The Expense of Cheap Life

I don't know if they have changed their tune, but I read years ago that the FBI determined 'snuff films' to be non-existent, urban myths. Golly- why would anyone film their own crime of murder? Who would be so foolish? 

If we have learned anything from the Epstein Files (not enough) it is that life is cheap, yet the Epstein class is willing to pay exorbitant sums of money to further cheapen it. Absolutely anything is possible, especially if profit is involved. 

In 1979, George C. Scott starred in a film called, "Hardcore". The storyline was that Scott was a hardline, Calvinist religious, businessman whose teen daughter disappears from a church youth convention. He hires a private eye to find her and that guy comes across an X-rated film with her in it. These leads Scott to LA where he searches the depths of the porn world in hopes of finding her. The deeper he goes, the worse it gets, up to and including the filming for profit of young girls being raped and murdered. It was a brutal movie, but a 7.1 on the IMDb richter scale so, well received. 

I was dating Laura at the time, and we saw nearly everything that came out, when it came out, pretty much for the sake of seeing it. This is to say, that there was scant research to be done on most films before viewing back then. It was not like it is today when you can consult IMDb and a hundred other sites before you buy a ticket. It was some pretty rough stuff, and I looked at her several times for signs that she might like to walk out. I vividly recall her not looking at me, her eyes riveted to the screen.

Of course, Laura being Laura, I got her review when we left the theater. How could I have forced her to watch such horror??!! Well, I must not really love her after all! She was quite the performance girlfriend, constantly questioning my love for her, demanding I prove it. I was young and a fucking idiot. Of course, I didn't know that then. I just thought I was a bad boyfriend. 🤷 I'd get better, right? 

Anyway, that film got a lot of people talking about whether snuff films existed or not. Well, they certainly weren't mainstream! As young and dumb as I was, I didn't see any reason for them to not exist. The world- even before Trump- has always been a brutal, dangerous place. Life has always been cheap. Other people's lives, that is.

In an expose on the Playboy Mansion during its glory days in Los Angeles, it was revealed that Hugh Hefner held weekly snuff film nights where he and select friends and bunnies would drink, eat pizza, smoke a little weed and watch unsuspecting women be murdered during or after sex. That's entertainment, I guess. Why wouldn't our current rich freaks do the same? Having money feeds the quest for power. Money allows you to see- or do- things that men without money or power cannot. In the movie, if I recall correctly, men were paying like $10,000 just to watch the films. Some were masturbating. Others were just getting off vicariously. 

You may be thinking that, well Hollywood has been creating gruesome, realistic violence for decades; why risk incarceration when it can be faked? Do you have any idea what CGI costs? I don't, but I know it's a lot and that it tracks that lacking a Hollywood budget, the price of kidnapping and killing a young, anonymous Guatemalan girl is far more fiscally prudent and delivers an extremely high ROI. The Epstein class is all about profit and low-cost mayhem. Eight billion people on a planet allows for hundreds of millions of disposables.

I don't know what the official FBI stance on snuff films is now. They might not even bother having one anymore. The only thing I know is that official stances are whatever the officials want them to be. And that is disgusting in itself.