This is what a BBC critic said of the film and i could not agreed with it more:

“But why the British Film Institute should re-release Pasolini’s “Salò” (which was awful in 1975, and is still awful now) is anyone’s guess. Perhaps, at a time when promotional budgets for non-mainstream films are almost invisible, the BFI knows all too well that a film stuffed with brutal demonstrations of power and perversion of every kind will at least get noticed.

Yet the re-launch of “Salò” is, just as the making of it was, a sad, if spectacular, waste of energy. Notionally a metaphor for Fascism (it is set in Italy in 1944), and specifically about the connection between politics, violence, and sexual excitement, “Salò” has in fact no meaningful link to Fascism whatsoever, but is simply a display of twisted lust, spun by the fantasies of four extreme perverts, not to mention the director himself. Clearly Pasolini (who could either be exceptionally inspired or – as here – absolutely dire) had hit the creative buffers, and so – in his tale of four power-mad, sexually-warped members of the ruling elite – seems to relish serving up endless examples of the most gruesome conduct, which include the forced consumption of food spiked with nails, nipples being branded, and – most ghastly of all – the consumption of excrement. Needless to say, the young men and women horrifically abused by the four condescending establishment tyrants are treated like so much available meat.”