@gav, rusty: i just want to add a detail on 120DoS. maybe it escapes the foreign public, but the film is actually done with a political intent, which in my head erases the squick factor completely - there is a point to the extremeness, which is used as a metaphor and not for its intrinsic value. as you might know, Pasolini was actively involved in the communist party and was a homosexual. at the time of filming (1975), italy hadn't yet recovered from internal fractures caused by the fall of fascism: you'll be surprised, but even now some members of the older generations think in terms of "fascist" and "anti-fascist", and there is a widespread cult of the resistenza, the armed groups of civilians who fought against the fascist and nazi troops, especially in Northern italy (where the film is set). when the movie was made, homosexuality was also far from being accepted: so basically Pasolini wanted to show that the accusations of depravity made against him - a homosexual communist, reviled both for his sexual orientation and his political beliefs by a significant part of nation - would have been more appropriate if directed against the "enemy", ie the fascist cadres during the last years of the war, when a part of italy (the Salò republic, also mentioned in the original film title) was governed by them and the nazis, and the rest was controlled by Allied troops. also, the movie contains a jab at the catholic church, which was very close to the italian government from 1946 to about 1990; one of the depraved characters in the film is a man of the cloth, if i remember correctly.
with the political aim in mind, i think that the film is not as shocking as it would be otherwise.