Alright, here's MY challenge to you hard-hearted callous-skinned cinephiles.
Last week Tuesday, the sickest movie ever made was finally released on DVD after years of finagling with the estate of the long late director: Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salo O le 120 Giornate Di Sodoma) I've been waiting 2 years for this release and got my copy Friday.
Released in 1975, it's a film that's long lived on in reputation more than actual viewership. Not only because it's in Italian, but because of the difficulty in distribution.
As LeeAllure might be the first to tell you, it's a modern-day adaptation of the Marquis De Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom, the ultimate precursor to all BDSM fiction ever written. Then-famed Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, known for his optimistic adaptations of Chaucer, took De Sade's novel and transplanted it from 17th Century France to 20th century Fascist Italy, and created cinematic infamy.
The film takes place in Mussolini-era Italy in the last days of WWII, where four sociopathic city magistrates known as The Libertines, with the aid of their well-endowed machine-gun toting militia, lure a group of 18 young men and women to a hidden manor house in Salo countryside. There, they craft elaborate and sadistic games to debase, rape, and torture their victims in innumerably perverse ways over the course of 120 days. But what will they do when they grow bored of their frivolities?
The film became universally reviled for it's graphic and stomach-wrenching content. Pasolini, an openly gay Marxist, was killed by a street prostitute shortly after production wrapped and editing was underway, making this his last film, and according to some, the victim of an assassination for making it.
Throughout the decades, it's been banned, censored, and refused distribution, and it seems that only in the U.S. was it ever allowed to remain intact--of course, this didn't mean it was allowed to be SHOWN. Relegated to the obscure art-house circuits of the metropolitan U.S., Salo's been the dirty secret of shock cinema despite the fact that it was meant as the most subversive of works of art rather than a gore-bucket trip.
The visuals have so overwhelmed the content that to many viewers, there seems to be little point to it. Pasolini decided to make the film in response to the 1968 student demonstrations that quickly turned into a chaotic revolt. Disgusted with the self-indulgent melee that followed, he decided to make a commentary on the modern world and it's consumerist ways by taking De Sade's work and using it's content to metaphorically represent capitalist excess, government corruption, and the herd mentality of the global populace. Of course, this is the basic explanation; the film's subtext is so complex that even 38 years later, people who can sit through the whole thing still find new meanings to interpret.
Salo is the ultimate torture-porn movie (even though it's not supposed to be). This film makes Hostel 1 & 2 look like The Little Mermaid. It's the only film I've ever seen that actually LOOKS like a psychopath made it. I couldn't eat for 2 days after I saw this for the first time, and I actually hesitate to push "play" when I do. It has copious amounts of homoerotic overtones and over 88% of the movie doesn't have a single scene without mass nudity in it. Even after all this time, it's still a movie that would shock and sicken the hardest gorehounds. I would go into a little more detail about what you might find in it, but it would dilute the challenge.
I will say that one of the chapters of the movie is called "The Circle of Shit" and that's as far as I'm going right now.
...and it's not even a horror movie either. Go fig.
Salo was originally released in the U.S. on DVD in 1998, but a dispute with Pasolini's estate over licensing rights quickly turned the first printing into the last printing. The only 2,000 copies of the first printing are now valuable collector's items and it's circulated as bootlegs for the last 10 years. But now it's been restored, upgraded, and re-released by the legendary Criterion Collection for all to...vomit upon watching.
So...
Now that the sickest movie ever made has finally been released in a pristine condition...
Who here has the balls to watch it?...it's on Netfliiiiix!
*oh and a final note: the film isn't pornography. Some of the cast and crew were then-respected filmmakers. The music was by legendary Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone (who did music for everything from the Clint Eastwood Dollars trilogy to John Carpenter's The Thing, to Bulworth) and the sets were designed and built by Oscar-winning industry powerhouse Dante Ferretti, who also built the sets for Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain and Sweeney Todd.
Last week Tuesday, the sickest movie ever made was finally released on DVD after years of finagling with the estate of the long late director: Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salo O le 120 Giornate Di Sodoma) I've been waiting 2 years for this release and got my copy Friday.
Released in 1975, it's a film that's long lived on in reputation more than actual viewership. Not only because it's in Italian, but because of the difficulty in distribution.
As LeeAllure might be the first to tell you, it's a modern-day adaptation of the Marquis De Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom, the ultimate precursor to all BDSM fiction ever written. Then-famed Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, known for his optimistic adaptations of Chaucer, took De Sade's novel and transplanted it from 17th Century France to 20th century Fascist Italy, and created cinematic infamy.
The film takes place in Mussolini-era Italy in the last days of WWII, where four sociopathic city magistrates known as The Libertines, with the aid of their well-endowed machine-gun toting militia, lure a group of 18 young men and women to a hidden manor house in Salo countryside. There, they craft elaborate and sadistic games to debase, rape, and torture their victims in innumerably perverse ways over the course of 120 days. But what will they do when they grow bored of their frivolities?
The film became universally reviled for it's graphic and stomach-wrenching content. Pasolini, an openly gay Marxist, was killed by a street prostitute shortly after production wrapped and editing was underway, making this his last film, and according to some, the victim of an assassination for making it.
Throughout the decades, it's been banned, censored, and refused distribution, and it seems that only in the U.S. was it ever allowed to remain intact--of course, this didn't mean it was allowed to be SHOWN. Relegated to the obscure art-house circuits of the metropolitan U.S., Salo's been the dirty secret of shock cinema despite the fact that it was meant as the most subversive of works of art rather than a gore-bucket trip.
The visuals have so overwhelmed the content that to many viewers, there seems to be little point to it. Pasolini decided to make the film in response to the 1968 student demonstrations that quickly turned into a chaotic revolt. Disgusted with the self-indulgent melee that followed, he decided to make a commentary on the modern world and it's consumerist ways by taking De Sade's work and using it's content to metaphorically represent capitalist excess, government corruption, and the herd mentality of the global populace. Of course, this is the basic explanation; the film's subtext is so complex that even 38 years later, people who can sit through the whole thing still find new meanings to interpret.
Salo is the ultimate torture-porn movie (even though it's not supposed to be). This film makes Hostel 1 & 2 look like The Little Mermaid. It's the only film I've ever seen that actually LOOKS like a psychopath made it. I couldn't eat for 2 days after I saw this for the first time, and I actually hesitate to push "play" when I do. It has copious amounts of homoerotic overtones and over 88% of the movie doesn't have a single scene without mass nudity in it. Even after all this time, it's still a movie that would shock and sicken the hardest gorehounds. I would go into a little more detail about what you might find in it, but it would dilute the challenge.
I will say that one of the chapters of the movie is called "The Circle of Shit" and that's as far as I'm going right now.
...and it's not even a horror movie either. Go fig.
Salo was originally released in the U.S. on DVD in 1998, but a dispute with Pasolini's estate over licensing rights quickly turned the first printing into the last printing. The only 2,000 copies of the first printing are now valuable collector's items and it's circulated as bootlegs for the last 10 years. But now it's been restored, upgraded, and re-released by the legendary Criterion Collection for all to...vomit upon watching.
So...
Now that the sickest movie ever made has finally been released in a pristine condition...
Who here has the balls to watch it?...it's on Netfliiiiix!
*oh and a final note: the film isn't pornography. Some of the cast and crew were then-respected filmmakers. The music was by legendary Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone (who did music for everything from the Clint Eastwood Dollars trilogy to John Carpenter's The Thing, to Bulworth) and the sets were designed and built by Oscar-winning industry powerhouse Dante Ferretti, who also built the sets for Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain and Sweeney Todd.
