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If your friend one day comes up to you and tells you that "Salo" is his favorite movie, don't freak out. Instead, try to act like nothing happens, and when you have the chance, call the police.

My friends and I are self-proclaimed film buffs. We are a little pretentious too, but just a little. We take pride in having watched extreme movies because we know they make us sound more movie-savvy. But "Salo," "Salo" freaks us out.

This movie was directed by this Italian guy called Peir Paolo Pasolini. There are some people out there who regard him as a provocative poet, novelist, essayist and filmmaker, but the rest of the world mainly thinks he is a wacko. And did I say he was murdered by a gigolo after completing "Salo"? From what I saw in this movie, that kind of exit seems more fitting than, say, a cardiac arrest. The story, on the other hand, is adapted from a novel by the infamous Marquis de Sade, who we all know spent most of his life writing novels in a French asylum using his own feces. Imagine how much he has to eat to finish the book. Now, I hope this gives you a general idea of what to expect.

Pasolini moves the novel's original setting from France to the small Italian town of Salo during the Second World War. The four Fascists who control the town ("the President", "the Duke", "the Bishop" and "the Magistrate" decide to have some fun one day and round up eighteen young boys and girls with the help of four brothel ladies and a handful of blackshirts. The kids are then brought to a secluded mansion, where they are raped, degraded and tortured for 120 days. To give you an idea of the scale of the atrocities, early in the film one of the boys tries to escape and is mowed down instantly by machine gunfire -- I consider him the luckiest of all the victims.

The film is divided into three parts. The first is called "The Circle of Manias," which makes the orgies in "Eyes Wide Shut" look like Saturday morning cartoons. I think the four wackos have come up with a rundown that goes like this: each morning, the kids are herded into the assembly hall where they are forced to listen to scandalously erotic tales told by the four brothel madams. And it's not some enticing stories we are talking about here, we are talking about piss drinking and stuff like that. And all the time while the kids are listening, the four pervs will touch them, boys and girls alike, and those who resist meet immediate doom. At lunchtime, the kids will go to this dining hall thing where they will enjoy their meals -- and get screwed by the pervs whenever they feel like it. One particularly outrageous scene features a blackshirt banging a girl next to the dining table. The Duke gets all turned on, takes his pants off, and asks the guy to **** him too in the ass. He does. Holy ****! After the fun meal, the kids will engage in other special activities, like dressing up to play bride and groom and screw each other, or go naked and crawl like dogs. If you ask me to choose, maybe I will choose to play the bride and groom thing, they feed dogs with nails. But then when you play the bride and groom thing, the pervs will join in! So, maybe you should forget I said anything.

The second part is dubbed "The Circle of ****," which is really a series of appetizing scenes where everybody eats turd at the dining table. They even go as far to serve them in silver trays! How lovely. Do they wash their hands before they start? I mean, seriously, this is one of the most nauseating scenes I have ever experienced in movies. The only other scene that comes close to this is the one where a girl pisses right into a guy's mouth. **** it's also from this movie! What am I watching? Help!

The final part is called "The Circle of Blood" which works like a finale to the movie. There is this boy whose eyeballs get pried out from their sockets. A girl gets a nice scalping, and this other dude has his ***** burnt. I think they also hang this poor girl right after they finish screwing her, but let me tell you, by this point of the movie that's ****ing tame! And all the time while these kids are killed off in the most sickening ways imaginable, the four pervs take turns and watch the whole thing from a nearby building. They also ask their bodyguards to stand next to them so they can grab their crotches during the climax! I mean, who needs popcorn?

I think I was more freaked out than disgusted when I watched this diarrhea of a movie (and by that, I don't mean I wasn't disgusted). This movie is ****ing creepy! Never had I seen a movie and thought I was looking into the face of evil, but here I do when the four wackos show us step by step what they are capable of and how much fun they find in it. I have to give the film some credit for that, and I must also commend the cast of this film for their unforgettable performances (and the unimaginable sacrifices they made), which have me completely buying that at least some of them are really sick and others who played the victims were really exploited during the shooting. You see, the images of this film are so forceful they actually made me believe what I saw. Common sense tells me that if some guy asks me to be in his next movie and I need to crawl, bark and eat like a dog without any clothes on, I will ask him to go **** himself. But here, there are actually eighteen young actors / actresses who are willing to undergo such torment. I think Pasolini must have doped them or something.

According to Pasolini and other "Salo" supporters, this film was intended to condemn Fascism and a ****load of other stuff. But how do you condemn something by showing us fiction for which it is not responsible? I don't think I hate Mussolini anymore after watching the dreads of this film, because as far as history goes, Mussolini did not round up eighteen kids and force them to do crazy things. I really doubt Pasolini's sincerity in making that statement. This film does give me creeps, but it does not begin to make me want to throw up until you tell me all these explicit gore and obscenities are only there to raise some big intellectual issues about our society and the world we live in.

© 2002 Geeky Marcus

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But probably the most disturbing film I've ever seen is ERASERHEAD.

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Why in the world would someone watch a movie like that? Disgusting. I felt sick just reading the post above.

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I'm thinking that you could pick just about any movie with Woody Harrelson in it and you'd have a strong contender for this category

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