I guess Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini has to be classed as a disturbing horror movie, if only, for its disgusting content.
I get what happens and why it’s so disgusting, shocking and somewhat disturbing. I can definitely appreciate that things like this happen and in parts of the world will continue to happen, but the film overall was pretty awful for me. Maybe I wasn’t as impressed as I wanted to be because I hadn’t seen or read much on this film but I’d heard a lot about it.
I don’t want to say much about Salo and make it sound really good unintentionally. It didn’t particularly gross me out or shock me to any extent (and no I’m not into coprophagia), but I found myself wanting to turn it off just because I started to get bored.
They have a lot of backdoor sex, torture, discipline and depravity mixed with more backdoor sex with no gender being safe from the leaders but the old school picture, terrible acting by most, occasional bad dubbing and orders of the fascists was just ‘blah’ for me.
Again, I can appreciate what Salo is trying to do but this is literally one of the few films that I’ve heard so much on that didn’t live up to its expectations.
I can see how this might affect the weaker stomached viewers, but unfortunately I feel the film has aged badly. If you’ve never seen a ‘disturbing’ movie before, then I guess you could be in for a shock, but I think that the real ‘horror’ of this movie lies in the premise. This lacked the punch that A Serbian Film gave me.
I could be more hardened than I thought as the only part that particularly got my interest was when they showed the dictators randomly looking out onto the lawn at the ‘games’ below. I haven’t read the book, but I assume it’s more interesting. If you really have a thing for torture and random sex, you may like Salo. Otherwise, skip it. Shocking doesn’t necessarily mean worth watching.
WICKED RATING: 4/10
Title: Salo/120 Days of Sodom
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Writer(s): Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergo Citti, Pupi Avati, Marquis de Sade (uncredited)
Stars: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo
Year: 1975
Studio/ Production Co: Produzioni Europee Associati, Les Productions Artistes Associes, United Artists
Budget: Unknown
Language: Italian
Length: 116 mins
Sub-Genre: Torture, shock, shock cinema
