Mute Witness

Mute Witness is a 1994 thrillerhorror film written, directed, and produced by Anthony Waller. The film was shot in Moscow, Russia, while Alec Guinnesss scenes were filmed in Germany in 1985. Although made in 1994, it was not released in the USA until the fall of 1995 with the UK not seeing it till the following year.

Billy narrowly escapes and manages to tell her story to her sister and the police, but the snuff film crew manages to convince the authorities that the onscreen murder was a cinematic special effect. However, the events bring forward Larsen Oleg Yankovsky, an undercover detective who is tracking the activities of the covert film crew and their connection to a shadowy criminal mastermind called The Reaper. The Reaper Alec Guinness is a financier of an international underground snuff ring. He tells the criminal film crew that Billy is a witness and must be eliminated, thus motivating the snuff film director, his thug assistant and a host of subsidiary criminals to retrieve a missing computer disc from her and dispatch it. As more and more factions get involved in killing and saving Billy the action becomes wild and fantastic and hard to discern whats real from movie magic.Critical reception has been mostly positive and the film currently holds a rating of 80 fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, based uponreviews. Variety gave the film a mostly positive review, remarking that while the movie can be entirely plotdriven, neglecting to develop intriguing characterizations, its suspense is so chilling, its narrative so disciplined and its style so pleasurable, they jointly triumph over the other deficiencies. The review from the New Yorker was more mixed and they wrote that the directors technique is impressive the film falls flat only when he attempts to make the frightening funny. But the plot takes some nice twists and turns, the tension builds a good head of steam, and the tawdriness never lets up. ........

Source: Wikipedia