Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

You simply cannot accuse Pier Paolo Pasolini of being a boring film maker and playing it safe. Salo is certainly one of the most extreme films I’ve ever seen- it’s still banned in several countries- but there’s more in it to be interested by than something as dull as The Human Centipede (2009). Human Centipede, despite many horror aficionados (who have admittedly more experience than me) claiming there are things in there that make it an interesting film, left me cold. Controversy for controversy’s sake is all well and good for those that are simply interested in extremism (A Serbian Film [2010] would be a good example), but for me a film that has this many questions over it needs to have content to back up the making of the film beyond just shock. Pasolini somehow achieves this with Salo, despite being a film that includes extended scenes of young men and women eating feces whilst naked on all fours held by dog leads. It’s a feast of debauchery and degradation but not in a way that glorifies the two. Towards the end of the Second World War, a group of fascists round up nine young men and nine young women and subject them to 120 days of physical, mental, and sexual torture in a castle like setting. Salo is divided into sections given names like ‘Circle of shit’ and ‘Circle of blood’ and each one begins with one of the female fascists regaling the audience of her early sexual encounters, which precedes various of the leaders acting out these tales in increasingly deranged and troubling ways. What hits home the most about these tales is that this sort of thing was forced upon many prisoners of war and still is today, making Salo a difficult watch and certainly an endurance test; but it’s almost impossible to dismiss Pasolini’s adaptation of a 1785 book as nonsense. It’s a troubling film and there’s no questioning Salo's extreme nature, it doesn't surprise me that it was banned in many countries. But unlike other so called ‘extreme’ films, the reason Salo works is that there’s no tongue in cheek here; this is pure filth filmed by a man you could never accuse of not knowing what he was doing. It’s probably worth noting that everyone who has an issue with Salo has already expressed it; meaning it seems futile for anyone coming into Salo now and being upset or offended, because if you’re easily offended you sure as hell wouldn’t go near Salo with a barge pole. Unless you actively wanted to be offended by something of course, but why would anyone want that? 7.5/10