Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is a new version of the 1979 Caligula that is still banned in some countries (Belarus). The most expensive independent production of its time, it was intended to prove an adult film could be a Hollywood hit – but not everyone received it in that spirit.
‘Sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash,’ wrote the late, great critic Roger Ebert, who walked out before it finished. Although this version is still violent and sexually explicit, it’s been reworked to show that, handled right, it had all the makings of a masterpiece.
There are whippings and sex swings and I think I saw someone doing it with a swan
In your dreams, pal. There’s no masterpiece, here. The only good news (kind of) is that you’ve never seen anything so full-on demented in all your life. It’s worth seeing just for that.
The original film had – to put it mildly – its problems. Gore Vidal wrote the screenplay but pulled out of the project when it became apparent that the director, Tinto Brass, had rewritten it according to his own vision. The producer was Bob Guccione (the founder of Penthouse magazine) who, once it was all in the can, forcibly ejected Brass, smuggled the footage from Rome to London where it was edited and had scenes of hardcore pornography inserted. It had attracted a first-rate cast – Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, Sir John Gielgud – who all then disavowed it, as well they might, given they’d effectively made a porno. (It did well on video.)
Step forward Thomas Negovan, a writer, director and art historian who, on discovering that 96 hours of footage existed, set about remaking it so that it would be more in keeping with Vidal’s vision while excising the hardcore elements. So that’s what we have here – and it opens as it means to go on. That is, with a sex scene. Caligula is in bed with his lover, Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy), who also happens to be his sister, but we all have our quirks. He is in Rome but is then summoned to Capri by his dying relative, Emperor Tiberius (O’Toole at his most bonkers), who is frolicking amid naked young boys in a pool. His palace appears to be jammed with nymphomaniacs. There are whippings and sex swings and I think I even saw someone doing it with a swan. Tiberius has an adviser, Nerva, played by Sir John ‘what the hell are you doing in this’ Gielgud, who was also, surprisingly, in Arthur 2, so he does have form. O’Toole and Gielgud don’t hang around for long – I’d have thought much to their relief.
I don’t think the plot need necessarily detain us. The story is just something that gets in the way of naked serving girls or some extra swinging his todger. (Was circumcision practised by the Romans?) Vidal believed that Caligula was essentially a good man corrupted by power but I don’t think we see that here. Quite early on, I’m sorry to say, he rapes a virgin bride on her wedding day then fists the groom – God knows what the original was like if this is Caligula Lite – so he’s pretty much a monster from the off. (Wouldn’t you say that was the mark of a monster from the off?)
Although this is the least of its worries, the film also has continuity issues and is confusing, suddenly cutting from an orgy to naked soldiers (and a chicken) attacking papyrus in a lake. I believe I also saw a decapitation machine, McDowell urinating spectacularly, everyone donning beards made of loofah for no reason whatsoever and Mirren, as Caligula’s wife, discovering he is sleeping with his sister and being absolutely disgusted. Only kidding. They have a threesome.
This is three hours I’ll never get back and nor would I wish to. A masterpiece, no, but as the most crackpot piece of filmmaking you ever did see? This rocks.
Comments