SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM — SHOCKTOBER!

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Pier Palo Pasolini's last film was the most ambitious of his career and remains the most misunderstood. Still banned in several countries, "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom" (1975) is a haunting journey into the depths of hell on earth, as loosely based on the literary underpinnings of the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom."

Moreover it is one of the most trenchant satires about corporate dominated capitalist politics ever imagined.

Pasolini, the journeyman poet and editorialist, incorporates the three descending levels of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno" as the format for his treatise.

The filmmaker set the story in his Italian hometown of Salo, where his brother was killed during WWII, and where Nazi soldiers once arrested Pasolini himself.

Shockingly graphic yet formally composed, Salò is a fascinating film that employs the full stockpile of Pasolini's polemic and satiric tools.

Pasolini forges a poetic commentary on fascism — disguised as consumerist capitalism — as enforced by a complicit group of bourgeois dignitaries looking to enslave and defile a group of young people.

Four wealthy Mussolini fascist libertines prepare for their certain demise before the end of the war by kidnapping nine boys and nine girls, for the purpose of living out their most outlandish sexual fantasies within the confines of a private villa. The men employ the assistance of four experienced courtesans to fire their debauched imaginations with ribald parlor stories that inform the humiliating and brutal sex acts they will execute upon their naked nubile prisoners.

Dramatically feral and artistically fertile, "Salò" is a rigorous movie that dares to use the metaphor of torture as a device of utter physical and psychological annihilation for both the victim and the torturer. It is significant that such an intellectual filmmaker could so dynamically condense thick layers of social commentary into an artistically skeletal form that remains perfectly transparent upon reflection.

“Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” is a film that expands in meaning in the years since its creation to encompass every micro-degree of political and military corruption that history has acutely fulfilled — most recently, at the time of this writing, are the atrocious abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

There is nothing exploitative about "Salo;" it is specifically directed dramaturgy in the service of editorial commentary. Very few filmmakers are able, willing, or focused enough to execute such a high-wire feat.

"Salo" is an uncompromising film that demands to be studied with the same degree of scrutiny that corporate, religious, and governmental industries should be subjected to for their enslaving the planet and humanity.

To quote Jim Carroll,

"I need a judgment day" And she said:
"I know there's more than one way
But I want my judgment day . . ."

Not Rated. 114 mins.

THE DAMNED — SHOCKTOBER!

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The first of Luchino Visconti's "German Trilogy" of films (which includes "Death in Venice" and "Ludwig") is set in high society Germany during the early '30s. The Essenbecks — an industrialist family modeled after the Krupp family's steel production company — are brought down and consolidated into the Nazi war machine after the infamous Reichstag fire in Berlin on February 27, 1933.

Hitler used the arsonist attack as an excuse to suspend civil liberties for the German people and assassinate his communist rivals. Liberties, such as habeas corpus, freedom of the press, and “secrecy of the post and telephone,” remained in place throughout Hitler’s reign, which ended in April of 1945.

Members of the SS murder the Essenbecks's anti-Nazi patriarch Baron Joachim (Albrecht Schoenhals). Investigators photograph his bloody body resting on the opulent bed that once provided comfort. The political assassination sets into motion the collapse of the Essenbeck family, an aristocratic representation of an “old” Germany that Hitler sought to obliterate.

As with “The Leopard,” Visconti is fascinated with the trappings of aristocracy, and their impermanent nature under the threat of fascist ideologies. All riches are temporary.     

The company's like-minded vice president Herbert Thallmann (Umberto Orsini) is falsely indicted for Joachim’s murder before escaping from Gestapo forces that incarcerate his wife (Charlotte Rampling), and children at the Dachau concentration camp. It wasn’t only Jews who were sent to the camps. The family’s industrial empire slips into the cunning hands of Dirk Bogarde’s anti-hero Friedrich Bruckmann, a shortsighted opportunist mentored by SS officer Aschenbach (Helmut Grien), himself a would-be thief looking to co-opt the Essenbeck fortune and status.

Visconti stylishly captures the frenzied debauchery and violence that the Nazis employed throughout the era, including the Night of the Long Knives wherein Hitler's execution squads massacred his political enemies — the paramilitary Brownshirts known as the SA.

Written by Visonti, with Enrico Medioli and Nicola Badalucco, "The Damned" is an incendiary precursor to Nazi-era films like Liliana Cavani's "The Night Porter" (1974), Tinto Brass's pornographic "Salon Kitty" (1976), and even the musical play and film "Cabaret."

By boldly confronting the psycho-sexual depravity of the Nazi mindset all the way through to is inevitable incestuous nature, Visconti creates a specific cinematic vernacular for viewing and discussing Hitler's manic ideology.

That Visconti's iconic vision became a cinematic touchstone for other influential filmmakers is a testament to the Italian director's lasting power as a storyteller and as an important conduit of historical information.   

Rated R. 156 mins.

CEMETERY MAN — SHOCKTOBER!

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Michele Soavi’s "Cemetery Man" is a quirky blend of romance, lust, surrealism, horror, and black comedy that surpasses the work of better-known Italian horror maestros like Dario Argento, thanks to its monstrously humorous bent. It’s also sexy as hell. The effect is intoxicating.

Based on a novel and comic book by Tiziano Sclavi, Soavi's avant-garde Gothic movie relies upon a romantic theme of macabre sexual desire that leads the viewer far beyond his or her expectation. The movie is a long rollicking ride into the unknown.

Central to “Cemetery Man’s” irreverent postmodern tone is Rupert Everett's inspired performance as Francesco Dellamorte ("St. Francis of Death"), a hunky cemetery caretaker in Buffalora, Italy. Dellamorte’s daily duties include killing "returners" (zombies) that perpetually rise from their graves. The charismatic Everett gives a spellbinding performance in playing a reputed "impotent" man who hasn't got "time for the living." Dellamorte’s chisled features only faintly obscure a seething passion that simmers within him.

His constant sidekick Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) helps his compassionate master with his graveyard duties, however disgusting they might be. Gnaghi is a socially inept (read, mentally indigent) character loyal to his emotionally confused boss right to the end. Hadji-Lazaro’s unfettered performance is a thing of comic wonder.

The voluptuous Anna Falchi plays three roles. Think of “Cemetery Man” as inspired by Bunuel’s “Obscure Object of Desire.” Falchi’s unnamed She character is a recent widow who appears to Francesco to be the most beautiful living woman he's ever seen — a fact that Ms. Falchi's frequently nude scenes bear out. Having sex with Dellamorte on the grave her recently deceased husband is on the agenda. A bite from a roaming zombie transforms the majestic specimen of femininity into a magnificent corpse able to seduce Francesco in a most delightfully painful manner.

Falchi returns later in the movie as a platonically obsessed girl whose romantic mixed messages eventually send Francesco on a quest to forever eradicate "love" from his vocabulary. One of the film’s primary philosophical themes is, beware of women who send mixed messages. This is juicy stuff that Michele Soavi delivers with exquisite attention to this lovely picture’s design, lighting, and composition. Genius.

Marked by a clever series of escalating reversals that include a goodly amount of outrageous murder, "Cemetery Man" is a dark and thought-provoking allegory about friendship and romantic deception. The outside world beyond the cemetery is nothing. “Cemetery Man” shows you the abyss and brings you back from the edge. There aren’t too many movies from any genre capable of doing that.

Rated R. 105 mins.