one. And he’s a fucking well-connected guy!!!

So snuff films are likely just the product of legend and of fear and of Hollywood screenwriting and of dishonest politically-motivated fabrication.

Maybe the reason for this is that we human beings don’t actually like the idea of killing other people. Maybe we find it universally awful at the most basic visceral level. And maybe this disgust with killing is something that is shared by all humans, even by those godless gay-loving pot-smoking heathens from California. Maybe those people with “San Fransisco values” have some morals after all, and maybe they’re not subhuman like we good god-fearing Haliburton stockholders have been saying all these years.

Maybe the only way to get a person to enjoy killing is through political warmongering and the associated collectivist brainwashing. Maybe snuff films don’t exist, but an atmosphere encouraging sadistic violence in the name of the political leadership of the day does.