Malcolm McDowell

Teresa Ann Savoy

Helen Mirren

Peter O'Toole

John Steiner

Guido Mannari

Paolo Bonacelli

Leopoldo Trieste

Giancarlo Badessi

Mirella D'Angelo

Anneka Di Lorenzo

Lori Wagner

Adriana Asti

John Gielgud

Bruno Brive

Rick Parets

Paula Mitchell

Osiride Pevarello

Donato Placido

Mario Di Biase

Gore Vidal

Renzo Rossellini

Enzo Micarelli

Alberto Travaglini

Armando Tortorici

Masolino D'Amico

Guido Rosina

Carla Cipriani

Massimo Spano

Stefano Curti

Riccarda Pierconti

Sergei Prokofiev

Olga Rendina

Romolo Mancini

Luciano Vinciguerra

Antonio Tonti

Maria Ruhle

A.G. Broderick

Tonino Manfrini

Giulio Mastri

Bruna Mariani

Mario Vitali

Aldo Venturi

Tito LeDuc

Otello Polci

Paolo De Andrei

Stuart Urban

Agnese Matiozzi

Luciana Mancini

Adriana Fiorato

Giuseppe Pennese

Peter Krook

Lidia Leonardi

Gloria Musetta

Mario Borgognoni

Franco Verticchio

Cristo Verrillo

Ettore Trivelli

Ivo Palazzi

Oreste De Falco

Rodney Glenn

Aram Khachaturyan

Claire Simpson

Alba Ravaioli

Franca Paoletti

Anna Foresi

Iolanda Di Pasquale

Giovanni Antonio Xaiz

Claudio Maimone

Peter Boita

Adriana Mattiozzi

Giselda Domenicucci

Walter Alford

Bruno Nicolai

Ettore Zampagni

Fulvio Armanni

Gregorio Simili

Silvano Tessicini

Roberto Ridolfi

Franco Rinaldi

Sabino Schiavoni

Alvaro Romagnoli

Pietro Santarelli

Enrico Sasso

Antonio Rinaldi

Sabatino Sperandeo

Vincenzo Mura

Frank Palazzo

Patrizio Mollichella

Luciano Giammei

Nazzareno Marini

Francesco Quattrone

Alberto Grassi

Sergio Spila

Marcello Puccio

Antonio Mollichella

Silvano Michisanti

Giuliano Michisanti

Augusto Gianelli

Arnaldo Parenti

Alberto Nannicini

Aldo Gentili

Silvano Pigu

Dino Mezzoprete

Enrico Maggi

Gianni Gentili

Francesco Pandolfi

Ivo Spila

Giuseppe Scansalegna

Antonio Piselli

Salvatore Gentile

Calì Said

Massimo Rinaldi

Francesco Pizzonia

Roberto Petani

Dino Paoletti

Michele Mele

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Caligola

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Italy

United States of America

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Caligula

rome, italy

roman empire

ancient rome

family relationships

madness

political corruption

peplum

erotic movie

italian history

1st century

caligula

capri, italy

roman emperor

moral corruption

Land sakes!!!

They don't make films like this anymore...and that's a dirty rotten shame! =)

Walk through a Bosch painting and marvel at the excesses and debauchery.  Critics don't take this seriously because a porn producer snipped it up and inserted his own scenes. It is what it is.  A near masterpiece.

A distinguished international cast; a screenplay by Gore Vidal; respected, award-winning talent behind the scenes; and millions of dollars at its disposal. What could possibly go wrong? Where would you like to start? CALIGULA (1979) had so much potential. I'd like to think that there's another universe where Vidal's much darker original script was given over to, say, Stanley Kubrick. That world now has a SPARTACUS (1960) for the post-porn age. Instead, we have something closer to CENTURIANS OF ROME (1981) with only slightly less cocaine. Producer Bob Guccione could have made a case for the big budget/star/studio X-rated film, which hadn't really existed in a meaningful way since the early-'70s. But in insisting that his art must be pornographic, he failed artistically 𝘢𝘯𝘥 pornographically: It's not intellectually engaging enough to satisfy the art crowd, and it's not physically arousing enough to satisfy the raincoat crowd. Still, this film remains a one-of-a-kind curiosity. Its enduring infamy allows it to be re-released in various home video editions every so often, bringing in viewers - and more importantly, money - like a carnival barker reels in passers-by to see the bearded lady. Perhaps Guccione knew what he was doing after all.

CinemaSerf

Now I'll be honest, I think John Hurt ("I Claudius" - BBC - 1976) made a better Caligula, but Malcolm McDowell is still pretty convincing as the despotic sexual deviant who held the ultimate power in the Roman Empire for four years. It ought not to have been a surprise that he turned out the way he did when we are introduced to the decrepitly monstrous Tiberius (Peter O'Toole) on his island paradise of Capri. He lives there in a court of acolyte nymphs and "fishes" guided only by the vaguest semblance of decency from his friend Nerva (Sir John Gielgud). When that brief sequence of hedonism is swiftly over, our antihero assumes the throne and proceeds to share it with his sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) with whom he enjoys a pretty incestuous relationship. There's pressure on him to marry, though, and father a legitimate child - so along comes Caesonia (Helen Mirren) - a woman all too keen to father the imperial progeny whilst enjoying a life of luxury and depravity. That's the history bit - which is really all rather peripheral to this shockingly scripted exercise in soft-porn which we are now going to watch in all it's three hour glory. It's clear that no expense has been spared on the look of the film, and to be fair to director Tinto Brass he does offer us quite a convincing glimpse at the excessiveness of a despotic court ruled by a monarch who believed himself a god - and who had few prepared to argue. It's maybe on that last point that "Longinus" (John Steiner) takes a decisive stance. He is the chancellor who increasingly finds himself, along with Praetorian Commander Chaerea (Paolo Bonacelli), more and more disgusted by the antics of this man with the thinnest grasp on reality. There's nudity all over the shop to the point that it becomes innocuous and once you've got used to that the rest of it fails to carry what could have been a blank cheque opportunity to portray the pivot of historical decadence. Instead, we have McDowell hamming it up energetically as he flounces around, scantily clad, but very little else. It's tawdry, no other word for it - and the unwelcome intermission completely throttled whatever pace there was as it sort of lumbered along in the most clunky of episodic fashions to an denouement that history told us about nearly two thousand years ago. It doesn't seem to know whether it's a movie or a sequence of short theatrical plays, Mirren adds precisely nothing and the magnificently odious O'Toole isn't around long enough to make enough of a difference. It's a shambles, certainly, and this ultimate cut is far, far too long - but somehow it's not unwatchable. You might never eat cottage cheese again!

The Ultimate Cut Official Trailer

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Caligula( 1979)

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A review by talisencrw

Written by talisencrw on Wed Mar 23 2016

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