Snuff Trap (2003)

When I first heard of Bruno Mattei's "comeback" into the old style of exploitation, Snuff Trap (aka Snuff Killer) was the first production I heard about. But I stayed away from it through the years, mostly because it seemed like a normal soft-porn film and I'm not interested in that genre. Then Mattei started to make movies with cannibals, zombies, WIP and demons and suddenly I understood what he was doing: restarting the old tradition of true Italian exploitation. So my interested turned back to Snuff Trap and especially after I realized it was partly inspired my Joel Schumacher's underrated 8MM (starting Mr Hair himself, Nicolas Cage) and just wasn't another boring skin flick.

Carla Solaro (a veteran from several Tinto Brass productions) plays Michelle, a rich French woman living with a esteemed politician. She has a daughter from a previous relationship, Lauren (Federica Garuti, I think...) who one night disappears after living la dolce vita at a fancy night club. Michelle's husband does not want her to contact the police because his political ambitions and Michelle starts her own investigation and decides to go undercover in the seedy pornographic underworld to find the kidnappers - and it leads to a downward spiral of sex, torture and... snuff!

At the first glance Snuff Trap looks like a porn movie. The digital material is not processed in any special way and the pre-credits looks as cheap and primitive as they can get. The lighting is flat and the acting suffers from being dubbed by other actors. But Mattei gets things going, and even if it's a boring mission to rip-off 8MM with a DV camera and a very low budget, he's doing a very fine job with giving the movie a nice pace and even if it's filled with a lot of footage of people walking, it's not boring. It lives it's own life and handles that well.

The basic premise is taken from 8MM, but only one or two scenes are directly taken from that movie. The rest is an "original" story that works quite well, better than it should. While it's hard to say something about the actors because of the somewhat cartoonish dubbing, their presence is not bad and in true Mattei-tradition we're treated to some gratuitous over-acting in the best possible way. My favorite actors are Anita Auer as Dr. Hades and Albert Ruocco as Roy, her slightly effeminate assistant and manservant. Here we have some over-the-top performances in a good way, from people who probably knew that they had nothing to loose and that this was a good movie to have some fun with their characters. If was a filmmaker I would make a movie only with these two sleazing around in Hamburg!

One thing that surprised me with Snuff Trap was that it wasn't as graphic as I imagined beforehand! Sure, it has tons and tons of nudity (and even some real hardcore and nasty S/M on TV-monitors) and a few deaths, but it stays far away from the worst things. I can't say it's classy product (...and it would probably offend notorious Swedish morality-protector Janne Ahlgren a LOT) but it's enough serious to be seen as a "real" thriller and not a soft porn masterpiece.

Snuff Trap is another fun exploitation movie from the fantastic mind of the late master Bruno Mattei. Oh, I wish he could have stayed well and alive and worked for another lifetime. But shit happens, so even to filmmakers we hold dear...