Alternate versions for
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) More at IMDbPro »Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (original title)

• The film was rejected for cinema by the BBFC in 1976 and a private showing of the uncut version at the Old Compton Cinema Club in London's Soho resulted in a police raid and confiscation of the movie. A heavily edited version - minus 6 minutes of footage including scenes of torture, homosexuality and excrement eating, and including a 4 minute prologue describing the history of the town of Salo - was later prepared by UK censor James Ferman for club showings. The film was finally passed completely uncut for cinema and video in the UK in December 2000.
  
  
• The uncut version of this film was seized by the UK police. The version available for club-membership showings was cut according to the specifications of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Six minutes were cut and an explanatory prologue of four minutes was added.
  
  
• Reviews from the original theatrical release mention scenes not present in any currently existant cut of the film. One of these is of a young girl stripped nude with hungry rats tied around her genitals; a production photo of this scene serves as the background for one of the menu screens of the Criterion DVD.
  
  
• The uncut version of Salo was finally approved for British cinema release in November 2000, when it received an 18 certificate. The reaction to this decision will be used by the UK censors to decide whether a video/DVD release can be allowed in 2001.
  
  
• The Criterion DVD omits a short 25-second sequence during the first wedding ceremony, where one of the masters quotes a poem by Gottfried Benn. The sequence is intact on the R2 BFI DVD.
  
  
• Salo has had a colorful history with Australian censorship boards. It was banned in Australia for 18 years before being re-submitted for a certificate with the Office of Film and Literature (OFLC) in December 1992. It was then banned again by the full board of classifiers. The distributor at the time, Premium Films, appealed the decision to the Classification Review Board in early 1993. This Review Board lifted the ban and granted it an uncut cinema release with an R18+ rating. It enjoyed a stint at arthouse cinemas in 1993, and again in 1996. The conservative Queensland Attorney-General, who caught wind of this re-release, applied for a review of the film in 1997 with the OFLC. They initially confirmed its R18+ classification. The Attorney-General, unhappy with this decision, applied to the Classification Review Board for a complete review of its rating. This Board decided to ban it again. A DVD version was submitted in 2010 and passed by the Classification board as an R18+ on the basis of "176 minutes of additional material of behind-the-scenes footage which served to give the film context and reinforce its fictional nature", and this R18+ was confirmed by the Classification Review Board.
  
  

Related Links