YMMV / Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

• Anvilicious: Fascist regimes are, at their core, a bunch of nationalistic bluster that conceals an uglier truth: most dictators and high-ranking personnel are hypocritical sick fucks who don't give a shit about any of what they say and really just get their rocks off at crushing people underfoot and making them suffer because Evil Feels Good while ironically railing against perceived "degenerates".
• Critical Dissonance: To the average viewer, Salo is a disgusting film, if they have heard or seen it. But for those who avert Small Reference Pools and recognize the Genius Bonus, this is either a searing, powerful work of art about violence and power... or still pointlessly disgusting.
• Crosses the Line Twice: If there was ever a line so to speak of.
• Nausea Fuel: The shit-eating scene.
• Nightmare Fuel: Given the entire plot revolves around the graphic physical and sexual torture of teenagers, the entire film could count as such.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The film is a Setting Update of a book written by the notorious Marquis de Sade, concerns a quartet of wealthy fascists who purchase a group of teenagers as sex slaves, subject them to every indignity imaginable (in the film's most infamous scene, the victims are force-fed their captors' feces), before finally slaughtering them once they get bored. Given its extreme content, it has naturally been dogged by controversy since its premiere. The movie is commonly brought up in debates on where the lines of free speech should be drawn, several countries have banned it, even democracies such as Australia, and it is in general impossible to bring up without getting into a discussion over whether it's a heartwrenching artistic statement about the suffering of the people in a totalitarian society or brainless, tasteless schlock that the director slapped a moral onto just to avoid coming off as a complete degenerate.
• Signature Scene:
  • Again, the shit-eating scene.
  • The scene on the theatrical poster in which the naked victims are led by leash to where they are forced to eat food laced with sharp objects.
• Squick: The scenes dedicated to literal shit-eating are the most infamous examples, though given the whole plot involves sexually tormenting minors, the entire movie is pretty squicky. What do you expect from a Marquis de Sade adaptation?
• Tear Jerker: The entire situation in respect to the teenagers, really, but a special mention goes to Renata, the blonde girl whose mother was murdered while trying to save her.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Like saying the grass is green, then again it was probably invoked by the director.
• Vindicated by History: For many artists and critics, Salo is one of the bravest, most powerful works of art ever made. It has been featured in lists like Village Voice's 100 Films of the 20th Century and is even admired by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Michael Haneke.
• The Woobie:
  • The victims. While some of them lose sympathy points in the scene where they rat each other out to escape punishment, they are all still a bunch of kids trapped in an unbearable situation with no hope of escape. Most of the adults around them are abusing them and subjecting them to unimaginable indignities for their sick pleasure and make it abundantly clear they will painfully kill the victims at any sign of rebellion.
  • The libertines' daughters, who are subjected to the same treatment as the victims, if not worse. It's strongly implied all of them have been abused by their fathers since childhood (the Duke and the President explicitly admit to raping theirs) and they seem resigned to their fates. All are cruelly killed along with many of the victims at the end.

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