Mooderator’s Notes: This is exactly the kind of thing we had in mind when we set up Café Société. That’s where I’m moving it.
IMO it sucked because it was bad – bad plot, bad acting, bad music, bad everything.
It was disturbing (and very) because the sexual sadism was extremely vicious and extremely explicit. Not the implicit “game” of voluntary S&M, no matter how hardcore, but the use of sex (specifically, rape and sexual torture) to hurt and kill people. So in addition to being badly done and very violent, it featured sex literally as a weapon of evil. A very bad film under any definition of badness. I would not say “don’t watch this film; it’s too disturbing” because some disturbing films nevertheless have redeeming qualities. This had none. It sucked. Really.
Mooderator? What the fuck is a mooderator. Who typed that shit?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by DarkWriter *
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I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read that there is worse stuff than the what the actors did.
Hmmm…Preview is my friend. DarkWriter said that quote, not me.
Unc, I’m pretty sure that it means you’ve been spending too much time with livestock. Mooderator. Ewe’ve been ba-a-a-ad. At least it’s not goats this time.
A mooderator. You know: One who regulates moods.
As in:
“What’s the matter Ma’am? Feeling depressed? Don’t you worry, UncleBeer is here to make you feel all better. I can mooderate all through the night, baby”
Worth a try anyway.
I saw the unrated Caligula and found it pretty entertaining. It’s really not that bad and is even unexpectedly insightful at times. I think the reason it gets such bad reviews is because (a) the brutal scenes are treated very casually; someone gets castrated and then bang, we’re off to the next scene and the poor guy’s forgotten – and (b), I think critics at the time were scared of endorsing it because it might have started a trend of similar movies.
Haven’t seen it, but for sexual sadism—and Jodi’s explanation of what that means is perfect—I doubt anything could be as disturbing as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last film, Salò: i 120 giorni di Sodom. Do not see it unless you have a very strong stomach, I am serious.
One important reason it was so disturbing is that the extremely sadistic scenes were not just gratuitous but made a political statement about Fascism (and all repressive systems by extension). How intimately the political repression is tied up with sexual loathing in human nature. This point was driven home by the Fascists’ forbidding anyone to make love the normal way. Sex was exclusively to be used for dehumanization. When they caught a couple actually making love, they shot them on the spot.
Suffice to say that I fast-forwarded through the episode entitled “The Circle of Shit” and gave up watching soon after; didn’t even get to the end.
Pasolini was assassinated about the time he finished this film.
Imagine a double feature, like in one of those repertory movie houses, with Caligula and Salò. Gaaackk! I double dog dare you.
Then there was the scene where you see Caligula’s murdered daughter(she was just a little girl) with blood all around her head.
There’s also a scene where Caligula has sex with his dead sister’s corpse.
I’ve never seen it because I was told it took way too many liberties with history and I don’t want to mess up my mind. I have seen I, Claudius (one of the top five things ever done with a television (unless you are a cat)), and read the Twelve Caesers. Caligula was one sick, twisted, bad, bad dude. He had no morality whatsoever. And yes, the final straw was apparently forcing the Senate to accept his favorite horse as a Senator, upon which they finally assassinated him. (They were pretty mad about forcing the noble wives to become prostitutes for a fund raiser too.)
I thought it was as a Consul.
Ah yes, the honorable Incitatus.
So the movie portrayed a madman, who was totally f***ed in the head… as well as in other places, who brutally killed for no reason, and seemed to enjoy causing others pain. Isn’t that historically accurate, though? I mean, maybe we shouldn’t be making movies about the man, but if we do, they’re going to be full of gross stuff.
My friend tells the following story:
She was watching Caligula with a couple of friends, and her roommate, who has a habit of saying the randomest things while drunk. Roommate happened to be both drunk and asleep at the moment when Caligula was boinking his horse, and woke up to him with the horse in bed. (or something. I’ve never seen it, this is all heresay.) Roommate asks what happened. Horrified friend tells her. Roommate says. “Well, that’s cool, I guess. He loves his horse.” Friend leaps up to grab a pen to document the quote, as she is sure Drunk Roommate won’t remember saying it tomorrow. The quote hangs on their refrigerator forever, despite the protests of (the now sober ) Roommate.
Aww, dude, there’s like heads gettin’ chopped off and people swimmin’ in their own blood… and people fistin’ and gettin’ semen rubdowns and bonkin’ horses and shit… dudes nailin’ their sisters and makin’ other dudes ho their wives out. It’s cool, man. It’s way, way cool.
I need it on DVD. Unedited.
There are softcore simulated sex scenes with the ‘real’ actors. The fisting doesn’t actually show the guy’s fist entering the other guy’s ass, and the scenes where McDowell don’t actually show penetration, probably because it was simulated.
Consul, senator, what’s the diff. I don’t really remember except part where Mel Brooks rides off with Gregory Hines and Madeline Kahn.
I thought a Mooderator was someone who made sure everybody treated their cow orkers with courtesy. There probably wasn’t a Mooderator in Caligula, but I’ll bet there was some cow orking. 