Banned Film News

Reality Killers is a 2005 Italy horror by Alessandro Capone, Pablo Dammicco, Volfango De Biasi
Starring Valter D'Errico and Cristina Puccinelli

Banned by the BBFC for 2024 video. The US release is uncut and MPA Unrated.

Summary Notes

We follow perverse serial killer 'The Sculptor' as he parades the viewer through his extensive collection of snuff videotapes. What follows is a series of candid vignettes of horrific intensity which will test the nerves of even the most hardened of horror fans.

Versions

uncut run: 75m pal: 72m		US: Uncut and MPAA Unrated for: 2025 Treasured Films R0 Blu-ray at US Amazon #ad released on 10th June 2025
banned run: 75m pal: 72m		UK: Banned by BBFC 2024 Treasured Films Limited Edition R0 Blu-ray The BBFC commented: Reality Killers is a horror film in which a man obsessed with violent snuff videos, featuring people being abused, tortured and killed, goes on to commit his own similar crimes. Reality Killers consists of a series of short vignettes in which people, including women and children, are killed. In some cases, acts of sadistic violence follow or involve sexual behaviour and nudity. The protagonist acts as a narrator, relishing in the violence and endorsing the actions of the killers. Women, in particular, are portrayed as either sexual objects to be abused or as predatory killers themselves. Potentially harmful attitudes, such as the suggestion that victims and perpetrators enjoy violence, and that women are presented primarily as sex objects or predatory killers, are not clearly challenged, nor is there a narrative counterbalance to the sustained focus on sadism. As a last resort, the BBFC may find content unsuitable for classification, in line with the objective of preventing non-trivial harm risks to potential viewers and, through their behaviour, to society. In our Classification Guidelines we state that this may occur where a central concept is unacceptable, such as a sustained focus on rape, other non-consensual sexually violent behaviour or sadistic violence. The guidelines also state that we consider whether the availability of the material to the age group concerned would run contrary to broad public opinion. The BBFC considered whether the film's issues could be adequately addressed through intervention such as cuts. As Reality Killers consists almost entirely of scenes of sadistic violence and abuse, we determined that cuts would not effectively address these issues. The film, when taken as a whole, transgresses BBFC Classification Guidelines and policy, and we believe that its classification even at 18 would run contrary to broad public opinion. The BBFC therefore found Reality Killers to be unsuitable for classification. : Mike Comments Reality Killers has been made available in the UK via import from the US. I got mine today and watched it, so here are a few comments: Most importantly, this is the tamest film the BBFC have rejected in a very long time. I'm struggling to remember a single shot which, on the face of it, would breach BBFC guidelines. Quite a lot of characters get killed but none of them in an especially gruesome way, and the special effects aren't up to much so it's hard to take seriously. The BBFC rejection statement mentions child killings, but there's only one and it's totally non-sexualised and non-sadistic. The killings of women have less effect than they might in that they're often shot in low light or with shaky camerawork, and usually we see the aftermath rather than the act itself. One puzzling aspect is that several of the sexually-motivated killings are committed by women against men. The BBFC line on this has long been that such scenes don't pose a meaningful harm risk because there is no research evidence that such scenes are harmful to viewers, even if sexualised. The last time such a scene was cut was in Neighbour (2009). So we might have expected the BBFC to go easy on those scenes at least. Not so - the rejection statement says that women are presented primarily as sex objects or predatory killers. So even when women are committing murders the BBFC still condemns the filmmakers. Very strange. The BBFC have often had problems in the past with films which fail to include enough narrative to tie together their scenes of sexual and non-sexual violence. Films in which we just see the killer murdering people with no wider narrative, explanation of why they kill, whether they get punished for their crimes, etc. are often viewed with suspicion. (Hate Crime and Grotesque are good examples of that). The problem that Reality Killers has is that it's a film almost without narrative. We assumed initially that it was directed by Alessandro Capone, but it turns out that although he did shoot one section, his role was basically as chaperone to some inexperienced young directors who were being given their first chance in the industry. So several people shot different parts of this film, and the only connection between them was that they featured snuff killers. Hence there is no single killer who commits all the murders. In many scenes it's not even clear which of the murderers we've met so far is doing the killing. The film's producer tried to introduce an element of continuity by filming some scenes with a fat man in a mask and interspersing them with the rest of the footage to make it look like he is the killer. But it doesn't really work, and there are just several killers none of whom we get to know. I think it's the lack of context and narrative that was the BBFC's main problem. If you go in to this film having read that you're about to see a depraved snuff killer's home video collection and assume it must be like the August Underground Trilogy or Murder Set Pieces, you're going to be extremely disappointed.