During the summer season it's easy to forget about the films you've been meaning to watch. For the past two years, I've been barraged with requests to finally watch and review what some call the most disturbing movie ever made. In its own right, Salo is just that. It is a ultra masochistic film that made me question whether I could or even wanted to continue watching. Salo involves kidnapping and sexual violence towards children and its absolutely unnerving.Compared to modern torture porn films, it's not an extremely graphic movie but it's one that turned my stomach and truly had me questioning the apparent evil that inspired this twisted piece of dramatic art. Salo is a descent in to the further most reaches of sexual depravity while diving directly in to the abyss of living hell. Inspired by Dante's Inferno, the film's narrative is broken up in to four different segments including The Circle of Blood and The Circle of Manias. To name the third circle would be too profane for this review.
Compared to other films of the era, Salo was a film that pushed the barriers of modern cinema. It's constant use of nudity and sexual torture was unheard of at the time. Banned in almost every country on earth, this was film maker Pier Paolo Pasolini's final work before his untimely demise and it was undoubtedly his most shocking. Without hesitation, Salo explores themes including mind control, perversion, rape, murder, and the disgusting act of coprophagia. If you don't know what that is, you may just want to skip this movie. Based on the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, Salo may just be the most twisted, perverse movie I've ever seen.
Salo is not the type of film you recommend. This is the type of movie you can either watch or can't. If you can handle a slow paced feature that verifies the truly disgusting nature of human beings, I say go for it. Other than that, you need to tread lightly when considering a viewing of this movie. While I'm sure you've seen more violent or explicit films, this one exists in the real world where bad things like this can, will and do happen.
-Review by Chris George