The Great American Snuff Film

I feel like this movie was made by a sadistic 16 year old in film class. It is supposedly a documentary on a "real life" serial killer. Any research of his name reveals that this is not true making this movie worse. The poor acting/ sound/ lighting and direction could have been OK if it was supposed to be a documentary. But it's not. simple as that. This film fell flat with no redemption. The "real footage" at the end is obviously not real. (Nor did I want it to be, if it was as it was claiming to be, a true snuff piece). I feel this whole movie was made on a whim by a couple of board kids who wanted to meet pretty girls, so they threw them in this horribly made "movie"

Snuff films were an urban legend that became real: Leonard Lake and Charles Ng made them, as did Maury Travis. This film is not based on them, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to Bittaker and Norris; the dominant one looks a bit like Bittaker, and the slow one is even called Roy.

A documentary about real serial killers serves a purpose, but a film that is simply gratuitous sadism, rape and murder with a bit of necrophilia thrown in, well, it reminds us there are plenty of sick minds out there besides these unspeakables.

This film is trash. One point for the soundtrack.

OK, this is NOT a film with superb acting, clever direction or high quality sound or production values...but hey, it doesn't claim to be. It clearly states at the beginning that this is a dramatisation of entries from William Allen Grone's journals, with the two-and-a-half minutes of Super 8 film recovered by police, thrown-in at the end.

The fact that the 84 minutes preceding the "real footage" is b-grade quality, adds to the realism. Its gritty, dirty, rough and raw - and because of this you are more easily affected by the events that transpire. I agree that the added Super 8 footage at the end is it's biggest selling point, but if you love films that challenge the concept of what film should be, than you will appreciate this film.

Overall, not the most shocking of films, but a worthy entry into exploitation cinema.

Excuse my English, I'm speak Spanish, but i do my best. I had a big expectation about this film, i spend a lot of time seeking this one, and finally i See, and i have to say ¡¡ this sucks!!... The acting was poor poor, the direction poor too, and the sound awful... literally hear the wind blows again the mics... and the story was stupid, even if was a true story, the gore and violent is very bad, the movie has no strong scenes like the title says... i expected intense violence and stuffs like that, but noooooooo..... Really, if you want to see a bad movie, see this one. Low budget is not equal a low quality, but the director of The great... think different.

As a true connoisseur of horror, exploitation, gore and such, I greatly looked forward to seeing "The Great American Snuff Film." I mean the reviews contained phrases like, "Stay away," "This is torture," "This is one brutally hard film," and "Can easily crush the spirits of unprepared viewers." Sounds good to me! So I buy the DVD, pop it in and wait for the delicious disturbing pall to wash over me. Didn't happen. All those people so shocked, disturbed and disgusted by this movie must only watch family films and the freakin' Teletubbies. Maybe, just maybe, if they had actual actors in the roles it could have given me pause but really - and I don't want to sound catty - the kids in the elementary school plays I participated in gave better performances. I even laughed at a few things in this film that were supposed to make me recoil in disgust. Maybe that makes me one sick fella - but I don't think so. I've seen the best and worst of the exploitation and torture genres and this one falls not as the worst but as pretty darn bad, sitting close to the bottom for sure. As a comedy... not too bad at all. I mean when I think of all the people naive enough to believe that this movie contained actual snuff footage, I laugh my ass off.