SHOOT TO KILL.

Despite the police manhunt, helicopter searches and trail of blood leading into California´s San Bernadino National Forest,
it was two week end hikers who found Aziz Ghazal´s body. On the second Sunday of 1994 they stumbled upon it four
miles into the woods. Ghazal had shot himself in the head with the .380 calibre pistol he still gripped in his hand. A prop
gun, a .357 Magnum lay near the body and the surrounding trees were nicked with bullet holes. The aspirant director had
made sure, he was fully familiar with the pistol before pressing it to his temple and squeezing the trigger.

The search for Ghazal had begun on December 3, when police discovered his Toyota in nearby Pine Cove. Its
blood-splashed interior contained two items: a notebook in which was written, "You can never know the pain you caused
me" and a copy of The Brave, the novel he was hoping to film. Ghazal had been seen two days previously, running from
52875 Cedar Drive in Pine Cove. It was the house his ex-wife Becky shared with their three children - the house Ghazal
had just set on fire. Earlier that day he´d driven from his west Los Angeles house and broken into his wife´s home, filling it
with makeshift Molotov cocktails. He was only disturbed when his daughter, 13-year-old Khadijah, arrived home from
school at 5pm. He beat her to death.

Becky arrived later that evening, smelled the petrol fumes, and left her two sons, six-year-old Chad and 11-year-old Nazir,
with neighbors before returning to investigate. An hour later the blaze had spread throughout the house. When the fire
department finally brought it under control, police investigators found Becky´s dead body upstairs, curled up and with one
hand over her face. They also found a large petrol can in the main bedroom and a blood-covered axe outside. Next to the
axe were two beer bottles stuffed with petrol-drenched cloth. An immediate police search of Ghazal´s LA address found a
receipt for the petrol can along with his will, dated September 4, which left all his property to his father. His diaries and
work had been neatly packed into boxes. Among the debris of his frustrated career was a script for a film called The
Brave.

Based on a novel by Gregory Mcdonald, author of the Fletch novel, The Brave detailed the final days of Rafael, a
poverty-stricken, alcoholic simpleton. Rafael sells himself to a snuff movie-maker on the basis that after he has been killed on
film his $30.000 fee will be given to his family. But his illiteracy leaves his wife with only a meaningless contract. The story
also includes a long sequence where McCarthy, the snuff kingpin, tells Rafael of his intended fate in pathological detail.

Ghazal had been introduced to The Brave by Paul McCudden in 1992. McCudden, a script reader for Michael J. Fox´s
Snowback productions, noticed a review of the book in the New York Times and thought it would make a good
low-budget film. As a writer he had no idea how to acquire the rights to a project, so asked Ghazak to do it for him. The
pair had originally met at USC Film School, where Ghazal had run the stock room between 1982 and 1993. He was
responsible for the equipment that every student would require at some point during their studies. If you attended USC
during that period, you knew Ghazal.

"You had to have interface with him and it was usually unpleasant" says producer Don Murphy, who was at USC at that
time "It was a thankless job, you needed to be an asshole to do it. But if he thought you were someone who´d go off and
have a career he´d help you out. If not, forget it"

Ghazal was equally as frustrated a film-maker as the students he dealt with, and used his position at USC to make student
films while studying for a masters degree. He produced 1987´s schlock horror Zombie High and 1990´s Natural History
Of Parking Lots, which were shown at Sundance. Ghazal convinced USC to give degree credits to any student who
worked on the former. "He literally exploited every student he could to get his name on a movie" says Murphy.

"Aziz was territorial" says a former USC stockroom colleague, who rented the guest house on his west LA property from
1987 to 1990 "He was like a wolf peeing on something: this is mine"

Aziz Ghazak´s determination eventually persuaded the initially wary Gregory McDonald to grant a $25.000 one-year option on The Brave. The author liked the brief treatment McCudden had sent him, along with the duo´s intention to make the film cheaply on 16mm black and white. McCudden completed the full screenplay by the beginning of 1993 and with Ghazal sent it to everybody they could think of - and anyone they´d known at USC who had anything to do with Hollywood.

Arriving during the post-Reservoir Dogs demand for dark low-budget movoes McCudden´s script rapidly attracted attention. The pair sought representation with Barry Mendel at the high-profile United Talent Agency. At one point Mendel was receiving 25 request a day for the script.

"I found it incredibly moving" remembers Mendel, whose wife was unable to read it to the last page "She thought it was too awful to face" he explains "It was the long description of the snuff movie death that stuck with most readers" McCudden disagrees "I always saw it as as a love story" he says "It was about how wonderful life could be in the face of evil. The snuff movie was not what the story was about, but it set the tone"

Aziz Ghazal´s script was by no means Hollywood´s first encounter with snuff movies. The idea of a film-maker actually murdering a human being on camera for the climax of a movie has long been part of underground mythology. It´s an oblique aspect of the stories of film like Hardcore, Paul Scrader´s bleak 1970 LA porn odyssey, or David Cronenberg´s Videodrome (1982) It forms the basis of last year´s low-budget Russian mafia story Mute Witness. The grim half-glimpsed world of perversion and criminality from which a snuff movie could come remains darkly fascinating - despite the scarceness of evidence that such a thing has ever existed.

