Caligula: The Ultimate Cut - Raunchy Roman 'Epic' Remains a Bacchanalian Bore
By Liz Braun
Rating: C
The release of the film Caligula in 1980 created a huge kerfuffle. The sex-and-violence-enhanced movie about the debauched Roman Emperor was financed by Penthouse Magazine honcho Bob Guccione, who later hijacked the film.
Written by Gore Vidal and directed by Tinto Brass, Caligula’s impressive cast included Malcolm McDowell, Not-Yet-A-Dame Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole and Sir John Gielgud. The drama was supposed to concern the way absolute power corrupts absolutely, with a nod to the notorious Caligula's rap as a violent perv. Once Guccione got his hands on the negative, graphic scenes of sex and violence were inserted, seemingly at random, in the film.
Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren doing what ancient Romans did.
The end result is such a disturbing mess that Vidal sued to get his name off the picture and just about all involved distanced themselves immediately. Given the resultant media frenzy over the film’s sex and violence, Caligula was a box office hit.
Now comes Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, apparently a labour of love for filmmaker/art historian Thomas Negovan. This is a total refiguring of the movie and a 4K Ultra High Definition restoration. Caligula: The Ultimate Cut was unveiled at Cannes last year.
Would any review of this painstaking film re-build be complete without a detailed comparison to the 45 year old version? Let's hope so, because having seen the new version your humble correspondent is not going to sit through the original three hour release. Even Roger Ebert, as he confessed in his 1980 review, could not make it past the two hour mark at the first Caligula; what he saw before walking out he described as vile, sickening trash.
We’ll take his word for it.
This ultimate cut version of Caligula follows the emperor’s journey from eager young man, madly in love with his sister, to barking mad head of the Roman Empire. Along the way there are sumptuous costumes and fabulous sets and umpteen orgy scenes, all surprisingly dull. This is a bit of a slog.
We meet Caligula (McDowell) in bed with his sis, Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy), having wakened from a nightmare in which his family is getting killed off by Tiberius.
Caligula goes to see elderly relative Tiberius (O’Toole) poolside, where naked bathers engage in various perversions and a lot of babies cry — it’s all a bit confusing — but various people are poisoned or otherwise dispatched, and now finally Caligula is the emperor. Yay!
Caligula hosts an orgy to find a wife and marries Caesonia (Mirren). As a sign of his increasing madness and debauchery he assaults a maiden on her wedding day and then assaults the unhappy groom, too. Now people are really afraid of Caligula.
His decline continues: there’s a demented attack on a spot Caligula imagines is Britain, he creates a bizarre new way to march, suggests a wine tax, organizes an imperial brothel and bestows honours on his horse; meanwhile, many many many more orgies take place.
Who knew it could all be so rote, sexless and off-putting? Also, what’s the plural of “orifice?”
No doubt an argument could be made for seeing Caligula: The Ultimate Cut as a fascinating bit of movie history; it’s a fairly engrossing bit of human history, too, for anyone interested in what people look like without implants or airbrushing and with pubic hair.
And it is delightful to see the very young Mirren and McDowell here, although their youth makes it impossible to shake the notion that you’re watching a student production of something.
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut. Written by Gore Vidal and directed by Tinto Brass, completely recut by Thomas Negovan, with a new score. Starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Steiner. Opens in theatres Friday, August 16 and will be available for home viewing in September.