Film Review! Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

It will be at least a full year until the release of the third and supposedly final Human Centipede film. This vacant lacking in my life has forced me to examine other related films- A Serbian Film, which encountered similar censorship issues, is an excellent example. Another example is the present matter at hand, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom an Italian film from the 70's that Human Centipede 2 director Tom Six cites as an important influence. It is not structurally a horror film, so to speak. it does share with films like Human Centipede 2 and a Serbian Film extreme sexual matter, pedophilia in particular in this one. Actually, it's teens rather then children. The whole forced fecal consumption theme central to the Human Centipede films was in this one. This film is loosely plotted. This group of aristocrats in fascist Italy get a bunch of teenagers from orphanages or something like that and force them to partake in a whole bunch of very odd and somewhat ritualistic sexual practices. They make them eat shit and they've got them on all fours with dog leashes at one point. It's loosely based on a De Sade novel. At the same time that this is one of those films that is sort of on the legally questionable side, I find the film sort of dull. A lot of people swear by this film and the relationship this film has as a precursor and/or influence on recent extreme horror that I've strongly praised is quite strong. I don't know if the people behind a Serbian Film saw this film, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if that happened to be the case. The connection to the Human Centipede films is quite clear and quite strong. There is one sequence in particular where the influence on the first Human Centipede film is very, very clear and very, very direct in which an aristocrat defecates, gives a girl a spoon and tells her to eat it, yelling. Those who have seen the first Human Centipede film will know exactly the scene I am talking about- it is the famous scene in Human Centipede 1 where Dr. Heiter yells "feed her!" while the headpiece if the centipede involuntarily defecates into the girl behind him's mouth. The notion of sewing central to the Human Centipede films comes up in Salo. There's this female aristocrat whose role is being a storyteller she, drops a line about a woman having a mouse sewed into her vagina. There is also a tongue removal sequence towards the end, which is also true of Human Centipede 2. I'll be honest though, this film drags a little bit. I did have to stand up and take an intermission. A good portion of the film is the aristocratic woman telling sexual stories-it could be as much as twenty minutes or more of the film. Clearly, this film is to be categorized as a light romantic comedy.