Caligula (Unrated Twentieth Anniversary Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Caligula (Unrated Twentieth Anniversary Edition)
Movie Review: Real Horrorshow Cine!
Summary: 5 Stars
A few years back there was quite a controversy over some shot-on-video garbage called 'Baise Moi' solely on it's inclusion of hardcore pornography (I have a bootleg and believe me it's a mere 30 secs over the total running time of the film). A lot of sheltered mainstream viewers were confused and bewildered, but there was nothing original or daring about 'Baise Moi'. Needless to say all the attention cast a great spotlight on an otherwise worthless film and the people responsible for it made off like bandits. Anyone who was "shocked" by 'Baise Moi' should definitely stay away from Caligula, which makes the overhyped 'Baise Moi' look PG-13 by comparison!Towards the end of the 70's there was a vibe that pornography would be absorbed into mainstream movies. Not too far fetched considering then X-rated films such as 'Midnight Cowboy' and 'Clockwork Orange' were winning awards and critical acclaim, also in Europe there were plenty of horror/exploitation films that blended full blown pornography into the genre for example Joe D'amato's 'Emanuelle in America' 'Erotic Night of the Living Dead' 'Porno Holocaust', Jess Franco's 'Female Vampire' 'Doriana Grey', Jean Rollin had put out a few and there was a fantastic little film called 'Thriller:a Cruel Picture' which should be out on DVD early this year! With this in mind Bob Guccione got the rights to a Gore Vidal screen play, hired top actors Malcom McDowell, Peter O'Tool and Helen Mirren then enlisted the services of Italian director Tinto Brass (who later removed his name after Guccione shot extra scenes) to create the most expensive porno in history.
I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed Caligula and genuinely feel it's a great film! A lot of people nit pick small historic anomalies or make unfounded blanket statements such as "the acting was bad" or "the story was pointless" to hide the fact that their own prudish tastes and inhibitions won't allow them to accept Caligula as the daring and unique piece of film making that it is. Now I respect the opinions of people who say Caligula is too graphic for them or there were scenes which offended them as make no mistake about it there are scenes in this film which will alienate anyone who isn't familiar with quite sordid pornography. Plenty of intelligent viewers will surely consider this film to be in bad taste, which is perfectly acceptable. However ignore intellectual posers who would have you believe this film is worthless simply because they are not big enough to say "personally I did not like it". Too many small minded people have the out dated view that all pornography is evil and while it's acceptable that not everybody is into porn, please do take a look where this book burning mentality leads before you endorse the ideals of censorship.
If you want to accuse this film of being historically inaccurate, pointless, badly directed and poorly acted, you should go write reviews for 'Titanic' 'Pearl Harbor' and 'Moulin Rouge' first. Caligula has more style and resonance than all of those films put together. For better or worse Caligula would surely get a more powerful reaction from an audience than any film you could see in the cinema today. Let's face it Hollywood has not produced anything vaguely original or challenging in more than a decade.
Another thing which irritates me is all these haters who attack Teresa Ann Savoy for her "bad acting". I feel she is a fine actress, so what if she doesn't mind taking her clothes off. Julia Roberts today gets the fattest paychecks for a female actor and she has done nothing but star in meaningless garbage and is incapable of playing anything but the same shallow character. Savoy is cool, sexy and has great expressiveness. Check out her other Tino Brass film 'Salon Kitty'.
Image Entertainment's DVD is good, but for those who are true fans of this film you may want to check out the remastered 2-disc French release available from amazon France. For those who are prudish or sensitive viewers, give Caligula a miss altogether, theres a new 'Troy' movie coming out with Brad Pitt which would better suite you.
PS If anybody knows where you can pick up a copy of the mythical 210 minute version, I would greatly appreciate an email!
