Before Saw, before Hostel, before The Human Centipede, and before “torture porn” was a stupid cliche that is overused to describe any film that has a hint of torture, there was Salo. Rest assured, this film is not for the weak or squeamish. You have been warned. I’m already shaking my head that I am even writing about this. Seriously, you don’t have to read this, you can just move on. I won’t be offended. Or skip to the bottom where I review it.
So, this movie is Italian and was directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and you’d be shocked to find out that he was killed shortly before this film’s release. I guess he wasn’t a bad director, and yes, this film makes its point, but at what cost? It’s all in subtitles, so I will do the best that I can considering the ginormous cast.
We have some nice music at least. People are cast as simply male victims and female victims. There’s a lot in each category. This movie does not fuck around. Our main characters are four Fascist Libertines: The Duke, The Bishop, The Magistrate, and The President. This takes place in Northern Italy in 1945 during the Nazi-Fascist occupation. The 4 guys all sign this book or document and says that all good things come in excess. Yup, this is a film that has meaning behind it.
These boys are on their bikes on the street, and they see these guys standing by their cars with guns. The boys try turning around, but they get caught. Some young guy named Claudio is being taken away, and he is given a scarf. These young guys are teens. A lot of boys being taken away. These men in uniform show up and one spits on this lady, they are all dressed in nice dresses. These are apparently the daughters of the 4 Fascists. They will marry the other one’s daughter so that everybody is intertwined. This guy is joking about the girls blooming and not knowing about doom.
We have more of the guys dressed as gangsters, no gun that I see, in a big room. In comes more guys, including the 4. They have about 30 boys lined up in the room. There’s some fat guy making jokes at Franco’s expense. We have a Claudio, Franco, Sergio. One of the 4 wants to inspect the boys, so pants down, shirts up and yay, 2 uncircumcised dicks. What is this, Game of Thrones? So the guys take a few of the boys. Now they are with even younger boys. All of these boys have been captured. The Magistrate has been waiting 2 years to deflower this one boy apparently and everybody laughs. I have some cereal.
Now we are at a new establishment with girls. OK, I can get behind this. Eva is kinda cute. The head lady pulls up Eva’s shirt and pulls down the panties. Nice perky tits, huge bush, fine ass. The Duke isn’t happy. He wants a new one. I’m looking at these girls, and Eva is easily top 5 best looking. They choose Albertina, and she is cute too. They purchased her off of 2 nuns and her dad is a professor. She is missing a tooth, so Bishop isn’t pleased. Next. This girl is cute, she’s crying, smaller bush. The crying turns on our guys, so they will take her. Good choice. Now they are transporting all of their picks. One guy jumps out of the truck, and he made a damn good run for his life but is shot down, and President is happy. Now they only have 8 boys. President made some joke about family and the number 4. It was totally lost on me, but they found it hilarious. They arrive and are greeted by 4 madames/head whores. Everybody is brought out to a field.
So the Bishop or Magistrate is laying down the rules. These people are there for the 4 guy’s pleasure. Any freedoms and legalities that they had are out the fucking window. Nobody knows they are there. Here are the rules.” At 6 PM, the company will assemble in the “Hall of Orgies” where our storytellers will tell us stories, each with a particular theme. Our friends have the right to interrupt at any moment. The purpose of the stories is to inflame lust; all will be permitted. After dinner, the gentlemen will conduct the so-called orgies. The Great Hall will be adequately heated. Participants, appropriately dressed, will lie on the floor like animals, they will intermingle, copulate indiscriminately, incestuously, and sodomitically. That will be the daily procedure. Any man caught in flagrante delicto with a woman will be punished by the loss of a limb. The slightest religious act by anyone will be punished by death.” Soooo long story short, you do as you are told, and you will get ass fucked. You don’t do what you are told, you will be ass fucked and missing a limb, or just killed. Deal? You can already see where this is going. Do I have to keep reviewing? Sigh.
Circle of Manias
It’s storytime! So the whore comes down, talks about growing up a boarding school. Her sister told her that a professor wanted to show her something and would pay her for it. Sweet, gooo on. So she follows him to a room and starts jacking it, and asks her to help. Magistrate is turned on, so he puts a boy’s hand on his package. So she jacks him off and he cums. Oh boy, I thought a Serbian film was an explicit thing to blog about. Well, Magistrate says that he needs her to slow down, be more detailed, or else this shit is pointless. I agree. a 30-second story about jacking off your teacher isn’t going to give any dude a raging clue. So she starts…..dancing? What? She says that she hasn’t omitted any details, and Magistrate is like, you haven’t told us the size of his cock, the consistency of his cum. Get it together lady! Did she cup his balls? We need details. The Bishop has brought a boy into a side room.