Rumors of snuff films have their roots in the "mondo" movies of the ´60s. These were titillating travelogues inspired by the success of Gualtiero Jacopetti´s 1962 Mondo Cane (A Dog´s Life) This was a documentary-style examination of man´s cruelty to animals and his enviroment, reputedly the bitter fruit of the director´s anger when his girlfriend were killed in a car crash. No human death scenes were included, but a sequel filmed the following year included apparently faked footage of a Buddhist priest setting fire to himself as part of a religious protest. Later spin-offs were even more gratuitous and macabre, swapping their predominantly animal-related slaughter for human misery, culminating in the open-heart surgery, failed parachute jumps and aeroplane disasters of the later Faces Of Death series.

Real snuff movies, however, those including footage of actual killing almost certainly do not exist. Police in Britain and America have never found any they didn´t believe were faked. The suggestion that they might exist, that the means to shoot one are available should some twisted auteur wish to use them, has been enough to perpetuate the myth.

It was Michael Powell´s terrifyingly prescient Peeping Tom, following a serial murder who records his crimes on 16mm and plays them back to himself, that introduced the idea of filmed death in 1960. But the term "snuff" was not to appear in the popular vocabulary for another ten years, first appearing in a book, The Family: The Story Of Charles Manson´s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion, about the Tate murders of the previous year. The author, Ed Sanders of ´60s underground political band The Fugs, suggested that Manson may have been involved in "brutality" films depicting torture and murder. He later dubbed the rumoured movies "snuff" and claimed they were buried in the Californian desert. But as hard evidence failed  to materialise Sander´s story was to remain unsubstantiated.

Nevertheless, the death of Sharon Tate was to prove ripe for exploitation. In 1970, two years after Tate´s murder, husband and wife duo Michael and Roberta Findlay used it as source material for Slaughter, the story of a brain-washing demagogue and his female followers culminating in the slaughter of a pregnant woman. The Findlays had gained previous notoriety for their low-budget sexploitation movie Satan´s Bed, which featured a young Yoko Ono. Slaughter was shot as cheaply as possible in Argentina and filmed without sound, as some of the actors were locals who spoke no English.
The intention was to dub it later. Eventually the distributors, a porn outfit called Monarch Releasing Corporation, shelved the movie owing to its shortfalls in bloodshed and plot. Even Roberta Findlay later admitted "It made no sense"

In 1975 The Family were making news again. A former member, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempted to assassinate President Ford, leading to a documentary about Manson being banned by a US Federal judge. Allan Schakleton, head of the Monarch Releasing Corporation, seized the marketing opportunity and re-issued Slaughter with the originals credits removed and a new title borrowed from Ed Sander´s book: Snuff.

Earlier the next year Shackleton began leaking information to the press about the existence of an apparently real snuff movie filmed in South Amerika. By Feburary a poster for Snuff appeared by the National Theater on Broadway bearing the tag-line: "The film that could only be made in South America ... where life is cheap! The bloodiest thing that ever happened in front of a camera" The poster showed a sliced-up illustration of a naked woman.

Immediately there were protest outside the cinema from women´s groups, some of whom were rumoured to have been tipped of by Shackleton. On Februrary 16, the story was in New York Times. The furore was over the extra footage Shackleton had added to the Findlays´original print: the supposed snuff element. Once the original plot ended, the new film cut away to reveal the "real" torture and murder of the lead actress by the director after he´s persuaded her to have sex on camera with him. The killing was obviously the work of an effects artist, and the parting voiceover sounded exactly like what it was, two low-rent actors reading from a script:

"Shit, we ran out of film"

"Did you get it all?"

"Yeah, we got it all"

And how could a film containing murder be shown in a Times Square cinema? New York Times film critic Richard Eder said "Everything about the film is suspect: the contents, the promotion and possible even some of the protest that is conducted each evening outside the box office"

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau described the movie as "trick photography" and had the lead actress tracked down to prove she was alive and unharmed. Schacleton himself said "If it was real I´d be a fool to admit it. If it isn´t real I´d be a fool to admit it" Another of his preferred soundbits was: "Pickets sell tickets"

As Snuff was releashed across America, the publicity snowballed. The mass protest, notably from women´s groups, spread across the country and heightened the suggestion that the death scenes might be genuine. Shackleton´s profit swelled as more and more people went to investigate this horrific film for themselves - and the notion of the snuff movie entered mainstream consciousness.

