Marquis de Sade - Influence

Influence

Various influential cultural figures have expressed a great interest in Sade's work, including the French philosopher Michel Foucault,, the American film maker John Waters and the Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco.

Ian Brady, who with Myra Hindley carried out torture and murder of children known as the Moors murders in England during the 1960s, was fascinated by Sade, and the suggestion was made at their trial and appeals that the tortures (some of which they tape-recorded) were influenced by Sade's ideas and fantasies. Brady and Hindley had, however, read very little of Sade's actual work; the only book of his they possessed was an anthology of excerpts that included none of his most extreme writings.