Having now seen this infamous, now 50-year-old Italian film, I get why it's a classic, why it's in the Criterion collection, and also why it's frequently on disturbing media lists year after year. It's egregious, but its philosophical self-awareness is dead right. In the wake of Epstein, Pasolini warned us about his ilk long ago, but many of us took it to be hyperbole when, well, I guess it isn't. In a post-Human Centipede world, though, shock value is not what it was, so Salo is a real slog.