Killing for Culture: Death Film from Shockumentaries to Snuff

by David Kerekes, David Slater

'Killing for Culture' is an investigation into the urban myth of snuff movies. It examines and questions the human obsession with images of violence, dismemberment and death, and also looks at the way society is dealing with it.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Death, Art, Cultural Studies, Horror

Paperback

First published January 14, 1996

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

mondo, snuff, fictional serial killers. throughly explores every aspect of death on film. generously accompanied by photographs. should be required reading for anyone who wonders why they're so sick.

[Friedrich Mencken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much of the book is the authors retelling movies in text and giving their opinions on them. There is no presentation of the authors, who they are or what credentials they have. Its just two guys telling the world what they think about everything from weird movies to serial killers, just in case anyone is interested... There is not much in the way of background information on the movies either, apart from short comments lifted from magazine interviews and the analysis given is thin at best. They do tell some anecdotes but it is all one sentence statements without elaboration. For example they mention Cheen contacting the FBI about Guinea Pig and leave it at that etc. What surprised me the most was the unsympathetic handling of the Mondo genre, the supposed raison d'etre for the book in the first place.

The book also throws a wide net and comes off as unfocused and arbitrary in its attempt to be all-encompassing, the portrayal of live news coverage and tv-shows like cops are contrived and quickly becomes tedious to say the least. I guess the conclusion is that "snuff" does not exist, but is an urban myth of sorts, concocted by shoddy film producers to make a quick buck and perpetuated by sensationalist journalism in order to sell fake news to a credulous public.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is long, exhaustively researched, and no matter how much you think you know about caught-on-film atrocities and controversial horror movies in film history, there's a lot to surprise you. The only reason it doesn't get five stars is because it suffers from an abnormal number of editing errors that drove me up a wall.

[Cleo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slamming YouTube for death video comps after this one

[MondoXtremo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was thirteen when a certain underground, ah, text first saw the light of day. I didn't notice. I was more interested in football, girls, acne-remedies and alcohol than in understanding the darkness beneath the everyday. So that initial manifestation passed me by. It might as well have been published on the moon, to be honest. It wasn't till two years later, as I was idly (and illicitly) looking through the bookshelves in the bedroom of a new friend's older brother, that a title caught my eye.

KILLING FOR CULTURE.

"What's that about, then?" I wondered. I had started to slide the book from the shelf when a cry from behind me spun in my tracks.

"Don't touch that!"

It was my friend, returning from the kitchen with a couple of beers.

"What's wrong?" I asked, though I knew I shouldn't have been in the bedroom.

"Get out of there," my friend said. "My brother'll kill me if he finds out anyone's been looking at his stuff. C'mon, let's go and watch that video."

So I pushed the book back and went and watched that video. I wasn't a big reader anyway, in those days, and I knew the older brother wasn't someone to cross. But somehow I couldn't get the title I'd seen out of my head.

KILLING FOR CULTURE.

KILLING FOR CULTURE.

KILLING FOR CULTURE.

It had... I dunno... possibilities. Dark possibilities. Dangerous ones.

So the next opportunity I got, well, guess what? Yeah, I sneaked back into the bedroom and had another look at the book.

A short, sharp, shocking look.

And that's the day I truly date as the end of my childhood.

I had my own copy of KILLING FOR CULTURE within a fortnight. I kept it hidden from my mum and never mentioned it to my dad when I stayed with him and his new partner. They wouldn't have understood. It was a Headpress thing. Yeah, KILLING FOR CULTURE wasn't just a mind-f**k in itself: it was my rite of passage into a new world. The world of Headpress.

And for that alone I'll always be grateful.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

tries a little hard with the style, but if there's a better study of this stuff i don't know what it is.

[Ângela]

"Snuff is a means by which the media can prick public morality. Despite no such film ever being found, in any place, anywhere, the media continues to indiscriminately nurture and promote the myth as fact. Perhaps in so doing (...) it will one day succeed in making snuff a true commercial reality."

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

For several years I held weekly dinners followed by films for a variety of friends. Some of the guests were once only, others irregular. John, however, was a regular for several years--not only as a guest, but also as a contributor of the films we would watch and, sometimes, discuss. John introduced me to a wide variety of films and directors, many of them Japanese, I had not previously encountered, his knowledge being broad, his film collection large.

