#2. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom | 1975 | Italy
This film is Not Rated. It includes extreme violence, sadism, and sexual/psychological torture.
Nazi-Fascist Northern Italy, 1943-44. Four senior members of government, aided by henchmen and Nazi soldiers, kidnap a group of young men and women. They hold them for 120 days, subjecting them to all manner of torture, perversion and degradation.
Ho boy, where do I even begin with this one.. If you’ve never heard of Salò then I envy you. I’ve watched this film once and I said I would never watch it again. Salò is widely considered one of the most controversial and disturbing films ever created, and supposedly it’s nowhere near as bad as the book this film is based on!
The film is separated into four segments with intertitles, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, so take that as you will. Salò has earned a reputation among some film scholars for being the “sickest film of all time”, with some citing it as an early progenitor of the extreme cinema sub-genre, alongside the American film The Last House on the Left (1972).
This is the last film of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s career, as he was found murdered three weeks before the films release. Salò has been banned in several countries, because of its graphic portrayals of rape, torture and murder—mainly of people thought to be younger than eighteen years of age. The film remains banned in several countries and sparked numerous debates among critics and censors about whether or not it constituted pornography due to its nudity and graphic depiction of sex acts.
Alright, we’ve seen some pretty disturbing films so far on this list. You’re probably asking yourself what film could be so bad that it would take the top spot here. Well, our number one film today is infamous in the foreign horror community. I’ll even say this now, I had an extremely hard time watching this movie. This movie is downright disgusting and it makes every other film on this list look tame in my opinion. I may have turned off Girl Next Door, but I should have turned this one off as well.. What is it I hear you say? Well, here we go…
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