The thing is, you could make a movie about Caligula, about how this psychopath controlled the empire and how awful it was. But the movie Caligula seemed to revel in the awfulness. You don’t have to actually SHOW the senator’s wives gobbling knobs until they get a faceful of semen to comment on the whimsical brutality of roman empire. You don’t have to actually SHOW forcing a man to drink a barrel of wine and then slicing open his stomach so the wine sprays out everywhere.
You can address these things without embracing them, without wallowing in them, without seeming to enjoy them, without presenting them as a spectacle for the jaded moviegoing public.
Actually, it was the producers–Bob Guccione and some friend of his–who shot the added hardcore footage. Guccione financed the whole thing himself and actually bought a NYC theater to show the film, charging a then-exorbitant $7.00 a ticket.
Just thought I’d let ya’ll know…Caligula is the subject of tonight’s “Biography” on A&E. Come one, come all, come see what’s sooooo bad about Caligula. Not that they’ll show any really bad parts but…we’ll see. Enjoy, all!
Caligula? I loved that movie! I’ll never understand why everyone hates it!
Sure, it’s perverted. Sure, it’s over-the-top. Sure, it revels in nastiness. But heck, that’s why I love it! It’s just so deliciously bad that it’s a true classic in my book.
The plot? Let’s see, Malcolm McDowell offs his uncle, murders his cousin, has sex with his sister, then with Macro, Macro’s wife, that soldier guy who’s name I can’t remember, solider guy’s wife, his own wife, and finally winds up in bed with a horse. You think I’m making this up, don’t you? And let us not forget the “invasion of Britain” with naked soldiers bravely destroying vast armies of…reeds. Or the decapitation machine. Or the infamous “dog food scene” (those of you who’ve seen the move know what I’m talking about).
So I say rent it! But only bother with the uncut, unrated, uncensored version. They cut nearly an hour out of the “R” version, and lost most of the good stuff.
I’ve never seen the film…but I remember that newspaper ads for the film ran for over a year and a half. It kept on playing and playing at the porno theater downtown for months on end. They didn’t switch pictures, just kept playing Caligula day after day.
The unedited DVD of the movie is priceless, or at least worth a rental. It has all the aforementioned stuff, the main “shockers” being that they got traditional (read: “real”) actors like O’Toole and Helen Mirren into the movie, and then spliced in actual sex - there is a full-on minutes-long lesbian scene with two Penthouse Pets that, aside from taking place on the Caligula set, has no connection whatsoever to the movie and occurs right in the middle of it. It’s shameless. Plus orgies, fisting, castration, blah blah blah.
The BEST part, though, is the behind-the-scenes documentary they have on the DVD - it includes Bob Guccioni, shirt open to the waist and with several Mr. T-style gold chains, sitting and discussing the film - apparently in the middle of filming at the time, and which he consistently refers to by the at-the-time full title, “Gore Vidal’s Caligula”. It also has a before-he-yanked-his-name-off Gore Vidal talking about the movie. The fun person though is definitely Guccione, because as he’s talking about “Gore Vidal’s Caligula” it is as if he, Bob Guccione, has created the Mona Lisa and given birth to Jesus all at once. He is sooooo full of himself, it’s riveting, especially in light of the piece of doody that resulted.
It’s clear from the actors’ interviews that Malcolm and Company were fine with nudity and simulated sex - I mean, the fisting, though simulated, does involve MacDowell, as does several other scenes where he’s naked.
But the story that I understand is that even post-production, Bob Guccione broke back onto the set to film the aforemention non-sequitor lesbian scene, which…well, let’s just say it involves close-ups, and is in no way simulated. And clearly the film’s final editing involved Bob Guccione using an Exacto-knife, roll of tape, and one hand.
Hmmm … sounds like Pier Paolo Pasolini might have read Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism. (Reich even claims that the Nazi swastika is a purposeful schematic representation of two people engaged in coitus.)
Then again, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four had kinda the same theme.
Well I’ll just hope you are old enough to know. But Caligula had a couple scenes that are forever burned in the back of my brain. A) young newly married spartan watching his fiance getting nailed by Caligula then he himself having a handfull of lard shoved up is ass followed by a fist up is anal canal! B) THAT MACHINE. I do not know the name of it. But there are several people burried to their heads and this machine inches forward towards them slicing their heads off as it goes. Yuck. I have to go know I do not want to think about this any more. I do not recommend the movie
They only have the rated version. Someone said that this version isn’t really worth it. Do you all agree that I should wait to see the unrated version?
Well, I went and saw it, the totally unrated, unedited version. And for the totally unrated, unedited version, I have to admit that it wasn’t that big of deal. Call me desensitized, but I kind of knew what to expect from this thread. There was the standard scenes, and then shots of porn thrown in. I’ve seen worse stuff on my sister’s computer. The violence is gross, but also, I’ve seen worse. And if you take all the sex away, it’s not that bad of a film. Sure the acting is a little bad, sometimes forced, but I think that was because the actors (especially McDowell) were trying to make their parts humerous (I mean, if you were in that movie, would you treat it seriously?) but the film makers considered it a serious movie. So
the two clashed, and therefore, people think the acting is bad. Now remember, this is just my opinion.
All in all, it’s a movie I’ll watch again. Not because of the sex (that stuff doesn’t do it for me; I consider it boring and silly), but because of the surprising humor and the general oddness of it. The sets were fabulous, as well as the costumes.
The only thing I didn’t get was the bird. Caligula would fly into a scared panic whenever he saw the bird, mostly during his bouts of paranoia. Was this a symbol of death, or was it a symbol of Isis?
Forgot to add about the little historical details that people overlook. There are some parts in the movie that are surprisingly accurate, including Caligula’s insomnia, how he worried about being bald (in real life he was completley bald, I believe, but for a movie so infamously bad at least they mentioned it), and how he seemed quite sane before his fever. I only wish they would have gotten to his past a bit more, like when he was a child in his father’s army and how the soldiers adored him. The only mention of that is when Tiberius tells Caligula to dance like how he danced for his father in the army.
Never ever EVER under any circumstances should anyone see this movie, it is that bad. The cycle of evil must end here and now. I am not exaggerating,
oh, and scrotum was his last word.
There was a whole lot o’ dick in this movie. So much so, I didn’t even want to look down for a good two weeks when I took a leak. Lots, and lots o’ dick.
Plus, there are the typical scenes already mentioned…gutting the guy after stuffing his gullet full of wine; raping a soldier’s wife on thier wedding day in front of him, then anally fisting him; later torturing this soldier, killing him, having two women urinate on his corpse, and then cutting his dick off and feeding it to the dogs; random acts of sex (guy girl, girl girl, guy guy); the semen rub down; the violent murders; and the wonderful scene where Caligula has a big party where the center of attraction is his child being born…with his wife standing in some odd contraption so she’s standing up and the kid is shown with his head coming out.
Then there’s the huge orgy at the end where his big speach is imposed over which climaxes as this woman takes a huge gob of cum in the mouth. And a whole lot more dick. There was no actual sex with the horse, just a shot of McDowel in bed with the horse. But with everything else in the movie, that’s really not that shocking.