Later in 1976, while Snuff was padding Schakleton´s retirement fund, Aziz Ghazal met Becky Vollstedt in San Francisco. He was the son of a Lebanese Arab father and Israeli Jewish mother, she was from the midwest. They married that year and settled in LA. Their first daughter, Khadijah, was born four years later and Becky began teaching a year later. It was not a happy marriage. Ghazal was an unsettled, violent man, and now he had a wife to beat. When they moved from their one-room flat to a larger home in west LA in 1986 Becky hoped the pain would stop. But it didn´t. Ghazal remained a figure of fear until they bought their week end retreat in Pine Cove. Ghazal was still far from being the ideal husband, but at least he didn´t always express his anger with his clenched fists. The Pine Cove cabin was acquired in 1991; the next year Becky began teaching in a nearby town. That Christmas she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She needed rest. She needed to be settled. She needed to get away from Ghazal. "If I am going to die" she told a friend "I want some peace and quiet first"

The couple officially separated the following March, shortly after Ghazal had seen Khadijah hugging her boyfriend outside her school and attacked her. He was charged with child endangerment and access to his children was restricted. When he did visit, his son Nazir insisted on sleeping with his toy bow and arrow. Three months later the divorce was final. In her declaration, Becky talked about the move to west LA.

"It was suppose to be a clean start" she said "It was just another place to fill up more rooms with violence"

Ghazal was beginning to put The Brave together just as his marriage was falling apart. The script had found its way to Don Murphy, who was preparing to produce Oliver Stone´s Natural Born Killers. Murphy and partner Jane Hamsher had both been at USC and were wary of Ghazal.

"A friend told me he was normal again" says Murphy "He wasn´t"

Stone read the script and liked it. A meeting was set up with Ghazal, who had become convinced that Murphy and Hamsher were trying to steal the project. Stone told Ghazal his interest was based on the involvement of director Keith Gordon, a promising new talent who´d directed one of the better episodes of Stone´s dystopian TV series Wild Palms. Ghazal was furious. He insisted only he could direct The Brave. Stone interrupted his rant and asked bluntly "What exactly is your ethnic derivation, anyway?"

Ghazal, who´d always been embarrassed about his mixed Middle-Eastern heritage squirmed. Stone shook his hand and left rapidly.

Ghazal´s former USC colleague and tenant visited him at home shortly afterwards "He told me; "I´m not gonna let this one go. I´m gonna make them give me what I want""

Ghazal had already employed his agent, Barry Mendel, to get what he wanted. Mendel was negotiating with Egg Pictures, Jodie Foster´s production company, who´d offered a $200.000 producer´s fee. It was a generous offer, but they were adamant Ghazal could not direct. By August they´d agreed to consult him on the choise of director. The deal looked all but done. Unbeknown to Mendel or Paul McCudden, however, Ghazal and his lawyer had been negotiating with Touchstone and two other USC graduate producers, Karroll Kemp and Charles Evans Jr. nephew of ´70s playboy producer Robert Evans.

Touchstone agreed to give Ghazal a director´s test, which was no guaranttee that he´d get the job. Ghazal felt the director´s job was practically his by right. When The Hollywood Reporter broke news of the Egg deal on September 1, Touchstone were incensed. One of their business affairs executives called Egg, who were equally confused and angry.

Mendel suggested Ghazal apologize to Egg and said he would explain the problem to Touchstone. Ghazal did call Egg, but only to badger them about his contract. The deal was lost. On his way home that day, Mendel stopped at a payphone and called Ghazal. He insisted that the only way to salvage the situation was to admit to his mistake, but Ghazal just wanted to argue. The next day, Mendel notified his client that he would no longer be representing him. The two never spoke again.

"He was affronted that I would make such moral judgments" says Mendel "He just generally felt misunderstood"
Ghazal former houseguest is convinced the problem ran deeper than just communication "It was about control" he says "He finally had some power and had people hopping to his tune"

What little power Ghazal had began to slip away after the project stalled at Touchstone. He was losing his hold on other things too. USC were investigating him over a $100.000 camera that had been missing for six months. Suspension from his stockroom post followed, and Ghazal was transferred to another department. He never turned up for his new job.

Ghazal was now channelling his obsessive behaviour towards his family. Divorce had given Becky sole custody of their children and temporarily denied Ghazal visiting rights. Becky had reverted to her maiden name of Vollstedt. Although she changed her number, Ghazal once managed to call her 100 times in one day. By autumn, he was writing daily letters to the Pine Cove address and when he phoned Gregory McDonald, the author of The Brave, he sounded so unhappy that he was invited over to the writer´s Tennessee farm for Thanksgiving. Ghazal left behind 100 typed pages of his journal, started at the suggestion of his therapist. It was a litany of paranoia and thoughts about his family "Aziz was very traditional" says his former tenant "The idea of losing his family pushed his buttons"

After news of Becky and Khadijah´s murder reached Hollywood, the United Talent Agency placed extra guards in the lobby "There was no reason to take any chances" says Mendel. McCudden only found out about his former partner´s rampage when Don Murphy called him. The next week were filled with rumours that the temperamental Ghazal was intent on levelling the score with anyone he felt had crossed him.

