Why The Ira Isaacs Retrial Is In Trouble

A Cinematic Experience All Potential Jurors Should See

If you haven't got anything to do tonight (Friday, 10/17), why not toodle on over to the Egyptian Theater for the 7:30 showing of Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film Salo, Or The 120 Days of Sodom? It's part of the Egyptian's Fetish Film Series, and even the theater's own website warns potential viewers, "Be prepared, SALO is not for the weak of heart."

Of course, that barely scratches the surface of one of the world's most notorious art films, set in fascist Italy during the waning days of World War II, and based on a novel by the Marquis de Sade. For a better preview, try the Wikipedia entry , which reads in part:

"The story depicts the many days at the palace, during which the four men of power devise increasingly abhorrent tortures and humiliations for their own pleasure. A most infamous scene, shows a young woman forced to eat the feces of the Duke; later, the other victims are presented a giant meal of human feces. At story's end, the victims who chose to not collaborate with their fascist tormentors are gruesomely murdered: scalping, branding, tongue and eyes cut out." [Emphasis added]

Yeah, it's pretty disgusting; I've seen it - but then, my taste runs to the prettier stuff like, say, Metro's recently rereleased Zazel .

But the point is, Salo, which was banned in Australia in 1976, and again in 1998, and busted in Cincinnati in 1994, with charges dismissed on a technicality - after a bunch of actors and filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Alec Baldwin, and scholars signed onto a legal brief extolling the film's merits - displays pretty much the same acts that could be seen in the two movies Ira Isaacs was put on trial for selling.

So once again, the courts have set themselves up as art critics, declaring that Salo is okay for the American public to watch, but Mako's First Time Scat and Hollywood Scat Amateurs 7 aren't.

Of course, I suppose there's always the possibility that L.A.'s ever-vigilant Vice Squad will bust tonight's showing - and wouldn't you want to be there for that?

Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood, CA 90028