I'm donating my Criterion Collection copy of "Salo" to the Wall Township Public Library. The film is spiritual poison and I do not even want it in my house.

The director Pier Pasolini made so many wrong choices with that film that I can only begin to list them. He took one of my favorite novels (the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom") and turned it into a campy yet depressing queer cabaret of morbid post-Marxist philosophy. Instead of using the work of the Divine Marquis to affirm life he created a film that negated life. He did everything possible to dampen down the effervescence of the Marquis' work. The result is a film that brings me back to the worst days of my depression.

Yes, in my opinion, the Marquis de Sade needs to be rehabilitated. I have no room in my life for unnecessary cruelty. Why not make the perversions of the Marquis de Sade consensual? Why not make the teenagers willing accomplices to the four middle-aged libertines? Why not transform Sadism into love, glory and freedom? THAT may be missing the point of the Divine Marquis too, but it is a far sight better than what Pier Pasolini accomplished with his travesty.

Pasolini was a gay Marxist, which is another way of saying that he had absolutely no sense of humor.

His film, as disappointing as it is, is still a bit too much for the average sheltered yahoo. Hopefully it will inspire a Wall resident to become a serial killer. Then maybe he can kill my mother and my sister. On Christmas. I would love that.

Maybe that's why I want to donate it!

Excuse this blog. This is still in rough form. I'm thinking about fleshing it out for my writers' group.