Pasolini's "Salo" is like waking up from an overnight drunk next to something that looks like Hatchetface from "Cry Baby," it is something that you will not be able to get out of your head for a long long while. Whether you admire the film, or hate it, if you can just barely bring yourself to recommend it, you will not be able to sleep at all that night, because the thought of what you have just put your eyes, ears, and entire body through will no doubt haunt your darkest sweatiest nightmares. And I'm not even talking about the message of the film. The movie is filmed in such a subtle and graceful style, that all of the sheer depravity on screen seems to excel at you in greater speeds than if the movie was flashy or filled with the unnecessary jump cuts. I've never had violence on screen react to me the way that this movie did. It is beyond realistic, both sexually, and violently. The sadism that flows throughout this film is sickening, vile, and downright scary because it is not a cartoonish sadism, or a sadism put there for exploitation purposes. It is realistic, helped in part by the make up effects and by the acting. You'd swear these actors weren't put in this film voluntarily. You'd think they were put there by gunpoint, you know, like Linda Lovelace.

Now did I like the film? Oh god no, are you kidding me. But then again, I don't know if it was the intention of Pasolini to make a film that people go to, then say "wow, I digged that film, lets watch it again." My guess is that it was the intention to make a film that showed the worst possible effects of fascism, as sort of a way to come out and say "this is what it leads to, this is wrong, this cannot exist in society." Yeah, he got his point across. After seeing this film, I gotta admit, I'm not a very big fan of fascism. The movie is so unforgettable and disgusting that the last time I saw it was 2 years ago, and I'm just now writing a review for it. It's like it was yesterday that I saw the thing. I've seen it twice. Once when I bought it, then a couple days later when a friend of mine brought up enough courage to sit through it. I never want to see the thing again. It's one of the most disturbing things that I've seen. Is it flawless? What, are you kidding me?

I've got some problems with the film. Someone could watch the film and really think of it as nothing more than 18 adolescents being kidnapped by 4 key political figures (a Duke, Bishop, President, and Magistrate). The kids are held captive in an isolated villa, surrounded by guards, and each day they either mentally or physically tortured, sometimes by listening to wild and perverted stories from old sex fiends, or by homosexual rape, or dining on feces, or random scenes like a girl being forced to eat bread with nails in it. In the end, those who disobeyed an orders are killed in the most brutal and sadistic ways possible. The end. That's really all that happens in the film.

It's divided up into a few different segments. The first one is "Circle of Obsessions" where an old prostitute tells her stories of sodomy and childhood rape, which turns on the 4 fascists to the point to where they begin fondling the adolescents, and force them to fondle each other. There are other scenes here involving the adolescents naked and chained and eating from dog bowls. "Circle of Sh*t" revolves around a giant feast over a steaming pile of feces, some of which is collected by the adolescents in bowls. Finally, "Circle of Death" ends with the prolong torture scene, and is the most paranoid of the three segments. Adolescents turn on each other in order to save themselves from sure punishment, while others are shot on the spot for engaging in sexual activity with one another. Pasolini says it's a film that goes against fascism, and I believe him. I believe that's the intent of the film, and it really does show, as I mentioned earlier. But since that is all that happens in the film, you could look at the movie as a piece of pro-fascist propaganda, and if you're into that, you'll think it's the biggest turn on since "Triumph of the Will." There's nothing in the film to go against the actions taking place unless you yourself already disagree with it.

It's like finding a stag film in which a woman is brutally murdered by a man in a black mask and a strap on. You know, a snuff film. Then after that very awkward viewing experience, you find out that the movie's sole purpose was to show you just how bad snuff films are. Of course you agree with it, someone being murdered on film is definitely not a very good thing to have, it's very messy. But then again, there's no evidence in the film to prove its intentions otherwise. For all you know, the director of that snuff film could be someone who just wants to put some shockinly graphic footage and psycho sexual situations on film.

Luckily "Salo" is handled by a professional director like Pasolini, and if it didn't come from someone like him, the movie would be looked upon in the same regard as something like "Bloodsucking Freaks," since ultimately the artsy quality saves it from being a Joel M. Reed film. Pasolini was a director who pushed the bar on controversy, so much so that some feel that his death (at the hands of a male prostitute) was nothing more than a political assassination. He was killed shortly after filming this movie. I don't know all that much about Pasolini, I don't know much about his films, so obviously I'm not the correct person to comment on that situation, but what I can honestly say is that I'm glad he believed in this film enough to come out and say that it is here to show the effects of a fascist-ridden society, otherwise I wouldn't have even thought about that. I would have judged the movie next to the likes of "Cannibal Ferox" or a snuff film, which would be the wrong thing to do with a movie like this.

Other than the quarrels I just mentioned, everything else in this movie completely works, and it's enough for me to recommend the film. The music in the movie is truly beautiful as in the opening credit sequence, which is the same bit of music that the two guards dance to in the movie's brilliant final shot. The constant piano solos are excellent, and that strange morbid gregorian chant bit that plays during the final scenes of murder and torture is equally part of making that scene so damn disturbing. I can't think of the tongue removing, the breast burning, or the hanging without that odd and dark music playing in the back of my head, and believe me, I try not to think about that scene too much.

The acting in the film is simply fantastic. Paolo Bonacelli is an actor who showed his strengths in "Caligula," but here he is just downright scary. When he yells, you can feel it in the goosebumps under your shaking skin, and when you see his eyes, you really think that this man wants the girl to eat the feces he has just squeezed out, in lack of a better term. His character loves the power in doing that to this girl, and it shows so well that it isn't overacting, it's what this character would do. He portrays fascist so well, that watching him, we completely get that this character absolutely loves what he is doing to himself and to the adolescents. The other three main actors are excellent and creepy in their own right, but Bonacelli has those eyes, those insanely frightening eyes, and that commanding yell. It's brilliant.

I could also go on about how the graphic violence really affected me in this film, but part of the fright of this film, what shakes you up, is not knowing what is about to happen to these people, making you so utterly scared for them. I won't mention anything else, other than the fact that the scene involving feces is so realistic and completely disgusting, that I felt this little thing in the bottom of my stomach that wanted to come up and spew all over my couch. It didn't do it, but it came so disgustingly close, and that has never happened to me while watching a movie. I'm the guy who always bragged about being able to eat lasagna while watching "Cannibal Holocaust." I couldn't do that with this movie. It's more disgusting than when Divine digested it, and that was real feces!

Truth be told, no matter what the message of this movie is, I would still go on to recommend the thing. I think that there are tons of movies out there that are genuinely scary, and numerous others that creep the living hell out of you. But as far as being disturbed from the inside and out by a movie, that rarely happens with me. I came up with a list of movies a while back that truly disturbed me. I think it was a list of somewhere between 10 and 15. This movie made that list. I have to recommend you see the movie, if for no other reason, than for that. This movie was panned upon release as just "Pasolini wallowing in his own sensationalism," but it's gone on to become known as something more than that. The movie has a message, which I think is slightly overrated in its telling, but it also has a large effect on the viewer for the images presented. Everything you've read about is in the film, but whether it disturbed you is up for question. I guarantee that it will. Oh yeah, and it's also based on the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom."


Recommended: Yes