So whore is telling a story about when she was 7. She got sat on the professor’s lap, and she had some syrup that will make her pee. That’s all this dude wanted was for this girl to pee. Well, Bishop comes back out kicking the boy to the ground, and he wants him punished. He had the gall to pull away. He kicks a girl to the ground and steals her seat. He refuses one of the other boys. He is so dismayed because he was close to cumming, but now, he lost it. I hear ya man, we have all been there, well where you lose it, not in a room where you are raping teens, at least I hope none of you have been in such a predicament. He just wants the boy punished. A whore says that she will satisfy him, and needs no instruction. He replies “There are a thousand occasions when one does not desire a woman’s anus.” A thousand occasions eh?The fuck. SO the whore tells her story, and the professor drank her piss and then came apparently. Magistrate has a boy…I think, start jacking him off. Yeah, it’s a boy, and he is bad at jerking it. A girl runs out of the room and is captured and brought back.
At mealtime, Magistrate says that nothing is more contagious than evil, and Bishop talks more about evil. Hey, they have nude girls serving the food! The boys are all laughing. One of the male guards or boys, but I think guards, trips a server. He pushes her down and undoes his zipper. Everybody is laughing. SO he sticks it in her ass and she screams. The President wants a great view. He pulls his pants down, asks Umberto how he likes his ass. Then he shows more people his ass and everybody laughs. Now he runs over to the girl and boy and tells the boy that it is his turn, but not how you’d expect. Nope, President gets on the ground and wants to get ass fucked. He has the weirdest smirk on his face. The Bishop starts singing some war song. Everybody joins in.
One of the whores has 2 boys bring in a chair, and then a male dummy in a suit and hat. She puts on the hat and looks not bad. She calls the girls over and tells them that the guys are not happy and that they must learn how to hold a cock. That seems reasonable. She tells one girl to get down on her knees. She unzips the pants, and gets yelled at to work the cock, up and down, and stroke underneath with the other hand.
We are back in the hall, I think. These big doors open, and there is a dead girl, the one who tried running I think. Storytime again. So her sister brings her to a whorehouse to get work. SO a dude takes her, so she shows him her pussy, and he’s not into checking out pussy, just ass. He sucked on her ass. The president is aroused, so he picks a girl up, bends her over his knee, lifts up her dress and begins to explore. So the guy in the story said he was gonna pound her ass. President is a fan of the ass. President is now wondering how to tell the sexual inclination of the boys and girls. Bishop is like, well let’s masturbate them and see their reaction. Brilliant! The guys are watching the whore and a guy masturbate 2 others. Come to find out, the dude with the full beard is the Duke. Fuck it, does anybody care if I am getting names wrong at this point? He is talking about Fascists and having power and restricting impulses. The guy got the boy off. The whore got the girl off. So that’s going to be our first coupe. All the boys and girls come out nude, except for the couple, dressed for a wedding. God, there is so much bushy hair.
Duke decides to suck on some titties during the ceremony, and kiss guy’s necks and grope. Bloody hell. He is kissing and fondling every guy and girl, like making out now. Bitches, shave those bushes. Time to continue the wedding, so they get married. Sergio has an Eric Foreman look to him. The Bishop tells everybody to get the fuck out. Now it is time to consummate the marriage. She is pretty. Sergio is going real slow. So they kiss. If he just got jerked off, what is he gonna do? He goes to fuck her and they yell at him for it. 2 guards pin them down. The Magistrate sees the guards bending over, so time to ass fuck a male guard.
The 4 guys are talking more Fascist talk. I am thinking of punching my balls. Duke is singing. Now they are talking about their old underwear. They talk about refinement and delicacy.
Storytime again and the whore is singing and telling a story about a Libertine making her go down on all fours, and then petting her like a dog. Haha, the guards are now sitting on the girls like they are chairs or pillows. Bishop takes a girl into the side room, the one who was stroking the dummy. He says that she has 2 beautiful eyes, and now wants her to piss for him. So she does, and so does he. Whore is still talking and the guy shot his load on her back.
