Like a privately educated shark or Carol Vorderman with a shotgun, serial killers are the winning combination of smart, deadly and, most importantly, fascinating. Unlike the first two (with the possible exception of Ice Cube’s worst nightmare in Deep Blue Sea) there have been an uncountable multitude of stories based on serial killers, from in depth police procedurals to twisted and gruesome portrayals of ‘real life’ events. Whether Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy or Charles Manson there are some pretty fucked up people out there who have in turn inspired some pretty fucked up fictional characters.
Snuff is cinema’s most controversial and disturbing concept. It originally got it’s name after a police raid on Sesame Street found a collection of videos tapes documenting Mr. Snuffleupagus’ years of abuse and murder. Unable to convict due to federal laws not applying to fictional species’ Mr. Snuffleupagus still works to this day and is suspected for the disappearance of scores of live studio audience members.
Back in the year 2000, at the age of about fourteen, I was deep in the midst of a pretty thorough obsession with the band System Of A Down. I had t-shirts and posters, my band did a number of SOAD cover songs and, most challenging of all for my teenage fandom, I tracked down every single demo song, B-side and bonus track I could. A tall task when the internet was still in its early days. As a result I bought an album of metal and hip-hop collaborations and a couple of film soundtracks on CD, one of which was for Dee Snider’s Strangeland. So nearly fifteen years later, as I crawl my way towards my thirties, I finally got around to watching the film which that album accompanies.