Movie Review: In a time when slavery and sex were plain commodities
Summary: 5 Stars
Whereas the 97 minute rated edition is absolutely meaningless, the 155 minute un-rated version has a full unity, a full flow of meaning and a deep signification. We see the character of Caligula develop his paranoid schizophrenia into what the world permits and authorizes: a murdering frenzy growing out of a sexual perverse cornucopia of impulses crying for and imposing their satisfaction in the flesh of every one else around. The first thing clearly shown is that this Roman world is based on 80% of slaves. These are not even animals. They are furniture, facilities, commodities, and you can do what you want with them, just as if they were some pieces of un-assorted trash. But the film does not concentrate on these slaves that are just a decor, even a decoration, that can easily spread and sprinkle its blood on the walls or on the floors. The film concentrates on the "people" who are free, even at times citizens. Tiberius shows how he picks one soldier of his own guard to play with him by having him forcefully filled with wine and then emptying him by directly puncturing his stomach with a sword. Just out of a caprice or for a transient impulse for sadistic pleasure. Note in those days it was not even sadistic. It was just normal. The Emperor could do what he wanted. Caligula will reach summits and records along that line, even with senators and their wives. He systematically exploited not the minds of people but the bodies of people and there was no end to his pleasure in blood, or any bodily fluid or orifice you could imagine. And when there was no door, he could always carve one with his sword. I must admit the standard death penalty and execution was a real pleasure for the onlookers that could throw oranges at the lively heads jutting out of the ground just before the reaping machine slowly came and cut off those terrorized heads like outgrowing grass. Quite more impressive than any lethal injection. But the film shows another element of that supposedly pagan Rome. Sex was in no way restricted by any rule or law. A daily activity you practiced just the same way as eating or drinking, or should I name more physiological functions, except that you did not need a taster for poison. You just took what you wanted, at any time, in any place, and very often it was all organized or even staged as part of the daily life of everyone. And there again slaves were a commodity, even if everyone could be the toy of their neighbours without being able or willing to protest. Just as they overfed themselves in banquets, even to the point of visiting the vomitarium, they over-consumed the bodies of their surrounding human beings and the men could always use a slave to do what they could not do anymore, and then get rid of the slave for good measure and as the cherry topping the whip-cream of the a la mode pastry. After a while you discover the ambition of the film. We are in 37-41 after Christ. The Christian faith and civilizing influence had still to come to cover up this deeply animal nature of man, though few animals kill for pleasure. But do not believe man has changed. Man has just learned how to hide this deep nature that can come out at any time, particularly in war time or when decency disappears in the name of some absolute rule, be it a moral or religious rule, be it the rule of a dictator or whatever. El Ghraib is a common field of realization of human barbaric impulses that have never been eradicated from man because they just cannot be eradicated. And don't tell me women would be different. These impulses are part of the very soil that nurtures, feeds and breeds the civilized or so they call it education of modern human beings. This film is a remake of sorts of Pasolini's Salo as a big expensive super-show peplum film that justifies excesses, not with the word fascism, but with the word paganism. But where is the difference, where is it different? The name does not matter when you have the same mixture of blood, wine and sperm.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Movie Review: Hard to watch sometimes, but you'll be proud to have seen it
Summary: 5 Stars
Definitely a different type of historical drama movie, "Caligula" differentiates itself from other movies by holding nothing back in terms of sexuality. Probably the only historical drama I've seen that consists of actual sex scenes with real bodily fluids and Roman-style orgies; some call it obscene, grotesque, etc, but those opinions go to show how utterly different the times of Ancient Rome were, and the film is unafraid to provide such a generous helping of sex that it is quite literally considered by many an expensive porno.
The violence is not as horrible as you might see in R-rated horror movies (or that grotesque scene in Spiderman2 with Doctor Octopus butchering the surgeons), though with much blood, and one case of castration (not real, don't worry!)
The acting is truly something else. Malcolm McDowell puts on his best performance I've ever seen as Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus "Caligula", and even succeeds in giving Caligula a human face apart from the grotesque portrayals of all the historians who chronicled him (Tacitus and Suetonius). He truly excels in showing a Caligula who is not necessarily completely mad, but rather an average young man corrupted by extreme wealth, extreme power, and the need to shock and disturb the aristocrats he so detests. Don't confuse this, he IS quite mad, but he is still human, and has human emotions; love, jealousy, paranoia, fear, hatred. Peter O'Toole's role as Tiberius is short in regard to the total movie, but it is absolutely convincing, casually trying to kill Caligula while continuing about his facade of treating him as a loved one.
One of the best parts of the movie was when Caligula organized an entire Roman legion on the coast of Italy, said he was going to invade Britain, and had the legionnaires charge, naked, into the water and attack Papyrus plants. I had a great laugh at that.
Now comes the problems: It seems to me this film has had a controversial post-production period, in which screenplay writer Gore Vidal attempted to disown the screenplay, porn director Bob Guccione added some pretty pretentious and unnecessary sex scenes which contributed nothing to the movie and brought the momentum to a stand still so we could watch some random girls have sex for some reason known only to him, and some of the scenes appear to have been cut together in the wrong places, as I've read in other reviews.