The guards are bringing the nude teens up the stairs on leashes and now they are gonna be dogs. I have to admit, this is about the best view of asses all film, but then it is a sea of asses, and you can’t always tell which is male or female, so then I just type and pick out the few that I know are definitely female. The guys are dangling food over the teens and want them to beg like dogs. They are feeding them and treating them like dogs. Is it sad that I consider this a normal scene for this film? Magistrate gives them a dog dish, and one boy doesn’t eat fast enough, so he gets whipped like crazy, even while running. Magistrate is damn good with the whip. He whipped it good. Duke asks Magistrate if he is convinced that he is happiest when others are degraded. More social messages. Magistrate is pissed. he grabs a handful of cake and puts 3-4 nails in it and is now time to serve one of his pets. So a girl comes to eat it. Well, she screams in pain and starts bleeding out her mouth.
Storytime. So many small tits. Duke makes out with a boy. Bloody fucking hell. This isn’t even remotely the worse yet. So whore went to a minister’s office. The Minister didn’t know that she was coming. 2 girls comfort one another, they were cute-ish. So this minister takes off her clothes and burned them and came over them.
Circle of shit.
No, I’m not kidding. You wanted something horrific, here you fucking go. I apologize in advance. Go ahead, stop reading. Nobody will blame you.
Another whore is storyteller now. President wants to see her ass, and it’s not bad at all for a middle-aged lady. Her story will be about the ass. I guess this is how President met her because he’s an ass man. She specialized in man’s basest of interests. President is rubbing a dude’s cock. So her madame sent her to a client after feeding her a large, laxative spiced meal. Bishop and Magistrate are rubbing girls. So this guy has whore undress and put a bib on him. Well, now the laxatives hit. So she just shits. And the dude has her dip her fingers in it and feed it to him like a baby. He pretended to be a baby and then cum. President says that he has heard of things like this.
Oh boy, and another story. About a nobleman who had some depravities. Her mom was giving her a hard time, so she killed her mom, which Duke is like, well yeah, that’s the only thing that you can do. He goes on a tirade about how we don’t owe our mothers gratitude for fucking a guy. That should be enough reward for her. He apparently killed his mom as well. Some girl starts crying. Apparently her mom died, so this excites the Duke, he wants to console her. President says some creepy shit. He tells the girl that she must re-enact the story. The girl is begging, but he orders her undressed, so they rip her dress off. “This howling is the most exciting thing I have ever heard.” Hahaha, fucking duke. She begs for death. Bishop says that she is praying to God, so has the Magistrate add her name to the punishment book. She just wants to be with her mother. Duke says that he will deflower her when he is good and ready and if she thinks crying weakens his desire, it only makes him want to fuck her harder. So Duke stands in the middle of the room, squats and we see that he has shit on the floor. He orders the girl to crawl to his shit and eat it. Seriously, this is happening. He is insistent that she eat it. She is crying. He gives her a spoon. So she eats his shit, and I am sitting here hating this blog in the worst way and shaking my head.
The whore is mad at the girl for putting up a fuss over such a delicacy. Shit is a delicacy to this whore. Think about that. Now better yet, let’s just try to get through this. Some friend of hers got all the shit that he wanted to eat from a beggar woman so it would be more putrid and delicious. Seriously, this is really happening. This film was made. President gets up and goes into a side room to jack off. Spoiled food can make for great diarrhea. President declares that they must try to have everybody withhold their shit so they can try this. My appetite is gone. And I just want to fast forward.
The 4 guys are kinda busting each other’s balls. Magistrate says that they have to change up their rules. He wants containers to go in the latrines so they can collect all the human waste.
President comes to the women’s quarters to make sure none of the girls have shit. So time to inspect the chamber pots. Probably the prettiest girl is, of course, the only one who has broken the decree. He is pissed at her. She apologizes, it’s Doris. Well, her name is getting added to the list. Now time to inspect the boy’s chamber pots. Of course, one guy has a treat and makes a joke about it. SO he wants to inspect the boy’s ass. The boy dared wipe himself, so his name goes in the book. Now Sergio is dressed as a bride. Wow.
So it is dinner time, and Sergio is at the head table dressed as a bride. The girls come out with a platter of shit. My stomach just turned. I can’t help it. The one whore is so proud of this. Sergio is Magistrate’s bride, and he is insistent that Sergio eats so he starts feeding him shit. The girls are trying to keep it down. Close-ups on shit. President cracks a joke.
