3/4  Atypical, Disturbing but Strangely Engaging
Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini paints a deeply disturbing film about Nazis who kidnapped eighteen teenagers from their homes and subjected them in all kinds of physical, sexual and mental embarrassment (”torture” is the more accurate... (read full)

2/5 You'll remember it forever--despite yourself.
  by Miles D. Moore (Alexandria, VA USA)
I've never had more wildly mixed feelings about any film than Pasolini's "Salo." The reviewers who note that it is a serious work of art, and not an exploitation film, are absolutely correct. Yet "Salo" goes beyond disturbing, and in many ways I feel it is dangerously unsound.

While I've never read De Sade's "120 Days of Sodom," Pasolini seems to remain true to the Sadean "ideal" (if you can call it that). He also does a brilliant job of making the Sadean story of sexual torture and dehumanization a bold allegory of Fascist Italy, and indeed of any totalitarian state. Why must these young people be sexually humiliated and murdered? Because four old men say they must. It should also be stated that the violence in "Salo" seems almost tame after 35 years of ever-increasing cinematic mayhem. (The scenes of coprophagia, however, remain pristinely nauseating.)

So why do I turn thumbs down on "Salo?" Because I cannot shake the feeling that Pasolini--not politically, but literally--sided more with the torturers than the tortured in this film. The very coldness of the sexual images seems to argue that Pssolini was a Sadist in the classic sense--someone who, like his Fascist dignitaries and their courtesan accomplices, got an enormous kick out of the pain and humiliation of others.

"Salo" remains a fascinating intellectual exercise, but one you will want to expel from your mind as quickly as possible. Here's the kicker: you won't be able to, and trying only makes it more vivid in the memory.

5/5 schindler's list evil twin hope none at all
  by M. J. Snoreen (Las Vegas)
This movie shows that men and women in high places can do with absolute no oversite anything.
People can drift in to the deapest levels baste on the marques de sade. Pier Paolo Pasolini
drew on the darkest aspect of man kind it proves with total power what man is capable of and what perversions are able
to proseed when you have no empethy for fellow people i think it is perhaps the most inprtant movie
in modern history it shows what even the nazis would not do morality is a nessery good for the world
we need are barings the sadom and gomora movie mabey or mabey not watch the movie on your risk with a open mind
weird for the age it was filmed in

1/5 The John Hughes remake was much better!
  by Rayscann
I loved "The Breakfast Club" and heard this was the film that inspired it. Both have essentially the same plotline: a group of youths are forced to be detained for some bogus list of offenses and they spend the entire film relating to each other while avoiding the thumb of their captors. The differences (aside from the fact that "Salo" is not in English) is that the "Breakfast Club" gang are not nude, aren't repeatedly raped, aren't forced to eat doo-doo, and aren't slaughtered at the end. I can see how Hollywood wanted to give it a lighter touch to appeal to a broader audience and I would have to agree. And you know what? Hollywood was right. "The Breakfast Club" made a lot more money than "Salo" and launched the careers of Judd Nelson, Julio Estevez, and Molly Ringwald. Bravo Hollywood! You showed the pretentious European film community a thing or two about successful filmmaking. Here's to your continued success in dominating world culture.

1/5 Don't buy this film
  by Travis Bonifas
This film should Not be in the Criterion Collection. It seemed to me that is was made just for shock value. it is a waste of money and whomever thinks this is a good movie is crazy. The movie if about a group of facist men and women who take multiple children for a type of sexual experiment. throughout the movie the adults constantly refer to themselves as facists. I can not stress enough that this movie is a complete waste of money.

2/5 Over Rated!
  by Cougar1ne (LA, USA)
I could have lived without seeing this movie. The acting isn't fantastic, the plot is weak, The sub plots are weaker still.