Personally, it had potential to be absolutely spectacular, with less attention focused on the few random sex scenes, and what felt like a 45 minute sequence of just watching all the men and women (Senators' wives and daughters) having sex on that Roman naval ship in the city was exhausting. It ceases to be arousing after about five minutes of that damn orgy, and the camera keeps going on and on and on and on for what seems like half the movie (it's much shorter than 45 minutes, but it just FELT that long)
I consider this a classic; one of those movies you absolutely have to see, like Midnight Cowboy, or The Manchurian Candidate, or The Name of the Rose.
Also, this is the ONLY time I have EVER even THOUGHT this, but: This movie is definitely a movie you should NEVER show to ANYONE under the age of 16.
NEVER before have I ever thought about any movie. But don't feel dishearted--it's not a trashy gore flick like a Tarantino movie or something. Nor is it a trashy porn with a half-assed plot. It's a good movie, which shows the full moral scape of Rome, from the debauched aristocratic high life in the Imperial palace, to the squalor on the streets, and Malcolm McDowell's performance is as memorable as his performance in A Clockwork Orange. If only conservative america weren't so cruel, it could be a genuine classic...
Movie Review: 5 star truth
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm always grateful to those who research the past and inform us as accuratley as possible as to how things were and how a person lived in a certain place and time.
I had never seen Caligula before and decided to get this unrated version dvd. I've always read about and heard about and seen movies about governments, kings, queens, monarchs, rulers, emperors, princes, dictators, etc. abusing their power and being unfair to the people they rule over, but this guy takes the cake.
I don't mind the constant nudity or the extreme sex or the cruely barbaric sceenes in this movie because that is the way things were for them. It was part of their everyday life. It was the norm.
This movie doesn't ofend me, what it does is it makes me feel grateful i live in the present day and what a long way we've come from those barbaric times.(and still have a long way to go because there's always room for improvment)
Caligula is definitley not a movie to watch with your mom or dad or grandparent or aunt; i know i'd feel humiliated. I watched it with my spouse and that works. We were able to coment back and forth about it and we realy enjoied it. Not everyone will though, because of the grafic "everything" but i personaly like knowing about and seeing how this young ruler became drunk with power. It is history after all, and knowing about history is what it's all about is it not? So why shouldn't it be told the way it realy hapened? No one is obligated to watch anything, but those of us who do want to know and see, should be able to!
If the movie hadn't been a real life story then it would've just been another violence and sex film and we have a million of those. Not that that's not fine too, but for the sake of argument in this case this man did exist and was mad with power and i do believe there's enough to go on to conclude that all these goings on did go on.
The Doors - Great movie because it's about the true lives of Jim Morrison and his band. If this movie wasn't a true life story it would just be a junk movie. Same goes for Sid Vicious(Sex Pistols), In The Realm Of The Senses, etc.
So for this movie you have to like nudity, you have to like sex, you have to like watching sex, and be able to watch barbaric violence and rediculous humiliation. Thank you for reading.
...5 stars
Thank you Tinto Brass.
Movie Review: ¿Was this guy mad?
Summary: 5 Stars
Our parameters to define "crime" differ completely from its meaning 2 thousand years ago. Caligula and Nero, 2 emperors branded as "criminals" by the Christianity, could have been in reality an average product of these violent times.
Remember, the average Romans used to pay for the privilege of citizenship with half of their lives serving in the army and certainly dying in the war. And Rome was in war almost continuously for hundreds of years. I would indeed be surprised if all this would have not had any effect in the emperor's behavior. After all, life and death were nothing under the rule of Rome as well as another civilizations. Somehow life worth nothing even in our time of wars for resources, and I don't know if we, humankind, have learned anything from history.
War and slaughter are truly [...] and I doubt that sex is. Remember that soldier and [...] are the most ancient professions.
But coming back to this movie, I believe that most of the events shown here are true indeed. Sex, death, torture, etc were a normal currency in the Roman court as gladiator fighting and death was normal in the Coliseum's arena. Caligula added his personal "touch" to these events: the "head harvester" is so original and funny, gee, why didn't I think of this brilliant idea before? ¿Did Mr. Guillotin invented his device based in the harvester? I think Caligula was both mad and smart despite other opinions in contrary. Naming his horse Senator! What a brilliant way to commit his crimes unquestioned by lousy senators. I have reasons to believe that the sex and brutalities portrayed by Tinto Brass were real. And the musical score by Prokopieff reinforced the idea that Caligula's mind was indeed both smart and sick, as it was the society that he ruled.
I recommend this controversial film to everyone over 18 and with an enough open mind to make an objective evaluation about the terrible events that may have occurred thousands of years ago.