DEAR HOLLYWOOD:
First one to make a movie about the Findlays wins.
From da wik:
The film started out as a low-budget gore film titled Slaughter which was written and directed by the husband-and-wife grindhouse filmmaking team of Michael Findlay and Roberta Findlay. Filmed in Argentina in 1971 it depicted the actions of a Manson-esque murder cult.
In 1976, the Findlays’ distributor, Allan Shackleton, a low grade filmmaker and sometimes pornographer specializing in sadomasochism, added a new ending in which a woman is brutally murdered by a film crew, supposedly the Slaughter crew. Filmed in a vérité style, the new ending purported to show an actual murder. The new footage was spliced onto the end of Slaughter with an abrupt cut that suggested that the footage was unplanned and authentic, and the new version released under the title Snuff.
This was done as a marketing ploy so that the fake on-camera death could be promoted as being genuine. Shackleton even went so far as to hire fake protesters to picket the movie theaters showing the film. Soon this became moot, as the group Women Against Pornography began staging real protests, which received coverage by such outlets as the CBS Evening News.
The new ending was not organised nor shot by the Findlays. After realising that their film Slaughter was being reused they threatened to sue Shackleton, later accepting an out-of-court settlement. Shortly thereafter, Roberta Findlay left her husband for Alan Shackleton, who taught her to make hardcore pornography.
Can that amazing twist ending really be true??? (God, the people who made 8mm really missed the real story, didn’t they?) But if that weren’t enough…
On May 16th, 1977 Michael Findlay was killed by decapitation in a helicopter accident on the roof of the Pan Am Building in New York City. The New York Airways helicopter Findlay and three other passengers were in the process of boarding tipped on its side while the rotors were still running.