Salo (1975)

More than 200 years after the Marquis de Sade penned “The 120 Days of Sodom” (1785), skinematic auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini adapted it for the big screen in the horror war drama Salò (1975). The loose adaptation tells a tale of four power brokers in Nazi-controlled northern Italy who round up a bunch of young women and go dirty old man on the lot of them. Along for the Gomorrgy are a handful of middle-aged prostitutes hired to tell titillating tales as they bare tits and tails for the fascist foursome. As a critique on the idiot ideologies of Nazism, Pasolini’s famously filthy flick features every freaky thing you can think of, including a poor ingénue eating a dude’s caboose juice. And that’s not even the worst of it — victims who don’t follow the mens’ orders get tortured and murdered in short order. Don’t tell these guys power isn’t the ultimate aphrodisiac! They won’t listen. But, if you can get over the violence, you may get off on the full frontal nudity and bootery collectively supplied by Giuliana Orlandi, Ines Pellegrini, Liana Acquaviva, Renata Moar, Susanna Radaelli, Tatiana Mogilansky, and Elsa De Giorgi’s body double. Just pretend these women are in a different, more tranquil situation. Since its release, Salò was dubbed the “sickest film of all time” by some film scholars. Yet the Toronto International Film Festival ranked it at #47 on its “The Essential 100 films” list in 2010. Whether it’s a masterpiece or masturbate-piece is up to you.