The most reprehensibly violent movie ever made came to America at the end of 1967: “must be the most expensive, pious, and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre,” wrote New York Times critic Renata Adler. “If 42d Street is lined with little pushcarts of sadism, this film . . . is an entire supermarket.”

One character, Adler informed us, is “throttled three times, sunscorched, and once so severely beaten . . . that anyone who would voluntarily remain in the theater beyond this scene . . . is not someone I should care to meet, in any capacity, ever.”