“The last taboo would be to actually kill someone in front of the cameras.”
--Six years after Sharon Tate’s murder, Roman Polanski makes a cameo in CONFESSIONS OF A BLUE MOVIE STAR -- a film that includes a hoaxed interview with a snuff film director.
The television screen flickered to life showing a grainy and somewhat shaky close-up of a fifteen to eighteen year old Caucasian girl’s face. Her eyes are wide open and a strip of gray duct tape cris-crosses her mouth. The camera pulls back to reveal her naked torso handcuffed to a metal bed frame. Her head jerks side-to-side as low moans and the squeal of metal bedsprings can be heard. The camera pans down past the rest of her naked body and focuses on her feet -- each one wired to the ends of the bed frame.
The camera sways backward to show a larger view of the room... devoid of furniture, cracked crumbling plaster walls, black plastic trash bags cover the two windows. By the looks of the surroundings this was most likely filmed in an abandoned building -- maybe one located in your city or town. After some shaky camera movement, a large man wearing a gray sweat suit enters the picture. His head is covered by a blue wool ski mask. As he approaches the bed frame, the girl starts to twist and struggle.
The man beats the girl about the thigh and stomach with a closed fist. The camera swings around focusing between the impact spots of the punches and her face. The man then removes the bottom half of the sweat suit and rapes the girl. His hands are around her neck. Seven minutes later, he pulls his sweat pants to his waist and leaves the frame.
He returns moments later. The camera zooms in on his hand -- now holding gardening shears. He opens and closes them for the camera. The camera sways to the girls face. Her eyes are closed, and there is no indication of life. The man removes her nose and ears with the shears before cutting parts of her breast.
Four minutes later he rapes her for the last time before walking out of the camera’s view.
Moments later he returns with a hack saw and decapitates her corpse. He holds her head directly in front of the camera. It zooms in for a final close-up.
What you just read was the remembered transcript of a actual snuff film. The description of which was written in the least sensational style in the attempt not to arouse or inflame any unsound persons reading this article. It was viewed several years ago by Frank Schildener at the behest of a federal agent with whom he had a working relationship. It seems that this video was found by the Feds in the possession of a paroled sex offender in Frank’s caseload. Another video found in this creep’s collection was labeled BAGMAN TEN, in which a ten year old girl is bound and suffocated by a clear plastic bag placed over her head. Needless to say, Frank went above and beyond the line of duty to send “snuff-boy” back to prison. The sex offender later testified as the State’s witness against the people who sold these videos to him.
I asked Frank if these tapes could have been hoaxed. His response, “No Fucken way! As a Probation Officer in Newark, NJ, I have viewed autopsy photos of murdered children, victims of sexual assaults, and drug addicts so wasted they appeared to be inhuman. I’m not squeamish, but this display was more disgusting than anything I’d seen before or since. I know many people would like to claim snuff films, or now, video tapes, are merely special effects, but I will tell you this, if that was F/X, then the creator was both a sick pig and the possessor of technology dozens of years beyond Hollywood... and that’s not likely.”
Many people like to believe that snuff films are either nonexistent or the product of a lone murderer who is recording his violence so that he can relive them on a later occasion. They ite the evidence of SCREW magazine publisher Al Goldstein’s $25,000 bounty for anyone presenting him with a real snuff film, a reward that has never been paid to this date. These usually are the same people who deny any form of crime that they do not see before them or have immediate evidence of it’s existence. This brand of thinking has lead to the denial of the existence of the Sicilian Mafia, the sudden discovery of the cocaine derivative, crack (despite that it had been a common street drug for almost half a decade by then), and most terrifyingly, the underground market created for child molesters. In the latter case, child molesters are able to indulge their fantasies through illegal magazines, internet websites and even packaged tours of countries in which child prostitution is common.
“Pretty soon the girls would become victims of more than being sex objects. If outsiders moved in so easily for sex, they could just as easily started maneuvering some of the girls into heavier shit -- like chains, whips, blood-drinking, animal death and even human sacrifice.”
--Charlie Manson talks about some of the people he and his family met in Hollywood. From MANSON IN HIS OWN WORDS as told to Nuel Emmons
The term “snuff film” slipped into the backdoor of the American vernacular in 1971 when it was coined by author Ed Saunders in his assessment of the Manson homicides, THE FAMILY. Between its pages many startling claims are revealed. Saunders asserts that Manson and his band of true believers had in their possession three super-8 cameras at Spahn Ranch which they used to film many unusual events. According to ex-family member Vern Plumlee, most of the films made by Mason were “you know, just crazy movies.” A person tripping on bad acid, girls dancing naked around a bon fire slashing the air with knives, and the occasional orgy “with the added spice of a few famous faces and bodies”, would be shown on a screen made from a bed sheet at any given night at the ranch. I wonder who those “famous faces” were?
But not all of Manson’s films were harmless drug induced exploits of the free love generation. During one filming session a fifteen year old girl called Simi Valley Sherri was brutally raped by Manson’s clan with such savagery that Linda Kasabian (eyewitness to the Tate killing) declared, “The whole scene was perversion like I’ve never seen before.” Little did she know then that gang rape would be a cinematic appetizer for her leader Charlie.
Armed with the knowledge that photographic evidence of Charlie’s Family activity exists, Saunders went undercover posing as a New York pornographer with a taste for the bizarre. In no time at all he found an underground film broker who was selling seven hours of Manson’s porn films. The asking price for the films at the time of Manson’s pre-trial was a hefty $250,000.
