SPELL: Sweet Slaughterhouse

Spell – Dolce mattatoio

A sustained, fragmented maelstrom of society’s fractured decline into violence, eroticism, and politics, occuring in an Italian village during the parade of its patron saint. Following a host of characters as their stories collide and intersect with explosive results, it’s a psychedelic monument to Italy’s Years of Lead!

Made in response to Pasolini’s Salo and Makavajev’s Sweet Movie, SPELL—SWEET SLAUGHTERHOUSE (1977) is Alberto Cavallone’s Surrealismo estremo at its finest, told in darkly compelling vignettes of madness, betrayal, brutality, sex and the grotesque.

(CW: a chicken is killed on a farm, incest, sexually violent themes)

• Director: Alberto Cavallone
• Country: Italy
• Year: 1977
• Runtime: 104 minutes