Were
it not for Jess Franco, I probably would not have had even a passing
interest in the writings of eighteenth century troublemaker Marquis de Sade,
Donatien Alphonse Franҫois, but thanks to Franco films like Marquis
de Sade’s Justine (1969), Eugenie (1970), Eugenie de Sade
(1973), and this prominent S&M aesthetic very much characteristic to a lot
of Franco’s films (as well as Renato Polselli’s), it was only a
matter of time before I would wonder: “why the hell am I not reading de Sade?”.
Reading a book by de Sade had been on my bucket list for a good six or
seven years. (It didn’t help that I was partially turned off by de Sade
after watching Pier Paolo Passolini’s Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom
(1975) due to the film’s shocking depictions of cruelty and grossness that the Jess Franco
films rarely reached).
Well, I finally read my first de Sade novel, recently, titled Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1791), and it was all kinds of fucked up. It was cruel, disgusting, evil, sickeningly disagreeable… And I could hardly put it down. I won’t go as far as to call it a horror novel, but a lot of the sadists poor Justine encounters are outright terrifying, especially the head-cutter character. De Sade seemed to pull no punches. He morally outraged to the extreme and probably intended to.
Well, I finally read my first de Sade novel, recently, titled Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1791), and it was all kinds of fucked up. It was cruel, disgusting, evil, sickeningly disagreeable… And I could hardly put it down. I won’t go as far as to call it a horror novel, but a lot of the sadists poor Justine encounters are outright terrifying, especially the head-cutter character. De Sade seemed to pull no punches. He morally outraged to the extreme and probably intended to.