Magistrate breathes his shit breath in Sergio’s face.
Storytime. Whore is talking about going to a guy’s house, and there was a coffin in the middle of the room. A man is on his deathbed, but he wants to die kissing an ass. Once he dies, place him in the coffin as he was close to death. SO she obliged. He made her shit for him. That was his dying thing. Duke brings a girl into the side room to piss on his face. So he gets the old golden shower. Duke is pumped.
Another story about her and her sister meeting some dude, both shitting and he cum from seeing the sister’s ass. Duke wants to know about the sister’s ass. Duke wants to arrange a competition to find the nicest ass here. More social commentary. It’s competition time. They turn the lights on. Before they start, they must figure out what the winner gets. The proposed prize is that whoever wins gets executed immediately. Seems fair. All agree. Time to view asses. They are saying that they can’t tell if they are looking at a boy or a girl’s ass, but they have a flashlight. Uhmmm, it’s kinda easy to tell gender when somebody is on all fours with ass in the air. They are discussing how boys have better asses, but not to be biased. They pick a boy as the winner and shoot him, but there is no bullet, so it was a fake-out. Haha, they aren’t letting him off that easy.
Storytime. Some dude only wanted women who had been condemned to death. The closer to death, the more that he would pay. He would eat their shit and the tastiest were the ones of women who had just heard the sentence of death. Is it bedtime yet?
Circle of Blood
For fuck’s sake, let this end! I am being tortured. All the Libertines are dressed in drag. Well, that’s something. Oh, it’s wedding time, duhhh. They demand that the teens aren’t laughing or applauding. 2 girls comfort one another, so their names go in the books. A whore and the pianist start doing some funny story. The group laugh. I’m sooo confused. She goes back and plays the accordion. I don’t even know what The Bishop is wearing, but wow. So a guy with a mustache marries the President. Duke is married next, followed by the Magistrate. Guys are butt fucking. That’s great, I guess, for them. He is really giving it to him. It was Bishop and his helper, and Bishop was taking it. So much penis. Bishop enters the boy’s barracks. The light is on, but only a few are up. A boy asks Bishop what will happen to him and Bishop says that will be decided tomorrow. The boy says that one of the girls has a photograph under her pillow. That fuck harlot!!!
Bishop goes to inspect the accused for the photograph. It’s the cute redhead. It’s of some boy with his bicycle. She asks to make a dead, to save herself, she will rat out 2 others who are breaking the laws. Bishop is pissed but agrees, Oh, the 2 girls are going at it. He pulls his gun, and she threatens to rat a guy out who is with a black servant. Everybody is a rat with a gun to their head. This time, all 4 are there. Oh, they watch him nail the black girl. She gets out of the way, raised his fist, with an erection, gives them a moment’s pause, and then shoots the hell out of him. Oh, and then the black girl too.
Everybody is lined up in a room, and the 4 and whores come up the stairs. He just went down the list and read off everybody’s name in the book. If their name was said, they get a sky blue ribbon, and the rest will be sent back to Salo. If you corroborated and ratted out somebody, you were to go back to Salo. This will end nicely.
Storytime. She tells of a 45 years old, hung like a stallion, rich and powerful. He has parties with about 15 girls, aged 15-17. He has then shit in his mouth, he doesn’t eat it. He then brands each girl with a number, yup burns a number into a girl. He then places a girl standing in the middle of the room, facing the window, and then kicks her powerfully enough to go through the window and into a dark cellar. In the cellar, there’s an executioner dressed as the devil, and he has devices. Once all the girls are in the cellar, our guy is very aroused as he hasn’t busted yet. Now all the machines are going and torturing each girl. The first machine is a huge wheel with razor blades to flay a girl alive. Hmmm, maybe Game of Thrones was inspired by this. Ya know, with the Boltons? Sorry, just trying to create some levity. Another has a live rat sewed inside her vagina. We see the group of teens all in a room, with their ribbons, in what looks like a big tub of shit. They just wait and overhear these stories. There’s nowhere to go, and pretty much, well over half of them are in there. One girl screams “Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken us?” What a handsome question. The guards play cards.
Back to the story, this lady is saying that a sane person wouldn’t repeatedly kill the same person. He would recommend murdering as many people as possible. I would like to subscribe to her newsletter. She has the best laugh.
