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Mr. Christian is the overarching antagonist of the 1999 horror-noir film 8mm. He was a wealthy industrialist who paid for the creation of an authentic snuff film, which he kept hidden from his family and associates, and the rest of the world until his death.
Biography[]
In the past[]
Although Mr. Christian is well regarded by the general public, and his family, he was in truth a depraved man who kept a dark and terrible secret: he arranged for the creation of an authentic snuff film, where a real girl was actually tortured, raped, and murdered on camera. In 1993, Christian, and his attorney Daniel Longdale hired pornographic film producer Eddie Poole, and director Dino Velvet to create the snuff film, they lured teenage vagrant and runaway Mary Anne Matthews into to the snuff film with false promises of stardom, and then they had Machine torture, rape, and murder her on camera. Mr. Christian paid 1,000,000 dollars for the film, and then kept it hidden in his safe that only he had access to.
Present-day[]
After Mr. Christian died, his widow discovered the contents of his safe, and in addition to seeing more normal looking things, she is dismayed upon finding Christian's snuff film among them. She and Longdale, (with her initially being unaware of Longdale's complicity in the creation of the snuff film) hire private investigator Tom Welles to verify the film's autheticity, while Mrs. Christian also tells Welles about herself, and her late husband, whom Welles admired at the time, and of their four children, and seven grandchildren.
As Tom Welles goes further along into his investigation, he discovers, much to his horror, that the snuff film was in fact real. He encounters the men directly responsible for its creation, but is also lured into a trap by them, with Longdale also revealing his part in its creation, where they force Tom -- under threat of killing his friend Max, and his wife and infant daughter -- to hand the film over to them. Tom is shocked and baffled as to why Christian would possibly want to own a snuff film, to which Longdale tells Welles that Christian had no real reason to make one other than because he could. Although the villains kill Max and destroy the snuff film, Tom is able to arrange for Velvet and Longdale to kill each other, and narrowly escape.
Welles informs Mrs. Christian of Longdale's death and of the snuff film's authenticity. Mrs. Christian then commits suicide in despair over learning the truth, but not before writing two final letters, one to Mary Anne Matthews mother, and one to Tom Welles. Welles is able to avenge the poor girl's death by killing Poole and Machine, the remaining two men involved in the snuff film's creation.