SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

DLoGoToP83 As both a film and a porn film this movie is underrated. It has a great cast of very talented actors, a good script, high production values and well shot porn scenes. Including the lesbian scene between Lori Wagner and Anneka di Lorenzo. The best lesbian scene ever.

Solnichka McPherson Okay, this is almost a pornographic film, but not quite - just very sexually graphic. If you have an active sex life, you can deal with this movie easily. That being said, it is one of the more interesting films you could possibly view, all things considered. The film tells the story of Gaius Caligula, the Roman emperor who ruled from 37-41 A.D. and was well-known for his vacant soul. His neglect of matters of state and his indulgence in pleasure and torture drive the plot towards its climactic ending. Technically, the film is interesting - some imagery will stay in your mind, such as the circular guillotine. The sets are lavish, and overall, the film is a firm cinematic achievement, technically speaking. The acting is mostly stellar - McDowell is able to step into the psychotic Caligula, both alternately as a charming head-of-state and a deranged pervert, sometimes in the same scene. O'Toole and Gielgud are only in the film's first 45 minutes, as Tiberius and Nerva, respectively. O'Toole is particularly captivating as the dying emperor, fraught with syphilis (according to historical records) and paranoia. Gielgud's performance is lukewarm - maybe he'd already seen the rest of the movie before filming his scenes? Helen Mirren is captivating as well as Caesonia, the lascivious wife of Caligula. I've seen her in many films, but this and Excalibur are the two I remember most, to be sure. Finally, Theresa Ann Savoy is very strong as Drusula, the incestuous sister of Caligula - she plays the role with a certain soft firmness of character, likable and rational, at least when compared to McDowell's Caligula. The film is full of nudity, sex and graphic images. Some add to the content, some detract - that can be said of any film's imagery. A viewer should not let the mere content dictate the effect. What these images do is lend validity to the story being told, a story of an emperor not fit to be so, an emperor more obsessed with his own benefits rather than the good of the people and the Empire, an emperor so morally depraved - well, this may have been the only way to truly tell the story of Caligula. And it's worth watching, at least once. The first time I tried to watch it, I was 19, and not ready to deal with the content. It is a film for mature audiences only, no doubt. It's up to you to assess your own maturity level, though - not me.

Ruairidh MacVeigh Yep, I am one of the unfortunate few who have sat through this onslaught of vicious and violent pornography trying to pass itself off as a historical drama. I first watched this as part of a University Dare Night, where myself and my flatmates decided to watch something really racy and preferably controversial (because as we all know, when you go to University, you check your brain in at the door!).So what's the grilling? The film tells the story of Caligula, played by the always controversial Malcolm McDowell, the infamous psychotic, incestuous and delusionally murderous Caesar of Rome as he rises from his frightful youth under the rule of his Uncle Tiberius (played by Peter O'Toole, while drunk apparently), to his dominance as lord of the known World.What are the problems with this movie? Just about everything you could imagine, especially seeing as it is in fact a pornographic film. It's got all the gratuitous sex and perversion that you'd come to expect from a movie like that, the only problem being that it's not particularly sexy, if anything it would probably put you off.At the same time this is offset by incredible amounts of graphic violence, including brutal beatings, stabbings, murder, suicide, decapitation by moving wall with spinning blades, etc. This film really does push the boat out.The acting is incredibly questionable, either because you question what the actors were thinking when they did these unspeakable acts to each other, or questioning how many of these actors may or may not have been actually killed during production. Malcolm McDowell especially, who really seems to be getting into his role as the debauched ruler.I will however give this film two points. One point for the magnificent sets and locations built for the movie, which, now that I think about it, all seemed to have gone to complete and utter waste, and another point for the outfits, of which quite a lot of work appears to have gone into, for the few people who actually wear outfits and don't just wander about in the nude!Bottom line, I really cannot recommend this film on those two points alone. If you want a historical drama, this isn't for you, if you want a pornographic movie, it still isn't for you. It's incredibly violent, not sexy in the least, has no historical accuracy, and is about as fun to sit through as Root canal treatment. Stay away folks, stay far, far away!

