When the original movie was released in 1978, it showed explicit death scenes and was banned, at least temporarily, in several countries. While the snuff film entered the domain of urban legend, it later was revealed that the human component and some of the animal scenes were faked, and the move became one of the decade's great hoaxes. The movie, which featured a narrator named Dr. Francis B. Gross, went on to become a cult film and spawned five sequels.
