Roger Ebert once called movies “the most powerful empathy machine.” He had a point—films connect people by letting them experience stories that aren’t their own.
This is also why viewers of extremely realistic horror scenes want to be sure they’re watching fiction, not real snuff films — actual footage of a murder staged for the camera.
The word “snuff” first appeared after the Charles Manson murders, with rumors that the cult had filmed some of their killings and hidden the tapes in the desert. From Betamax tapes to DVDs, snuff films have stayed mostly a myth.
These horror movies were filmed so realistically that some viewers believed they were watching actual snuff films. Content warnings are needed for the descriptions and images that follow.
Cannibal Holocaust
One thing that brings horror fans together is the hunt for the scariest or bloodiest movie out there. With the arrival of DVDs, it became easier to find these films, and the long-rumored Cannibal Holocaust (1980) finally became widely available.
Cannibal Holocaust is notable as the first “found-footage” horror movie, released long before The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity.
People also mistook Cannibal Holocaust for a snuff film. Today’s viewers know it was staged, but that wasn’t always obvious.
The Italian movie was presented as a documentary, following an NYU anthropologist and his students searching for a missing film crew in the Amazon. What they find is only the crew’s disturbing footage.
Filmed in Colombia’s rainforest with real Indigenous tribes, it’s easy to see why the film tricked early audiences. It showed real animal killings and disturbingly realistic human deaths. Director Ruggero Deodato achieved his vision but was even arrested after the film’s premiere in Italy.
Director Ruggero Deodato was inspired by the little-known genre of fake documentaries, and realism was always his main goal for Cannibal Holocaust. He insisted on filming in the jungle, using local tribes, and even included real, graphic scenes of animals like a turtle, snake, monkey, pig, and coati being killed on camera.
Just ten days after the Milan premiere, authorities seized the film reels and arrested Deodato for obscenity. But things got worse after the 1981 premiere in France. To make the film feel even more real, Deodato told actors whose characters died to stay out of the public eye and ignore interviews for at least a year. This “promotion” was so convincing that Italian authorities ended up charging him with murder. Even in court, the actors kept silent.
Finally, Deodato had to bring his cast to court and onto a talk show to prove they were alive. He explained how he created realistic effects, like a scene showing an impaled girl, and was eventually cleared of charges.
Though the case was dismissed, the film remains infamous.
2. The Blair Witch Project
When The Blair Witch Project hit theaters in 1999, audiences had never seen anything like it. The film was presented as a documentary about a film crew investigating a local legend about a witch in Maryland, with their footage capturing eerie, off-screen events. The credits even listed the crew as “missing.”
Directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick went all out to make it feel real. They put actors Heather Donahue, Mike Williams, and Josh Leonard through intense experiences, like scaring them in the woods at night and having them use their real names as character names.
The cast learned to use film equipment and spent weeks in the woods, equipped with GPS devices to reach specific landmarks each day. Each night, the directors left instructions at their tents to guide the next scenes. Having the actors film themselves added to the realistic feel of a true documentary.
The marketing boosted this feeling even more, making some believe it was a real snuff film. Movie posters looked like missing-persons flyers, and IMDb even listed the actors as “missing, presumed dead.”
When the film premiered, an astonishing 50 percent of viewers thought they were watching a real snuff film in theaters. Even decades later, many still believe the cast was actually killed in the woods by the directors, who used the movie as a cover to satisfy a twisted plan. Some even think the witch is real.
“There are still people who think that me, Mike, and Josh are actors that were hired to cover up that The Blair Witch Project was actually a snuff film,” she said. “That those kids are actually dead, and Josh, Mike, and I were hired so they could get away with releasing it as a film.”
Although Donahue is still recognized as an actress today, many people believe she isn’t Heather Donahue at all — but someone hired to pretend to be the woman who supposedly died in the film. Her mother even continues to receive sympathy cards for her “missing” daughter.
3. A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin
The word “giallo,” Italian for yellow, originally referred to Italian paperback thrillers with bright, eye-catching covers. Over time, it came to mean Italian genre films, especially horror, with directors like Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento shaping and popularizing this intense, operatic style of slasher. But in 1971, Fulci’s talent landed him in court.
Set and filmed in London, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin follows the story of a politician’s daughter haunted by nightmares. Her dreams start off psychedelic and sexual but soon turn dark when she dreams of killing her neighbor — only to find out he was stabbed to death that same night.
Although this was Fulci’s second try at a giallo film and didn’t become a cult hit like his later work, it included a highly realistic scene showing six dogs torn open. Fulci had hired special effects expert Carlo Rambaldi (who would later create E.T.) to achieve this disturbing effect, which looked so real it led to a court investigation.
