S&MAN and Violent Voyeurism
Earlier tonight, I had the chance to get cozy with Mikita Brottman’s essay “Mondo Horror: Carnivalizing the Taboo” in Prince’s anthology The Horror Film . In it, Brottman discusses the place of mondo films like the well-known Death Faces, which show scenes of real life horror—grainy footage of assassinations, bloody crime scenes, horrific accidents and other material deemed too disturbing for television—accompanied by documentary style narration. These films are definitely on the fringes of the horror film industry and have always intrigued me as a fan of the genre. It was this interest in the reality of the mondo film that drew me to the horror documentary S&MAN or Sandman that documents filmmaker J.T. Petty’s search for a real snuff film. J.T. Petty takes us along for the ride as he shoots a documentary for HDNET. When his idea to interview a Peeping Tom from his old neighborhood flops, he takes the question of voyeurism and turns to the underground horror film industry as he ...