Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Starring: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Uberto Paolo Quintavalle

In World War II Italy, four fascist libertines round up nine adolescent boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of physical, mental, and sexual torture.

‘Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom’ has a sense of style and elegance with men in suits and women in beautiful evening wear, but under this façade of glamour lies a vile and disgusting movie I can’t recommend to anyone.

There honestly is no story here. It’s about sex, humiliation, and being as disgusting as possible. It is supposedly about Nazi fascists who capture young people, and then abuse them for their own sexual pleasure.

Women tell sexual stories to entice and excite the men, who then randomly chooses youngsters to have their way with them in the most inappropriate manner. People are being treated like animals, and the men in power have no sense of dignity, almost as if they are dominating animals themselves who has sex any time with any one.

From drinking urine and eating excrement to the most offensive dialogue you will ever hear, ‘Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom’ is the most vile and sick movie I have ever seen. There is plenty of nudity here, with both male and female frontal nudity, men with erections and beautiful bodies, but even this could not compensate for the fact this is a most unpleasant movie.

If this is supposed to be an art movie, it is vulgar and distasteful to the extreme. Not even to mention the torture during the film’s final moments…

In Italian.

Would I watch it again? Definitely not.