“[We had to] convince four different judges that they were not real dogs but in actual fact mechanical dogs that had been vivisected with our special effects,” said Rambaldi.
After the premiere of A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, the Italian press reported: “Lucio Fulci, director of the film A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, and the owners of the production company and distribution house, have been reported to the judicial authorities for having tortured and killed six dogs during one scene of the film.”
“There are six dogs who have been vivisected, ie still alive, but with their chests slit open and with electrodes clipped onto their hearts.”
Fulci and special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi had to travel to four different cities across Italy to prove their innocence. The scene looked so real that only physical evidence would convince the authorities. Luckily, Rambaldi still had the mechanical dog props used in the film.
Without being able to present these props in court, both Rambaldi and Fulci might have been branded as animal abusers, ending their careers. Instead, Fulci became one of horror’s most respected directors, and Rambaldi went on to win an Oscar for his visual effects work in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
4. Faces Of Death
When Faces of Death hit theaters in November 1978, audiences and censors were baffled. Inspired by the mondo horror genre, the film featured a fictional pathologist, Francis B. Gross, who presented scenes of animal killings, accidents, and murders as if they were real footage.
The movie grossed $35 million at the U.S. box office and gained such a notorious reputation that its 1983 VHS release even changed policy in the U.K. Led by Mary Whitehouse, England’s National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association banned it, dubbing it a “video nasty”—a forbidden horror film.
“I’ve always had an interest in horror films,” said Michael Felsher, producer of a documentary for the Faces of Death Blu-ray release. “Faces of Death had this legend about it. It was this forbidden thing. People were talking about it and how it was all real; you got to see people actually killed on screen.”
With the rise of VCRs, horror fans eagerly sought out Faces of Death in underground stores to see it for themselves. Mark Goodall, head of media and film at the University of Bradford, said it even became “an underground currency” among punk culture and anyone searching for “extreme films.”
The film’s cover featured a skull and multiple warnings, with a fictional pathologist showing different ways people could die. Director John Alan Schwartz bought unused footage from news stations because it was too graphic for TV and filmed additional scenes himself — even capturing a real corpse on film.
“They were down there filming something else but they got a report of a body on the beach and happened to be there to film it,” said Felsher. “It was some guy who got high on LSD and had fallen into the water and drowned.”
Schwartz edited footage of two dogs playing to make it look like they were attacking each other and used wet cauliflower to simulate monkey brains being eaten. Using archival footage and a real drowned body, Faces of Death looked so convincing it was banned in 46 countries, with many still believing it was real.
5. Guinea Pig 2: Flower Of Flesh And Blood
Most people have never heard of Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), but actor Charlie Sheen thought law enforcement needed to see it. A major Hollywood star at the time, Sheen contacted the FBI in 1991, convinced he had just watched a real snuff film.
Directed by Hideshi Hino, this Japanese horror film wasn’t a snuff film at all. It was part of a five-part series inspired by Hino’s manga comics, released by the same distributor that made Faces of Death popular in Japan. Still, its scenes of murder, torture, and mutilation looked incredibly real.
It’s unclear what state Sheen was in when he watched the VHS tape, but what’s known is that he saw the staged scene of a crazed samurai dismembering a woman — and then called the FBI, determined to bring the “killer” and filmmakers to justice. Surprisingly, the FBI launched an investigation.
“The FBI confiscated Sheen’s tape and proceeded to investigate all involved, including Charles Balun, an early distributor of the film,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time. “Balun fiercely asserted that the film was a hoax and was merely a series of startling special effects.”
“Propitiously, the Japanese took this time to release Guinea Pig Two: The Making of Guinea Pig One, revealing the technical sleight of hand in all its bone-cracking glory. After viewing this film, the FBI backed off and dropped the investigation.”
It almost seemed like the movie could have been a real snuff film, with its producers creating a “making-of” feature just to throw off suspicion. Though that wasn’t the case, the Guinea Pig series had already stirred controversy in Japan when a search of a serial killer’s home revealed a copy of Guinea Pig 6: Devil Woman Doctor.
6. New Terminal Hotel
When Police Chief J.R. Blyth entered the hotel room, he encountered the most gruesome scene he’d seen in his 35 years on the job. The room was covered in blood from floor to ceiling, and a human scalp lay on the bed.
This scene took place at the George Washington Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 2010. Local firefighters, responding to a fire on the fourth floor, noticed the horrifying setup in room 405. However, hotel owner Kyrk Pyros knew the real story — and found the confusion amusing.
Firefighters “were getting everybody out safely and alive,” he said. “No one got hurt in the fire. It was just accidental. Then, about an hour and a half into it … the coroner said they found a crime scene. He said there is a scalp, there is blood all over the walls, written in all kind of languages.”
