And yet the film - graphic and coy all at once - doesn't work as pornography either. At least for the latter it was a warm-up for Prospero's Books."I had to take my destiny with my own hands," cries Caligula, as everywhere, everyone is taking their own, and other people's, into their hands too. As if embarrassed, O'Toole bails out early, as does Gielgud. The effect is exactly like watching distinguished thespians politely attempting to ignore a stage invasion at the Old Vic by furiously copulating naturists, right in the middle of a pivotal soliloquy. If you want a picture of the future two hours and 36 minutes, imagine a scrotal sac slapping on a human face forever.Wherever you look, men and women, often in jarringly different film stock, are performing every permutation of straight or gay sex, or vigorously masturbating to issue like glassy-eyed clockwork monkeys. Caligula hiccups from one sorry sequence to the next, seemingly without connective tissue the whole enlivened, if that's the right word, by repetitive and bewilderingly gratuitous money shots. His penis is cut off and fed to the hounds while cackling hags hoist up their togas and urinate on his corpse.You can sort of see what they were trying to do. The fistee is later charged with being "an honest man and therefore a bad Roman, and therefore a traitor". "I've never known any," comes the reply or simply shrieking like a bat.Among other outrages, he has sex with his sister dead or alive marries "the most promiscuous woman in Rome" Mirren sleeps with his horse turns the senators wives into prostitutes for an imperial brothel "A logical way to balance the state budget" and rapes a virgin bride on her wedding day. The uncut version, on the other hand, is a fascinating mess, made strange and mad through sheer licentiousness.McDowell, who's on screen for pretty much the whole picture, is, well, very McDowell: whether coquettishly swiveling in his boots like a doe-eyed Biggus Dickus, quipping like Lurkio in Up Pompeii "I thought you didn't like virgins," he's chided. The theatrical cut is a badly-dubbed, silly old mess, a third-rate Ken Russell. One's enjoyment the word used advisedly may also depend on which version you're exposed to. "I just tried to survive it" McDowell explained later.The result is utterly unique. Vidal was barred from the set lawsuits pinged between Italy and the States and the 'Penthouse' boss, tired of being dry-humped by Brass, finished the film off himself, inserting extra hardcore, willy-nilly, into the edit.
"I want to screw theeez Penthouse!" the anarchic Tinto informed McDowell, who envisaged Caligula as less an insane tyrant than an anarchic revolutionary, hastening the Senate's downfall from the top. With a trio of emperor-sized egos in bed, the Vidal-Brass-Guccione threesome collapsed under the weight of those old artistic differences. This would be a truly groundbreaking picture, a heavy breathing Aubrey Beardsley illustration, combining high-art, high-drama and Penthouse Pets placing their ankles behind their ears.It all went terribly wrong. Beyond the violence and the sex is a well written, acted, and photographed film.I have spoken! ĭroog-of-the-moment Malcolm McDowell in the title role. To shock you you can't believe you're seeing what you're seeing. Aren't all pornos supposed to be filmed in the director's back yard?And that right there is the point of the film. They look like they belong in a run-of-the-mill Hollywood produced film. A lot of people say the colors are "dark" and "washed out", but I think that lends to the grittiness of the film.Danilo Donati's sets are big and well designed, it kind of shocks you to see someone getting a blow job in them. There are original, evocative pieces written for the film by Paul Clemente, no doubt a talented composer.While some of the photography is stilted in this film, for the most part it's gorgeous. The acting in general is all very good.The use of music is also to be noted. And Peter O'Toole's Tiberius Caesar, whose diseased face is rotting away, is truly an oddity to behold.put he pulls it off well. Is convincing as Drusilla, Caligula's sister.
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