Pasolini follows up "The Decameron" with this adaptation of several of Chaucer's stories. Like the proceeding film, this is an extremely earthy and bawdy adaptation of the material, celebrating life's pleasures and castigating authoritarian hypocrisy. This film is mildly inferior to "The Decameron", although it's high points, including an extended homage to Chaplin and an amazing vision of hell, are higher.

This is the second in Pasolini's series of setting classic bawdy tales to film… In this case, he selected eight of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, including the infamous miller's tale and the incident with the red hot poker kiss… The tales revolve around a group of pilgrims who are journeying to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket of Canterbury… The trip is so boring that they begin telling each other stories that soon get obscene, gory and very sexy… Pasolini adds another motif to his visualization by placing Chaucer himself into the movie, periodically cutting to him writing at his desk...Pasolini inserts pleasure and amusement at social customs, especially marriage… Some of the stories are funny, others are deadly serious… The scene where a young man is burned for making love to another of his own sex, for example, is chilling...In fact, Pasolini's using non professional actors, is more in keeping with the tone of the original than the usual romanticized versions...

I wasted my money on the DVD version of this film, I sure don't recommend this film to anyone unless they find demeaning, ridiculing and perverting women in film very stimulating! ( I don't just mean the women in the film, all women in general) I found this film very sexist like most films of the early 1970's. The only great part of the film, unfortunately was the scene with the gay man being executed and the two young Scottish men murdering one another! How very disturbing! As for the rest of the film, I did not find it one bit humorous, and the sex scenes were terrible! It is no wonder Pasolini was murdered after making the film and (with all due respect) was also gay. Please don't waste your money on this film, it is bad enough to be airing on television!

In the Middle Ages, people generally did not stroll about in brightly colored, shintzy clothes. Especially not when they went on a pilgrimage, "to seek the holy blissful martyr". Roads and streets were not paved. People stank. One cannot convey that in a film, but please pay more attention to set decoration? The standard you would like to attain in that respect was set by Terry Gilliam in "Jabberwocky": shabby poor people, dirty faces, muddy streets. Or "The Name of the Rose".Besides, you can only follow this movie if you have read the Canterbury Tales first. Otherwise, it's incomprehensible. By the way, almost all Italian movies I re-view of late seem incomprehensible. I used to like Italian cinema, but its products do not seem to age well. The dialogues usually seem hollow and pretentious. One notable exception: "Kaos".