The Duke enters a room with 4 guards. He sits in a chair in front of a window and gets out his binoculars. The guards shake each other’s hands proudly. We see the other 4 down in this open area with all the teens. I can’t even describe what he is wearing. The other 2 had robes, but President is in black underwear and has a knife strapped to his thigh. He approached one boy who is being restrained by 4 other men all wearing the black underwear.
WARNING, if the sex and shit didn’t overwhelm you, congratulations on being a sick fuck. Remember me mentioning the whole torture and violence? With 8 minutes left, if you questioned whether this was horror or not, well here it comes. You have been warned.
President goes and holds a flame underneath the tip of this teens cock until he passes out. A girl is tied to the ground, face down. The guys pull her face back and president lights a flame under her tits. The pianist has stopped playing and takes a stroll upstairs to take a gander. She sees and then jumps to her death. Duke asks Umberto, a guard to come to him. We see another guy tied down the same way the girl was. This is an area is made of sand. The President puts his candle in the sand 8 feet away from the boy. He holds the boy’s tongue and slices it with a razor. The Duke is aroused. He reaches in Umberto’s pants and commends him for always being “ready”. We see a girl being held by one guy and taking it in the backside by another. All things considering, she got off easy. Oh, the guy finished, and they place her on a stool and put the noose around her throat and she is done.
Now the President is upstairs in the window chair. Another guy is tied down, same as the other 2. The Magistrate sticks a knife in the boy’s eye socket and kinda scoops all of the eye bits out. The President tells another one of his corny jokes, I admit, I laughed. Magistrate is with another person tied down and sticks his dick in their ass. The guards get a wooden chair, kinda reminds me of an old school chair that they would use to electrocute somebody to death. It has a strap to go around the throat and has the screw in the back to tighten it, and the guards are playing around with one of their own in it. The President is oh so amused. Another girl tied down is getting scalped.
It’s time for The Magistrate’s turn in the chair. The Bishop is out there fucking screaming at people. He is whipping everything moving, including what appears to be one of the whores. He goes to town whipping somebody who is tied down. Now the President, Bishop, and Duke are dancing, doing the Can-Can. You cannot make this shit up. The Bishop has guards hold a guy on his knees and another prepares the hot iron. He applies it but then starts twisting it. 2 of the inside guards start dancing after one changes the radio from like chants to an old jazzy type song. They talk about the one’s girlfriend.
End Film.
Supposedly this was planned as the first part of a trilogy of death. That’s a shame that it wasn’t finished. This shockingly has a 6.0 rating on IMDB because it has a message, but the Saw sequels get shit on. Are you fucking kidding me? I have seen this movie multiple times because nobody believes me when I say that this may be the most vile film of all time. I know people who have read the book, and I think I would like to. I would think I would be numb to this, but I still get queasy over the shit eating.
I walk away analyzing the positives and negatives. The positives are that it tells a story, quite well actually, and has a very nice soundtrack. Also, lots of tits and bush for those who like big messy, non-trimmed bush. Or if you like dick, lots of dick. I can say dick was a negative, it was unfortunately needed, but I can’t say it was appreciated. I actually hated watching the dudes make out more. I know, I know, be open-minded Kent. Hey, I’m trying, but I still don’t like watching men make out, but I support their right to. The negatives are plenty. I typically hate films that try to push a message down your throat, and this does so badly. It’s irritating. I know that some douche bags get off on having a big message in their film and feel good when they watch a movie like Snowpiercer and are like, I get the message, look how smart I am. Listen, everybody got the message, and a lot of us didn’t want it. I wish there was an English dubbed copy, even though I don’t mind subtitles, sometimes with confusing or oddball films, reading it doesn’t always translate. As I mentioned, dude’s making out was a huge negative after the first 2-3 times. It was excessive. Oh my, excessive, that’s the whole point. But when you get down to it, the shit eating. There, I said it. If you take away the shit-eating and all shit, I could probably give this film a 5 or 6. But they focus soooo much on the shitting and the shit-eating that I just can’t do it.
Final rating: 1.9 for soundtrack alone
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Produzioni Europee Associate (PEA) (a co-production) (as Produzioni Europee Associate S.P.A. Rome)
- Les Productions Artistes Associés (a co-production) (as Les Productions Artistes Associses S.A. Paris)
Please go find a copy and support the creators.