Source: Some information on this page may have been sourced as part of the 2023 Wikimedia Australia Partnership Projects grant, with the purpose of improving and expanding the use of Wikidata on our website. Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Read more about this project here.
A widow settling her husband’s estate, finds an 8mm film in his safe. The film on the reel is a “snuff” film, and shows a young girl being tortured and killed. Upset by the film, she hires private detective Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) to find the girl on the film and determine if the film is real. When Tom learns the girl on the film is a runaway, his investigation takes him to Hollywood, where with the help of Max (Joaquin Phoenix), a clerk in an adult bookstore, he discovers the world of underground pornography, and his initial investigation becomes an obsession.
Content notification
Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.
Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.
How to watch
Stream, rent or buy via
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
314326
Languages
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
English
English
Finnish
German
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Norwegian
Polish
Swedish
Turkish
Audience classification
R (18+)
Subject categories
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Pornography
Courtroom, Crime, Espionage & Thrillers
Courtroom, Crime, Espionage & Thrillers → Detective and mystery films
Courtroom, Crime, Espionage & Thrillers → Thrillers
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
DVD; Access Print (Section 1)