Behind the Couch

The recent direct-to-DVD horror  Terror Trap  tells of a couple who discover the isolated motel they are stranded at is used as a studio to produce snuff movies - films that purportedly depict actual homicide. The staff at the motel are all involved, and the residents of the small rural town the motel stands outside, are also aware of the films being produced there and, chillingly, turn a blind eye. While writing a review of  Terror Trap , I began to think about other films that revolve around the idea of snuff movies... Mute Witness (1994). A deliriously taut exercise in sustained tension and suspense, Mute Witness  stars Marina Zudina as Billy, a special effects make-up artist working on a low budget slasher movie in deepest, darkest Moscow. Staying late at the creepy, crumbling studio one night, Billy witnesses the filming of a snuff movie and is relentlessly pursued around the sprawling studio buildings by the filmmakers. Billy is mute, and therefore can't simp...

2010 Dan Garcia When bickering couple Don and Nancy’s car is forced off the road when they pass through a small, rural Louisiana town, they are taken to stay at a nearby motel by the somewhat inhospitable sheriff. They soon discover that the motel is used by a gang of twisted individuals to produce snuff movies. And Don and Nancy are to be the unwitting stars of their latest film... Beginning suspensefully with a menacing scene in which a young woman is stopped by a surly sheriff in the middle of nowhere, hauled out of her car, has her keys confiscated and told she must either spend the night in a jail cell or a nearby hotel because she’s in ‘no fit state to drive’, Terror Trap sadly goes down hill from here on in. The taut uneasiness created in this scene, depicting a helpless individual powerless to do anything when a corrupt authority figure abuses his power, could have lent the film real suspense had writer/director Garcia incorporated more instances like it throughout. Wh...