F. R. Tiberius When a glorified pimp steals control of a masterpiece, and when the moral compasses of all involves withers away, then worlds of cinemas collapse. Logical, no? Once, several years before Star Wars, Gore Vidal wrote a screenplay about possibly the most depraved Roman emperor of Ancient times. It's probably safe to say that his mistake was in asking a porn magazine to fund this movie's production. Throw in the involvement of Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione and you have Caligula, one of the most notorious failures of 70s cinema. While it's not quite as vicious as Cannibal Holocaust, it's still excessively exploitative; while Holocaust used real killings, Caligula used real sex - so as to try to boost sales of Penthouse magazine, apparently. So what grabbed my attention for this film so strongly, especially when I initially thought it'd give me nightmares? I mean it's not like it's entirely historically accurate, is it? Well... it's got Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren, among others. And the musical score is recognisable, at least among classical music aficionados.Well, I took one for the team when I went to pick up a copy of the Imperial Edition DVD set. This included the uncut release... which SHOULD warrant an R18 where I live but somehow doesn't... the 1999 "Rated Version", misrepresented as the "Theatrical Version"... and there's the one I chanced at, the Alternative "Pre-Release" Edition, a new edit created from an earlier cut which re-arranges a few scenes back into their original context, and most of the explicit sexual inserts added by Guccione are removed, filled in by a handful of 16mm behind-the-scenes footage. So, fair enough, it's not so much of a sex film as it was before. But not even that could save Caligula from being one of the most miserable films I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.From start to finish this turkey blows (in more ways than one!), and it's not hard to see why: you have three conflicting artistic differences duking it out, and while sometimes it works, it can't really be excused that sometimes you can forget you're watching a film with explicit sex, and then a helping of genitalia brings you back to earth with an unpleasant thump. Not to mention the violence, as well - in one early scene, a soldier has several gallons of wine poured down his gullet, and Tiberius personally pokes a hole in him... just to prove to us that neither the Ancient Romans nor the Modern Writers have limits when it comes to pointless and senseless violence. Still... I guess it's fair game if, historically, Tiberius ordered to have the scales of a fish rub off a victim's face...And as for the explicit porn - how did this get into public cinemas again? It's clear proof that Bob was a sex tycoon who sneaked back onto the set to film a hardcore porno movie for which - though as I recall, most of the acts are legal - the authorities could shut down the set and sentence everyone to jail. It almost happened anyway - in several theatres the movie was shut down and seized by police! I'm just saying that this is the sort of thing that doesn't bear watching if you aren't in the mood. I'm not going to say anything about them, for obvious reasons. Even if I did, perhaps my arguments would be invalid - except for the fact that they replaced some of the more important scenes.This excessive sex and violence aside, the point is this: Caligula in general is a major dud - a long, drawn-out (seriously it drags on well over two hours!!) piece of work of which not one bit is historically accurate, nor assembled in a historically accurate order. If Bob was holding out for artistic freedom, then he'd failed in that respect because really, even ART has standards! Of course, it's not all bad news... Malcolm, Helen, Peter, John and co. did a fairly good job in their acting, and the music, like I said, is a splendid compilation to listen to. The sets aren't bad either, even if they do represent a nightmarish version of Ancient Rome. Also on the Imperial Edition DVD, there are a few deleted scenes which SHOULD have stayed in the film, as they surely would make it less of a disgrace than it is now. A complete and detailed history of the production of the film is also being written by James Ellis Chaffin and Ranjit Sandhu, with research from Thomas Ryerson, called 200 Degrees of Failure: The Unmaking of Caligula, slated for a release sometime this year, or possibly the next. You can find a lot of their research at their site (caligula.ws). I'm sure that the story behind how Gore Vidal's work fell apart would be a much interesting read, and I'm looking forward to it.