At the time no-one knew what was going on and it was a natural assumption that this was about grudges" says Murphy "We didn´t know about the other dramas going on in his life. Everybody in Hollywood has tunnel-vision. This is what happens when there is no light at the end of that tunnel"

In the early ´90s, as Ghazal worked on his screenplay, Charlie Sheen and a friend acquired an Asian snuff film. Unable to explain away what they saw on screen, they contacted the FBI. The Bureau and Japanese police were already on the case and the tape Guinea Pig 2: Flower Of Flesh And Blood was traced to Chas Balun, editor of grimy splatter magazine Deep Red.

"There´s not one scene of mayhem that couldn´t have been effectively rendered by a journeyman effects artist" he said. It was a judgment confirmed by a later investigation.

The Japanese Guinea Pig series´ reasonably executed special effects led to a widely held belief that they were genuine snuff films, and they were subject to widespread bans. Flower was the second in the series and featured the apparent kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of a girl. Its multiple camera angles, sharp editing and credits suggested it was far too slick to be snuff.

By the time of Sheen´s "discovery", snuff folklore had emerged in mainstream cinema. In Videodrome (1982) James Woods becomes fixated on satellite images of a woman imprisoned in a room where she is beaten by two hooded men. Two years later, Larry "Q The Winged Serpent" Cohen made Special Effects, about a director (Eric Bogosian) who murders a girl while filming himself having sex with her. The footage, he hopes, will rescue his career. In John Frankenheimer´s 52 Pick up (1986) a gang of blackmailers threaten to murder Roy Schneider´s girlfriend, film the killing and frame him for it. They force him to watch a snuff sequence that adheres to the established template: silent, low-budget, single camera angle.

These films traded on allusion to filmed death. But two others were to take both the portrayal and public awareness of snuff to a new level. The first was John McNaughton´s Henry: Portait Of A Serial Killer (1990) in which Michael Rooker´s Henry continually re-plays a brutal rape and murder that he´s filmed on a Handycam. The scene is emotionally blank and disturbingly non-judgemental as Rooker admires his work just to avert boredom. The Belgian Man Bites Dog (1992) attracted as much attention as Henry, largely because it was released on the tide of moral indignation caused by Reservoir Dogs. A pastiche of true-crime TV, it follows a wisecracking murderer who kills for the benefit of the camera crew. Shot in documentary style, on black and white 16mm, it was passed uncut by the BBFC. The colder Henry was edited. "The whole point is to say to the viewer "Look, how can you accept this?" claims André Bonzel, the director of man Bites Dog.

"Aziz definitely saw himself in The Brave" says Don Murphy "There´s no question about that. you could see the drama off him going into the woods and putting a gun in his mouth. You could see him thinking, Oh, God, look what´s happened? I need an ending"

USC held a memorial service for Ghazal, but The Brave remained alive in spite of the fact that most of the major studios distanced themselves from it "They thought it had become too weird" says Paul McCudden. Eventually it was rescued by Ghazal´s former associates, Karroll Kemp and Charles Evans Jr. who´d managed to attract Johnny Depp to the project. Depp decided to make it his directorial debut and, with the help of his brother, rewrote McCuden´s script to make the lead character, Rafael, a Native American.

"The original script was full of cliches" says Depp "It was a Christ allegory that resembled a long, humourless funeral march. Despite that, I found the idea interesting. The story paralleled what happened to the Indians 100 years ago" With the help of Bernado Bertolucci´s producer Jeremy Thomas, Depp found financing for the film at the 1995 Cannes film festival. He cast his friend Marlon Brando as the predatory snuff baron McCarthy and had Iggy Pop write the score. The Brave was shot in the desert around Ridgecrest, California last year.

When Depp was asked about Aziz Ghazal during a press conference at this year´s Cannes festival, he glowered, "I had a friend who cleansed this project. He cleansed and exorcized it" All of the cast and crew on The Brave took part in a daily Native American blessing of the film set. The ritual may have given Depp peace of mind, but it did litlle to help the film´s reception. It was savaged by the festival press, while John Hurt dismissed it as too poor to be in the competion. Currently it has no UK or US release date.

Paul McCudden also saw the film at Cannes. "Once Depp was on board, I had no further creative involvement" he says, though he retains a writer´s credit "I wish his version well, but it´s not the film that I wrote"