Event

EVOLUTION OF SNUFF

Dir. Andrzej Kostenko, Karl Martine, Wes Craven (will explain below), 1979
West Germany, 79 min.

"The death of the soul begins when the human being no longer sees any sense in his existence."

There is a certain type of documentary, often German, that combines public domain footage of lurid crimes interwoven with a lurid if muddled primary story line, then overlaid with deadpan narration to make some sort of existential point about the ruination of society. It's close to a Mondo film, close to underground sleaze, close to a scuzzier Making A Murderer/The Jinx, yet not quite any of those. I imagine there's a German word for it. THE EVOLUTION OF SNUFF is a profoundly confusing example of this genre. Starting with pedophile Roman Polanski, not terribly long after the death of his wife, pontificating on that sad old chestnut: the snuff film. This leads us to believe what we're going to see is a documentary about a film where a person is murdered on camera, right? Wrong! We get a making-of film about a wigged-out pornographic version of Lysistrata, which probably has some of you confused, until you learn the twist is instead of the solidarity of celibacy the women are going to screw the guys so much they have to submit to their whims. From here we go to a mix of William Kleinian absurdity counterbalanced by the relentlessly sardonic narration as things go from bad to weird to worse. Please stay for what might just be the most insane ending of a film ever, built around stolen outtakes from Last House On The Left! Bring a date! I dare you!