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Salo - Criterion Collection
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Actors: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, and Caterina Boratto
Rated: Unrated
Retail Price (not our price): $29.95
Release Date: 1998-08-12
Theatrical Release Date: 1975
Studio: Criterion
Run Time: 112 minutes
Format: Array
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Discs: 1


Editorial Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):

1) Description
A loose adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò is perhaps the most disturbing and disgusting film ever made. It is also one of the most important, offering a blistering critique of fascism and idealism that suggests moral redemption may be nothing but a myth. Criterion presents Salò in its uncut, uncensored version.

Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5

1) Would make a terrific musical!   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I have loved this masterpiece for many years and have often wondereded why is was never re-staged aa a musical or perhaps opera. The chararaters and story are so invovolving that one wonders why there was never a sequel in the making. Beautiful script, costumes. Don't miss

2) Keep ur money in your wallet   [Rating: 1 out of 5]
This must have been one of the worst movies i have ever seen. I mean with all the hype that i had read up on i thought it would be worth the time. When i started the movie i thought to myself oooo i cant wait to see some gore and watnot. I got nothing wat soever nothing to even think of looking away from the screen. I thought to myself this film is just more of a werid fantasy of a old deranged man who was beaten and abused as a child. To recomend this movie to a friend i would rather save my breath and time which i wont get back from watching this movie. STAY AWAY

3) Not as shocking as I was hoping, didn't make up for it in it's profundity   [Rating: 3 out of 5]
I'll admit right away, I was mostly interested in Salo because of a curiosity with exploitation films. I was also aware that Bonacelli altered Sade's work so that it was taking place in fascist Italy, but all I was really expecting from this alteration was the use of shock and exploitation as a critique of fascism (which is essentially all I found it to be as others have already elaborated). I feel I should also add that I'm an 18 year old college student who is not a huge movie-buff, but who does like to push his limits.So with this in mind, Salo was somewhat of a disappointment for me. I found the plot to be weak considering the length of the movie (almost two hours). Essentially, a few prostitutes tell stories of their personal encounters with various libertines, while the aristocratic libertines present exercise their whims on a group of teens that have been taken captive (this is literally the whole story). This may be expected though as Sade's actual work seems more focused on shocking his audience than telling them a real story. This may be an issue for those who really need a plot to follow, maybe not for those who just want "torture porn" (as Sade might have intended his work to be).So moving on to the "torture-porn" aspect of the movie. The "sick" moments did exist but they were relatively short compared to the amount of dialogue and even silence at times (which maybe was there to exemplify the teens anxiety while waiting to see what their fate was/ the mortification of their identities, however it's taken, either way I found it a tad slow with little build-up). I found the worst scenes to be a girl having to eat her own excrement, and a few very short (maybe 10 seconds each) scenes at the end of the movie such as an eyeball removed with a knife, branding a boys nipples, scalping a girl, and putting a flame to a boys penis (and besides all this the movie has a fair amount of sexual degradation). Yes, it had it's sick moments, but overall I found Salo to be far less shocking than I was expecting from what I heard was "the 8th sickest movie ever made". So if "torture porn" and exploitation films are your thing, I'd say this movie is worth a watch just because it crosses a lot more barriers than most movies and does contain an ample amount of exploitation. One should keep in mind though that it has a kind of slow pace and the first 3/4th of the movie is mostly degradation with little to no death or blood. The pinnacle moment of "torture porn" in Salo is found in the last 5-10 minutes. Maybe I'm just jaded and desensitized and don't find this movie as horrible as it actually is, but I'm definitely not troubled or really even that shaken having seen this movie. In fact, I find animal cruelty videos such as meetyourmeat.com (real snuff films?) to be much more disturbing, exploitative, and just generally hard to watch. Salo certainly wasn't bad, and I don't mind owning the non-criterion edition for the $8 I paid, but it definitely wasn't great, and it can't be shown to many of my friends due to it's graphic and disturbing nature (my girlfriend wouldn't watch it with me). In terms of rewatchability, I probably won't watch it again because I just found it sort of dull, but if you're watching Salo to find meaning in Boncelli's link between Sade's work and fascism then I'd say it definitely has rewatch potential.In short: Worth a view if you're into exploitation films, critiques on fascism (that embody the aforementioned), or just want to add another Criterion selection to your repertoire (still keeping the aforementioned in mind). Other than that, this movie probably isn't for you.

4) What was that?!   [Rating: 2 out of 5]
Honestly, I don't know where to begin. I must be completely naive or not sophisticated enough to understand the purpose of this....whatever you want to call it. I'm actually okay with that in this instance. The only purpose I can see for taping material such as this is to make money and unfortunately I helped with that purpose by buying this DVD.

5) I Loved This Movie!   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
This has got to be one of the best movies ever made! A perfect blend of action, comedy, and romance, "Salo" goes where most movies fear to tread, except for maybe "Die Hard" and "Bad Boys II". There are laughs every minute coupled with just enough gun fights to make even Clint Eastwood grin and sweat. And as far as the lovie dovey stuff, there isn't so much that it ruins the film, but I would have preferred more gratuitous nudity, like in "Apollo 13" when you see Kevin Bacon get out of the shower. Yeah, that's the one! I don't know why the rest of these reviews are all stuck on the artsy farsty elements of the film, I didn't get that out of "Salo" at all.The perfect date movie, "Salo" will guarantee a little somethin' somethin' after it's viewing.Two thumbs up. Way up!