According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a snuff film is “a violent film that shows a real murder.” The verb “snuff” means “to extinguish,” much as one would snuff out the flame in a candle. The most rigorous and commonly accepted definition of a “snuff film,” though, involves a movie featuring a real murder that was produced and distributed for profit. In the early 1970s, rumors started emerging that an entire underground film industry existed to make and distribute snuff films for profit. But the concept is much older—a 1907 short story called “A Good Film” by Polish-French writer Guillaume Apollinaire was about photojournalists who stage and film a murder due to the public’s insatiable hunger for true crime. But although there are several films that depict actual murder, according to Snopes, there has never been a movie that actually fits the technical definition of being filmed and distributed for profit.