Caligula

Remobo3.0

I watched this on the t.v. in my garage, while eating Count Chocula dry, out of the box, so…I guess you could say I know a thing or two about opulence, myself.

Neil3.0

It's hard (sorry) to know how to review Caligula, especially in its full length (sorry again) version. I've seen lots of 10/10 reviews on other sites, but you can't help feeling (ahem) that they are actually reviewing the behind-the-scenes story. That of course is incredible, hilarious and tragic - all things that the film should be but isn't. It's swollen (cough), sloppy (cough cough) and gets itself into a proper mess (nurse!). Mark Kermode famously said that there was a great film in here waiting to get out, but surely that disappeared up its own rectum (OK that one's just a single entendre) when Brass started interfering (fnarr) with Gore Vidal's original script. You sense that even before Guccione began fiddling (fnarr fnarr) with the cut, it must have been confused and flaccid (oh matron). But... but... Malcolm McDowell is convincing, terrifyingly so at times, Helen Mirren rises above everything with grace, and the set design is brilliantly OTT - the highlight being the nightmarish decapitation machine that executes prisoners buried neck-deep in the arena. A good metaphor perhaps for how it must have felt for Gielgud, O'Toole and co to find themselves in the production, and the spectacle is just as morbidly compelling. In many ways Caligula is the most mondo of mondo movies, and it should definitely be seen for its awe-inspiring excess and the sorry subtext of what happens when film-makers from utterly different worlds collide. Ultimately however you have to judge it by what is on the screen - for me it's a three-star film and no-one is going to change my position (OK I'll stop now).

Aberrant Ghoul5.0

Does anyone remember Ben-Hur? No, I don't mean the 2016 remake. I'm talking about the 1959 version that was (at the time) the most ambitious and expensive undertaking Hollywood had yet attempted. I mean, this sucker was the 50s equivalent of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. With a whopping budget of $15.2 million (yeah, it doesn't sound like much today), the largest sets ever constructed for a film, roughly a hundred people churning out costumes, and hundreds of artists crafting statues and friezes, it was exactly the kind of filmmaking excess that only Hollywood is capable of. Tinto Brass' Caligula is basically that... if it was a hardcore porno film. This is, without a doubt, the most ambitious and over-the-top smut that has ever been created, or ever will be created. And I mean porn with a capital 'P', as in there are full-on, unsimulated, graphic depictions of sex in this thing. For example, there's this Imperial Brothel scene (late in the film), that's just a massive orgy, featuring many long, lingering close-ups of lovingly performed fellatio (with one guy even climaxing in a girl's mouth), as well as shots of intercourse where actual penetration is shown. In a fucking historical drama with proper actors and shit, like Malcolm McDowell, Peter O'Toole, and Helen freaking Mirren. There's also a scene where Malcolm McDowell lubes up his hand and jams his fist right up a dude's arse, after deflowering the poor bugger's bride, on their wedding day! And, if you removed all the sex (which would be difficult as it's woven into almost every single scene) you would actually still have a gorgeously filmed and epic historical drama on your hands, with an absolutely stellar performance from a young Malcolm McDowell. A vibrantly colorful and scintillatingly surreal tapestry of grotesque violence, lurid perversion, and bold excess, with some astonishingly epic sets. A sumptuous feast for your eyeballs. Fucking amazing that this thing even exists. It could never be made today. A one-of-a-kind historical porn epic.Watched with Jozlyn