murder of a news anchor to boost ratings. According to film critic Geoffrey O'Brien, "whether or not commercially distributed 'snuff' movies actually exist, the possibility of such movies is implicit in the stock B-movie motif of the mad artist killing his models, as in A Bucket of Blood (1959), Color Me Blood Red (1965), or Decoy for Terror (1967) also known as Playgirl Killer." Likewise, the protagonist of Peeping Tom (1960) films the murders he commits, though he does so as part of his mania and not for financial gain: a 1979 article in The New York Times described the character's activity as making "private "snuff" films". The first known use of the term snuff movie is in a 1971 book by Ed Sanders, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. This book included the interview of an anonymous one-time member of Charles Manson's "Family", who claimed that the group once made such a film in California, by recording the murder of a woman. However, the interviewee later added that he had not watched the film himself and had just heard rumors of its existence. In later editions of the book, Sanders clarified that no films depicting real murders or murder victims had been found. During the first half of the 1970s, urban legends started to allege that snuff films were being produced in South America for commercial gain, and circulated clandestinely in the United States. Snuff controversy (1976) The idea of movies showing actual murders for profit became more widely known in 1976 with the release of the exploitation film Snuff. This low-budget horror film, loosely based on the Manson murders and originally titled Slaughter, was shot in Argentina by Michael and Roberta Findlay. The film's distribution rights were bought by Allan Shackleton, who eventually found the picture unfit for release and shelved it. Several years later, Shackleton read about snuff films being imported from South America and decided to cash in on the rumor as an attempt to recoup his investment in Slaughter. Shackleton retitled Slaughter to Snuff and released it with a new ending that purported to depict an actual murder committed on a film set. Snuff'''s promotional material suggested, without stating outright, that the film featured the real murder of a woman, which amounted to false advertising. The film's slogan read: "The film that could only be made in South America... where