#588 - Saló, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) - Italian Fascist Abuse Film - WatchThis W/RickRamos
Release Date: 02/17/2026
Watch This With Rick Ramos
Kirby Dick's SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan - SuperMasochist Listener Distrection Advised: There are a number of films that burrow into the hearts and minds of its viewers. In 1997 the Los Angeles poet, writer, performance artist, comic, and BDSM celebrity, Bob Flanagan would succumb - at the age of 43 - to cystic fibrosis (a disease that is comparable to drowning as one's lungs constantly fill with mucous). The final years of Flanagan's life would be documented by filmmaker Kirby Dick in SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan - SuperMasochist. Unlike any film these...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
Nick Bromfield's Fetishes This week we dive into the world of High-End S&M/Bondage through the lens of provocateur director Nick Bromfield - Fetishes. A 1996 HBO documentary in the American Undercover series, Bromfield's camera walks into New York's exclusive, expensive, and fascinating world of dominatrixes, fantasy, race-play, whipping, humiliation, and dungeons. Lorded over by Mistress Raven and a small staff of women who engage in and fulfill the fantasies of New York's elite through bondage, humiliation, wrestling, fetishizing, feminization, suffocation, and wrestling among others....
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
John Dahl's The Last Seduction Continuing with an idea that we started a few episodes back focusing on Lena Olin in Romeo is Bleeding, this week Mr. Chavez & I take a look at an overlooked neo-noir, erotic thriller from 1994 featuring a stand-out performance from Linda Fiorentino. Our basic idea is the difficulty of casting "dangerous and strong" female characters with intimidating and daring actresses. So, why was Linda Fiorentino - an intelligentl and overpowering actor - not given the opportunities to break big? In John Dahl's cult classic, The Last Seduction, audiences were never...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
J-P Valkeapää's Dogs Don't Wear Pants This week Mr. Chavez & I explore Finnish Cinema with a look at J-P Valkeapää's Dogs Don't Wear Pants. A brave and troubling look at emotional trauma, BDSM, and auto-ertotic asphyxiation, Valkeapää's 2019 erotic black comedy is an exploration of the erotic underground subculture of dominance and submission. There's a great deal to admire in this film including the lead performances of Pekka Strang as a widowed single father struggling with death of his wife seven years earlier, and Krista Kosonen as the woman he meets and whose dominatrix skills...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
Peter Medak's Romeo is Bleeding In the 1990s low-budget studio films on the periphery (in this case Polygram Filmed Entertainment) were being made with casts that - in some cases - would become mainstream stars throughtout the decade and the upcoming milennium. 1993s Peter Medak directed Romeo is Bleeding, is an under-watched, hidden gem with a cast that almost defines the 1990s - Gary Oldman, Annabella Sciorra, Roy Schreider, Juliette Lewis, Michael Wincott, and the brilliant, Lena Olin. A New York set Neo-Noir that explodes beyond the Hayes Code limits of the genre, Medak's film...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
David Lynch's Wild at Heart This week we return to a World of Dreams and the Land of Oz through the dark and chaotic eyes of David Lynch (January 20, 1946 - January 16, 2025). A Homage/Love Letter to the classic MGM masterpiece, Lynch's 1990 Wild at Heart is a pulsating cinematic shotgun blast. The story of young lovers breaking parole and crossing the country to find a future that is never clear, Lynch's dark romantic comedy is unlike anything seen before, but inspiring to cinema for decades after. With allusions to Fleming's 1939 Technicolor Classic, as well as nods to Elvis,...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
Victor Fleming's (w/Directorial Contributions from George Cukor, Richard Thorpe, and King Vidor) The Wizard of Oz A long time coming, this week's episode focuses on the 1939 MGM Technicolor Classic The Wizard of Oz. In the early days of the studio system, each studio focused on a specific genre, Metro Goldwyn Mayer was the home of the musical and The Wizard of Oz is one of the greatest, most remembered, and most loved musicals of all time. Adapted from the L. Frank Baum classic series of novels - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) - the film an eagerly antiicipated adaptation that would...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
Wolfgang Petersen's The Never Ending Story This week we look into the cinematic psyche of Mr. Ibrahim Chavez. Our path is Wolfgang Petersen's 1984 Childrens' Dark Fantasy, The Never Ending Story. A childrens' adventure/heroes journey of youth battling nihilism (in this case The Nothing), bullies, parental loss, and the power of imagination, self-worth (self-belief), and self-realization. Possibilities abound in this story surrounding a magical book, a young warrior (Atreyu), beautiful, frightening, and troubling settings (The Swamp of Sadness - one of the most depressing and...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China When I first saw John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, it was a Pan & Scan VHS copy from my local video store. I immediately fell in love with one of the strangest and most imaginative films of the 1980s. The fourth collaboration between Horror icon, John Carpenter, and Disney legend Kurt Russell (doing an over the top and ridiculous parody of John Wayne), Big Trouble in Little China is a love letter to the Hong Kong Sword and Sorcery epics of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. With admitted and obvious inspiration from Tsui Hark's Zu Warriors...
info_outlineWatch This With Rick Ramos
James Mangold's Cop Land Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro, and Sylvester Stallone in one of the most highly-anticipated films of the 1990s . . . Springing from the headlines of the 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, and today, James Mangold's 1997 police corruption drama was released to critical acclaim and tepid box-office. In an era of 90s Independent filmmaking, focusing on newspaper/magazine headlines and evening newscasts, Mangold would write and pitch a story (ostensibly a Western) set in modern day life. The reluctant hero, Sheriff Freddy Heflin (an overweight, tired, and sad Stallone), who is...
info_outlinePier Paolo Pasolini's Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
For most serious cineastes, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom is a bridge that we all arive at and struggle with crossing; a cinematic rite of passage that challenges each of our ideas of art. Is Pasolini's final film - an interpretation of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom - A Political Critique exploring Fascism and Fascist Abuse or simply an opportunistic and transgressive exploitation piece designed to simply shock without artistic merit? Fifty-one years later, audiences continue to be disgusted, angered, confused, excited, and polarized by a film that many consider a masterpiece of Italian Cinema. This week Mr. Chavez & I struggle with these same reactions as we watch this film in the long shadow of a 2026 rife with controversy: ICE, The Epstein Files, Murder, Political Lies & Propaganda and - of course - the heavy and hateful hand of the Trump Administration and its Leader. Take a listen and ask yourself how you truly feel about these issues. As always we can be reached at gondoramos@yahoo.com. Many, Many Thanks.
For those of you who would like to donate to this undying labor of love, you can do so with a contribution at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/watchrickramos - Anything and Everything is appreciated, You Cheap Bastards.