He also discovered two most shocking rumors. The first: a man named Chuck, who claimed to be a close friend of “Family murder victim” Gary Hinman, maintained he had in his possession films of a “Malibu and San Francisco ax murders.” How pathetically ironic it would be if Hinman was involved with snuff activities at his beach house -- the same house where his own ear was sliced off by the sword wielding Manson before being stabbed to death by Bobby Beausoleil. Before the night of the Hinman carnage, Beausoleil had a promising film career of his own. In his first film he appeared as an angel in MONDO HOLLYWOOD with future “Family murder victim” Jay Sebring. Another time before the camera he and fellow Family member Gypsy played in the X-rated Western epic of rape, totture and murder, THE RAMRODERS. And in his most famous and only staring role, he acted opposite Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey (who play the devil as well being a technical advisor for Roman Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY) in Kenneth Anger’s LUCIFER RISING. According to Bill Landis’ unauthorized biography of the 1960’s underground filmmaker, Anger himself had a run-in with the law in 1965 when he delivered raw footage of THE LOVE THAT WHIRLS to a local drug store for developing. The film contained scenes of a sadistic doctor “working guys over.” One of the masochists looked so beaten that the developer turned over the film to the police suspecting that “it was a possible snuff movie.” The doctor in the film was arrested and Anger was held for questioning. No charges were filed against Anger but all copies of the film were destroyed.
The second rumor: A famous New York artist purchased from a Los Angeles drug dealer a film “depicting the ritual murder of a woman.” (It is interesting to note that this passage only appears in the first printing hardcover of THE FAMILY, and in part two of this article you’ll find out why.)
Only after delving deeper into the muck of the porn film underground, Saunders finally unearthed an individual who witnessed a few of Manson’s snuff films. The anonymous source claims that Manson and his brood hooked up with a cult of devil worshippers known as the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Together they filmed nightly secessions at a unknown beach location that involved “two key Manson female followers” engaged in intercourse as blood from a recently killed dog is poured over their naked bodies. Another grizzly scene had a black-hooded group of five standing around the naked corpse of a decapitated woman. Saunders might have also suspected Hinman of being involved with this film due to the prior rumor, and also because of the snuff film’s location. He asked his source, “What was the name of the house?” Puzzled, his reply was, “It’s not a house. It’s just a beach.” Was Saunders trying to get him to implicate Hinman’s beach house? Maybe.
“We were invited to private parties in Beverly Hills, Malibu and other exclusive areas. A lot of the movie people shot up heroin, smoked opium, free-based and snorted cocaine... We had long ago chucked our inhibitions about sex, but chains, whips, torture, and other weirdness were not part of our routine.”
-- Manson enters Hollywood society, from MANSON IN HIS OWN WORDS as told to Nuel Emmons
Another interesting turn of events happened that could have advanced Manson’s snuff career just before Helter Skelter. Years before, Manson wrote the suicide-drenched tune CEASE TO EXIST for America’s favorite clean-cut band, the BEACH BOYS. With “death” not being part of the surf culture at the time, the group changed the lyrics to CEASE TO RESIST, now a song about sexual liberation -- groovy. Charlie wasn’t pleased with the change in context. He thought the children of the sixties would embrace his death-tripping vibes. Charlie decided that he wanted to be a rock star, so Dennis Wilson, friend and supporter of the Family, made a few telephone calls.
One of the people contacted was record producer Terry Melcher, the person that Roman Polanski rented the residence at 10050 Cielo Drive from. He and friend and soundman Gregg Jacobson took a ride to Spahn Ranch to hear Manson wail prison blues and folk gyrations on a beat-up acoustic guitar. According to Melcher’s side of the story, he took a pass on Manson’s musical talents, but, Charlie, and his ragged band of run-aways, interested Jacobson. He pitched a deal to Manson that he would produce a television documentary on Manson’s communal lifestyle. Charlie agreed.
During that time, Manson’s group ripped-off an NBC news truck. Though it is not mentioned, it is highly likely that this truck was sent to film Manson for Jacobson’s TV documentary. Charlie’s band got away with tens of thousands of dollars worth of broadcast quality video equipment. Equipment that could have made him a top player in the field of underground porn.
Shortly after the theft, the documentary was called off. Charlie had bigger plans in the works. (In 1978, Manson wrote a letter to a California newspaper claiming that Dennis Wilson supplied him with thousands of dollars worth of video equipment in order to penetrate a world-wide underground porno circuit. If Manson is telling the truth, Wilson could have been the one to encourage Jacobson to film a documentary about the Family in order for Charlie to steal the video equipment. Also the second part of the claim has Manson a fledgling player in a “worldwide” porno circuit. If this is true it is certainly not because Manson had an abundance of “pretty girls.” In fact his girls were so plain looking he couldn’t pimp them out as go-go dancers -- an idea he tried and failed. His only commodity would have been snuff films.)
SOURCES:
MANSON IN HIS OWN WORDS by Nuel Emmonns, 1986, Grove Press
THE FAMILY by Ed Saunders, 1971, E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc.
THE GARBAGE PEOPLE by John Gilmore, 1971, Omega Press
ANGER by Bill Landis, 1995, Harper Collins
KILLING FOR CULTURE by David Kerekes and David Slater, 1994, Creation Books
Patrolman Richard Genero, the beat cop who made the initial body discovery way back in The Pusher, strikes gold again when he finds a discarded flight bag containing a severed hand. With nothing to go on but a printless hand and a vague description of the person who left it, the bulls at the 87th need to pull clues and suspects from thin air to discover not only who the killer is, but who the victim was.
