RG
Roberto Giacomelli
•Young and rich Lauren one evening goes to a nightclub with her friends, but after having isolated herself in the car with a boy she just met, she is kidnapped by a man who first kills her partner. Michelle, Lauren's mother, after consulting a private investigator who directs her to the sector of women trafficking, decides to undertake a personal investigation in the world of porn, even suspecting that her daughter was kidnapped to participate in a snuff film.
With "Snuff Killer" we are in the full "La Perla Nera" period, the name of the production company of Gianni Paolucci who financed all the last films of Bruno Mattei, that is, the worst things that the Roman director has realized in his life. "Snuff Killer" does not escape the rule and presents itself as a visually poor and content-wise sterile product, presumably shot only for "alimentary" reasons.
The packaging is squalid, it is enough to think that the video quality of the digital used makes "Snuff Killer" resemble those sad hard films shot directly on video that circulated in the early 1990s, with photographically overexposed scenes and clearly reconstructed (poorly) interiors in some theater set; and the CVC-branded DVD that circulates in Italy only accentuates the defects, including the grain of the image.
As is customary for a certain Mattei lacking ideas, too frequent in his last twenty years of career, the film is a shameless copy of a famous Hollywood blockbuster, in this case it was the turn of the good thriller signed by Joel Schumacher "8mm: Delitto a luci rosse". However, it must be underlined that in this case not all the flour is from Schumacher's sack, because a little without doubt also belongs to Paul Scharder, since "Snuff Killer" borrows from "Hardcore" (another known film on the world of porn and snuff) the opening, only modifying the sex of the protagonist, from male to female. Well, the gender identity of the protagonist and the unlikely ending are Mattei's flour, author also of the subject and the screenplay. The embarrassing similarities with Schumacher's film are not limited to the pedantic evolution of the investigation, but also to the reproduction of photocopy scenes (the protagonist who views a snuff just purchased and realizes it is a fake, for example) and even to the use of some phrases, including the famous "If you dance with the devil, the devil does not change. It is the devil who changes you!", spoken by Joaquin Phoenix in the original film and here several times put in the mouth of a similar character.
Compared to other bad films by Mattei, one can recognize in "Snuff Killer" a minimum of research and care in the management of the framing, something that unfortunately does not save a film that really has nothing to say, moreover a bit boring and interpreted by the usual actor-dogs that populate the "La perla nera" productions. In the role of the protagonist is Carla Solaro, an actress with poor acting skills who has often worked with Tinto Brass (in "Fermo Posta", "Senso '45" and a cameo in "Paprika") and has shown every abundant centimeter of her skin on calendars and magazines for men only.
Despite the protagonist and the "hot" theme, "Snuff Killer" focuses less than expected on the erotic component, resulting modest even on the side of violence.
As with all the other films by Bruno Mattei of the last years, the advice is to avoid watching "Snuff Killer", so as to remember the late director for his most famous works that have made him cult among horror enthusiasts.