Meanwhile, sometime during this period, I befriended a coworker who also introduced me, glancingly, to some other new material. In addition to his day job, with me, he also had a night job: arranging entertainments at gay clubs, and a film hobby: gore movies. I'd never seen a real gore film, he asserted after we'd discussed the matter, just palid Hollywood imitations. He offered me the "real" thing: something called Cannibal Holocaust. It was pretty bad and not just because of the gore. It was pretty bad by any criterion.

I don't recall whether I watched this film at one of the movie nights with John or not, but it did lead to a discussion of the genre and to being loaned Killing for Culture, a popular review of snuff films.

Killing for Culture reviews the history of the snuff film, examples of such things and compares the known facts to various popular beliefs. In the judgment of the authors the only real snuff films are some of the demonstration clips produced by Thomas Alva Edison and some clips derived from news reports (a couple being on-air suicides). In other words, there are no true snuff movies.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an incredibly comprehensive book on the presentation of death in movies and other forms of media. But while it is heavily researched and bursting with all kinds of information, as a reading book it frankly gets mired down in its details. It starts off quite nicely at looking at how a poorly made fake snuff film could create such a huge kerfuffle, but once we get into the Mondo movies and things like Faces of Death, the book drags. A more thorough analysis and examination would be well fueled by this book.

[melancholinary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beside Mondo Films and Death Films chapter, the rest are pretty much flat. I wish this was written in Internet era though.

[Larry Ggggggggggggggggggggggggg · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential document for anyone interested in the history of shock cinema and its cultural origins in the postmodern mythology of The Manson Family Killings and virtually every facet of its cultural impact up to and including the terrifyingly plausible implications that real snuff does in fact exist

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

The the best, most serious examination, as art and cultural artifact, of some of the most notorious fictional films ever made. It falls short only in its age.

[Will Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scholarly rundown of the snuff film, pseudo-snuff films, and true death on film. Well done.

[Przemek Kotowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1993 this book is a printed version of a very dedicated fan’s blog. I was expecting more of cultural and movie criticism but it is just a long list of movies and their plots.

[Justice4Gaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is Headpress?

Headpress is a feral voice in a fetid world.

Killing for Culture is indubitably their most toxic publication.

"Death on film" is arguably the world's most teratogenic topic.

Be in no doubt: we live in interesting times, mis amig@s.

On the one hand, death cults of ever-increasing ferocity are on the rise.

On the other hand, advancing technology makes it ever-increasingly easier to record and disseminate scenes of the most disfective and disturbing violence.

The result has been a flood of incendiary imagery guaranteed to rock the most hardened gore-geek back on his heels.

Of course, some regard this septic surge as an opportunity for snickering scopophilia.

While others seize their chance to...

But let's not go there, chiquit@s. There are some unsavory individuals afoot.

Snuff said.

Compare and contrast the authors of Killing for Culture.

David Kerekes is a discerning death-film researcher with more than 40 years of visceral viewing under his belt.

So, too, is David Slater.

They don't have fancy degrees in Snuff Studies.

They won't smother you with jargon or bamboozle you with cultural theory.

Instead, they offer something much more important: a passion for putrefaction.

Killing for Culture puts that passion on paper.

It also points a body-fluid-stained forefinger towards the future.

What awaits the death-deviant community?

Where will advancing technology take us next?

I shudder to think.

But I know one thing.

Snuff. Is. Not. Enough.

¡Viva la Muerte!

[Justice4Gaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

What core skill-set is required to write a book engaging issues of such toxic transgressivity? For me, three core skills jut forth maximally. The first is easy to identify, being (as it is) at the heart of all Headpress publications:

#1 Incendiary Intleligence.

The second follows naturally therefrom:

#2 Counter-Cultural Commitment.

And the third? Arguably it is the keyest core skill of all:

#3 Passion for Putrefaction.

Killing for Culture is so pyogenetically packed with pro-active Passion for Putrefaction that I could swear it vibrates on the shelf at times. If you're a member of the counter-cultural community and don't own a copy, then, hej, mein Freund, you need to get your a. into g. and make with the t.

Period.

[Stuart Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written at a time when cinema and film censorship in the UK was at it's most draconian and fearful of the moving image. This book goes back and investigate the existence or otherwise of snuff movies in a commercial market sense. The whole Charlie Sheen / Human Guinea Pig series / FBI debacle is worth the book alone... enjoy

[Andrew McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. The meticulous research that went into this book is absolutely outstanding. Great work to this team. With the addition of new chapters and research to the book, it it so much more poignant for todays snuff media culture. Excellent revisions! Thanks!

[no elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

riddled w factual errors & fairly outdated, but comprehensive in its overview of notable mondo films especially