A snuff film is a film, sometimes pornographic, that depicts the actual murder of a human.

The actual existence of snuff films has been disputed. Such films have long been relinquished by skeptics to the realm of urban legend. In the year 2000, however, an Italian police operation broke-up a gang of child pornographers based in Russia who were offering snuff films for sale to their clients.

The first recorded use of the term snuff was in Ed Sanders' book about the Manson Family murders, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion (1971). It subsequently reappeared and became more widely known in 1976 in the context of the film Snuff.

Sometimes murderers film their crimes; the resultant movies are not considered snuff films because they are not meant for distribution.

The film Hardcore (1979) involves a runaway's father investigating the veracity of an 8mm film that appears to be of a teenage girl being murdered. 8mm (1999) is a similar movie about a private investigation of this genre of filmmaking.

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