“I had no idea what was going on,” recalled Blyth. “Blood on the floor, the mattress, the pillows, piece of a scalp with hair still attached in the center of the bed.”
Chief Blyth arrived with 10 crime scene investigators before hotel owner Kyrk Pyros realized which room they had found. It turned out to be the same room director BC Fourteen had recently used to film the Corey Haim horror movie New Terminal Hotel (2010) — and had intentionally left covered in fake blood.
“I smiled and [the coroner] looked at me and said, ‘I am not finding this funny,'” said Pyros. “I said well, that is where Terminal Hotel was shot; that is our scare room … We leave it there on purpose [because] we get haunted tourists. Supposedly, the hotel is haunted.”
At first, Blyth was upset about the wasted police resources but eventually saw the humor in it. What makes the story even more intriguing is that the George Washington Hotel is rumored to be haunted, with 12 people having died there since 1923.
7. Snuff
Married directors Michael and Roberta Findlay worked during a time when making independent films was much tougher than today. They used inexpensive effects of sex and violence to create “roughies” like Slaughter (1971), which would later be re-edited into Snuff (1975) — and mistaken for a real snuff film.
Their producer, Allan Shackleton, asked them to remove the film’s credits and add a shocking new ending. As a low-budget distributor, Shackleton knew that Slaughter‘s Charles Manson-inspired plot would attract viewers, but he wanted to make its violent scenes look as real as possible.
Slaughter told the story of a cult leader named Satán, who led a group of female followers that he used for both sex and murder. One of the film’s victims was a pregnant woman, a nod to the 1969 Sharon Tate murders. Ironically, the Manson case had inspired the term “snuff,” bringing the concept full circle.
In his 1972 book The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion, Ed Sanders used the term “snuff” to describe rumored recordings of real murders committed by Manson’s followers and supposedly buried in the desert. No tapes were ever found — but Shackleton saw this as an opportunity.
Shackleton removed the end credits from the Findlays’ film to make it look like found footage, then added a new ending. The film seems to end, but then “behind-the-scenes” footage accidentally continues to roll, showing a female crew member being attacked on set.
In the scene, the woman is held down by crew members and appears to be gutted, with others pretending to play with her intestines. The scene ends with crew members urgently asking if they captured it on film, saying they’re running out of celluloid. Then, without warning, the film cuts off.
Snuff was advertised as if it were real, using the tagline: “The film that could only be made in South America … where Life is CHEAP!” Although today’s viewers would likely spot it as fake, New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau launched an investigation after its release to verify.
The film was officially declared a hoax only after authorities located the actress who appeared to have her guts removed.
8. Ghostwatch
When the TV film Ghostwatch aired on BBC1 on Halloween Night, 1992, millions of viewers across Britain thought they were watching a live news report — where a real ghost killed the hosts.
Written by British horror writer Stephen Volk, the fake documentary began without credits and included a real phone number for viewers to call in with their own ghost stories. Making it even more believable, the film was hosted by well-known British journalists and TV personalities Sarah Greene and Michael Parkinson.
While Parkinson took calls from viewers and discussed hauntings with a paranormal expert in the studio, Greene investigated a supposedly haunted house in West London with a camera crew, giving updates from the scene.
Soon, it seems that the house is genuinely haunted by a ghost known as “Mr. Pipes,” the spirit of a child killer. Worse still, the skeptical hosts gradually become truly scared, realizing that the broadcast and viewers’ calls are creating a mass seance that’s making the ghost stronger.
Viewers reported seeing glimpses of Pipes, and the filmmakers even added brief, hidden images of the ghost throughout the show, making it scarier. In the end, Greene’s character is killed by the ghost, and dragged off-screen in a scene that has become familiar in today’s “found-footage” horror films.
The broadcast left viewers shaken as Parkinson seemed to become possessed by Pipes, and the program cut to black.
But Ghostwatch wasn’t just a fun Halloween show for many viewers. BBC1 received thousands of complaint calls from people, including parents whose children watched the film and thought it was real — and sadly, it even seemed to lead to a real-life tragedy.
Dozens of reports came in of children showing signs of PTSD after watching Ghostwatch, and, in a tragic case, one young man took his life because of it.
Eighteen-year-old Martin Denham, a young man with an intellectual disability from Nottingham, became convinced that Ghostwatch was real and that Pipes was haunting his home.
On November 5, 1992, just five days after the show aired, Denham took his own life using a piece of plastic tubing.
Denham left a heartbreaking suicide note that read: “Please don’t worry — if there are ghosts I will be a ghost, and I will be with you always as a ghost.” His parents told reporters that he had been “virtually hypnotized” by the early found-footage horror film.
