Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

hyped garbage

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Poor quality sound and very dirty messy print. The transfer was not good either with film slipping and bad aspect ratio. Effects were generally pretty convincing - hope they weren't real. There was not a lot of thought or creativity involved. They just thought of the sickest things and made people do it. Most noticeable is the thought that people actually acted in this. This is impressive and bumps the score up a little. I've never seen anything like this made before it. I only watched the first half hour at normal speed, then sped it up to 1.5 speed. I got what was going on and didn't like it. This is all about humiliation, degradation and sodomy. There were also sex stories. The concept was pretty horrifying and harrowing. I didn't like it. Sick twisted and wrong - certainly not enjoyable.

I don't believe art's role is to "entertain" (although it can do that) but to engage, stimulate, inspire, confront, challenge, etc. And it certainly doesn't have to be nice about it! If a work of art does any of those things for me (and, of course, this is highly subjective), then it works for me.This is why I believe that Salò is very flimsy artistically. The craft of it, including the excruciatingly wooden acting and equally wooden script, simply weren't sufficient for me to ever suspend disbelief, and I was therefore never engaged by what was going on. There's no plot development, no journey, no character development, no emotional insight into characters. Nothing. Like its subject matter, the film itself is dehumanized. No doubt this was intentional, and its almost "anti-art" aspects are part of the film's "art" (for other people...), but its effect on me was that I was always aware that I was watching second-rate actors reading a second-rate script. And I just didn't care about any of it.The shock value was kind of minimal, too. I came to this film already aware that it focuses on horrible depravity. I watched it and saw a depiction of horrible depravity. So what? It needed a framework to have meaning and, therefore, rise above the level of a splatter movie (but see below).I don't believe Pasolini was commenting on Fascism or any -ism, but simply on the darkness within human beings and used that period of Italy's history as an appropriate context and pretext. I guess someone needed to make a film that showed this. It's been done now...If there is artistic merit to this film, I believe it's because it's so open to interpretation: Pasolini shows us human depravity, leaving it up to us to make of it what we will, to bring our own frameworks with us to give it meaning. (Some people even see a criticism of fast food in the pooh-eating scenes!) How much of this was part of Pasolini's design, though, I have no idea. But as art, it's right up there with, say, putting a mutilated animal carcass on display in an art gallery and calling it, say, "Installation 38b." That's pretty shallow art. (And, in 2018, quite dated -- which is another criticism I have of this film. Good art doesn't date.)The only real moral stand (and intellectual substance) I can find here is that by not providing a framework, Pasolini is rejecting the mind-control philosophy typical of the Fascists and other totalitarian regimes. Again, though, I'm not really engaged, stimulated, inspired, confronted, or challenged by that. But it is a nice idea.

Salo manages to portray human depravity in a terrifyingly realistic manor that I've never seen in any other film. It's very well made in that regard, but doesn't have much substance beyond that.If you can't handle seeing or hearing about bizarre acts of sex and violence, then I can't recommend this movie. That said, I think most other people (especially fans of film) could get some enjoyment out of Salo if for no other reason than the experience of witnessing true evil.

I don't know why I picked this movie. First I found Marquis Sade in the internet, and then his novel 120 days of Sodom. Intrigued by the name Sadism, I wondered what the novel really consisted of. I read the summary in Wikipedia. Damn! Then I found out that someone made a movie out of it. Then I found this. Just out of curiosity, I read a review of this film in IMDb: He (she?) gave a score of 7 or 8 and wrote that this movie depicted the dark side of humanity and that it was sick. An art film, it was supposed to be. Fine, then! I finally brought myself to watch it. (By the way, I had happened to find that Simone de Beauvoir wrote an essay on this book: Must we burn Sade? In the essay, she had defended Sade, I think. This had intrigued my curiosity further.) I started watching the movie. Halfway through the movie, I regretted my decision to watch it, but I finished the movie all the same. Because I wanted to know the dark side of humanity; and I did know it through someone's so-called art. All hail my curiosity. Damn! The movie was disgusting and repugnant. But, hey, the director succeeded in his job. He wanted to disgust us and he succeeded. I should like to read Sade's book, if I ever get the time and chance. Wait. Am I praising the movie or condemning it? I don't know! I don't know how to respond to this movie! I don't know if 1 star out of 10 is the right score. If you want to watch the movie, do so at your peril!