Friday, June 3, 2011

#17: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)


The Marquis de Sade is an author remembered chiefly for his attempt to create a literal chronologue of every known perversion.  In this movie, director Pier Paolo Pasolini places some of the worst ones on the screen and into cinematic history.  It's the story of four wealthy and corrupt fascist libertines, who spend their post-Mussolini days kidnapping and torturing a total of eighteen different teenage boys and girls.  They proceed to spend the next 120 days subjecting them to the most extreme and yet sublime sadistic urges boiling in their twisted souls.  This film is rated the 65th scariest movie ever made by the Chicago Film Critics Association in 2006, and this in spite of the fact that it's not even typically considered a horror film.  Pier Pasolini, who created it was murdered shortly before its release.  A tragic footnote to a tragic movie. 

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