Caligula…the motion picture that unabashedly, unashamedly, and undoubtedly crosses the delicate line between 'artsy' and 'fartsy.'

Is it the erotic masterpiece that producer/distributor Bob Guccione claimed it was…or just the porn industry's feeble attempt at mainstream filmmaking?  Is it an inspired bit of avant-garde cinema starring a stalwart cast of stellar British greats…or just a big, stinking, pile of horse manure featuring a pompous collection of overacting Limeys? … Oh, no…I'm not getting into that debate!  But what I will tell you about the experience of watching Caligula, though, is that it is like a big, bloody train wreck of a movie: despite the overwhelming, revolting feeling of depravity the movie repeatedly bombards us with…no matter how many taboos our modern, sexually-repressed post-Puritan society has set are systematically broken by the film…and in spite of the fact that the film has been eviscerated, re-constructed, and re-animated again and again, one is still compelled to watch it.  Maybe it's just to see if it can get any weirder.  

It's own creator/writer, the one and only Gore Vidal, went on national television before the film had even been completed referring to it as a turkey, the director, the great Tinto Brass was locked out of the editing room by Bob Guccione who, at the time, was the head of Penthouse Magazine and Penthouse Films International.  It is unclear as to what Bob was thinking when he shot an additional six-minutes of hardcore sex and (pardon the expression) inserted them into this supposedly mainstream film.  Perhaps he wanted to mix two genres together and make porn the norm.  Or maybe he saw The Producers and  figured he could make more money with a flop (considering Guccione would later lose control of Penthouse in a bankruptcy several decades later, the latter is unlikely).  It could certainly be the first option: in this day and age, it is all-but-uncommon to flip through the cable channels, surf the internet, cruise the magazine rack at a gas station or even listen to a song without finding some trace of pornography.  Alas, we can't even rent sub-par 'art' films at the video store without seeing some total-filmmaker-wannabe getting his jolly on whilst receiving a little fellatio by an oh-so-brave-yet-desperate female lead simply because that would be the only way he could someone to do it (thank you, Vince, for hammering another nail into the coffin of the movie industry)!  

Don't get me wrong: I love porn!  Why wouldn't I?  Fornication is fun……just ask your parents (and if you're a parent, simply ask your kids).  But why put it into a film when clearly the writer or director never intended for it to be there?  Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but we still remember the movie, don't we?  We are talking about it, aren't we?  Yes, the key word here is "controversy".  Say it with me: "controversy".   

Most of Caligula's disaster-like status is mostly attributable to Bob Guccione, who is said to have financed the entire production by an estimated $22,000,000 from his own Penthouse Magazine in tax write-offs!  

In a nutshell: Bob took a screenplay from Gore Vidal (a script itself reworked from an unproduced television mini-series treatment by Roberto Rossellini), hired cult hero Tinto Brass (Salon Kitty) to direct and Danilo Donati to create the sets.  The result was one large pissing contest.  Vidal didn't want Brass to do his story, Brass didn't want to do Vidal's story, Vidal made his departure, Brass and actor Malcolm McDowell re-wrote scenes as well as adding new ones, Brass didn't want to use hardcore sex scenes, Guccione shot hardcore footage and threw it in after locking Brass out of the editing booth, blah, blah, blah.  Upon its initial release, four years after production had started, nothing of Gore Vidal's Caligula remained the same (save the names of the characters) and very little of what Tinto Brass had originally envisioned was there: Guccione had re-edited several days of footage into one large, incomprehensible mess.  If nothing else, Caligula is a superb example of how not to edit a film. 

Let's not forget Donati's contributions: huge, neo-realistic sets were made with the hopes of making the average audience member say "Ooh", "Ah" and "Oh, far out, man!" in their best drug-induced Tommy Chong impersonation.  Instead, these large, suspiciously modern-looking but still stunning achievements manage to look like what would have happened had Peter Greenaway and Cecile B. DeMille made Jesus Christ Superstar: a five-story high lawnmower-like contraption beheads prisoners in a massive stadium, a full-scale Roman vessel was constructed for the Imperial Brothel segment (and was the largest prop ever built at the time), nearly 3,600 costumes and 5,000 handcrafted boots and sandals were made, and over a thousand pounds of real human hair was sorted and matched for the wigs.  Wow.  

As for the "plot" -- well, thanks to the handiwork of my dreaded arch-nemesis, the infamous Editing Room Floor Slasher, the story is laid out much in the same way a mentally-challenged toddler with Attention Deficit Disorder would set the dinner table.  Entire scenes were omitted, re-filmed or fuddled thanks to using the wrong shots or, in some cases, a long shot where a close-up should be (and vice versa!).  Some scenes were created and shot right there on the spot while filming another.  Other scenes were created in the editing room using leftover footage and dialogue.   

Here goes (takes deep breath): Malcolm McDowell plays Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (better known by his Latin nickname "Caligula", or "Little Boots"), seizes the throne of Pagan Rome following the assassination of his sexually-depraved grandfather, Tiberius Claudius Nero (Peter O' Toole), sleeps with his sister Drusilla (the stunning Teresa Ann Savoy, running around in a skimpy little next-to-nothing, baring everything), turns Rome into something resembling Rick James' drunken office party gone horribly awry, marries Helen Mirren, and, after a LOT of sex and violence, meets his demise at the hands of his own guards. 

Oh, John Gielgud shows up, too, but promptly slits his wrists when he realizes the film is going nowhere and John Steiner has one of the better (read: likeable) roles as Longinus…a name that causes teenage boys to snicker everywhere. 

Extras 
The boys at Image Entertainment have placed their balls firmly against the interior freezer wall with this 3-Disc Imperial Edition of Gore Vidal/ Tinto Brass/Bob Guccione's Caligula with a wonderful array of extra features. Not only do you get the uncensored, unrated 'original' 156-minute Theatrical version on Disc 1, but you also get a seldom-seen alternate 203-minute Pre-Release version on Disc 2, which itself contains three Audio Commentaries: one by Malcolm McDowell and film writer Nick Redman, one with Helen Mirren moderated by film writers Alan Jones and James Chaffin, and another with on-set writer Ernest Volkman. While the Pre-Release cut offers some new footage (both releases were more-or-less formed from scraps), the beauty part of it is that it makes more sense editing-wise.

The second disc also sports 12 Deleted/Alternate/Extended scenes (some of which were taken from an unfinished workprint).

Disc 3 features several Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes, Interviews and Documentaries: The Making of Caligula runs 62 minutes (an alternate 10-min version is included as well), My Roman Holiday with John Steiner is an interview with the actor who discusses working in Italy during the '70s and '80s (a good view), Caligula's Pet: A Conversation with Lori Wagner is an amusing 24-min tidbit which shows just how pathetic former Penthouse Pets with no talent can be as they near the midlife crisis/menopause stage (and you can't sing, either!), and Tinto Brass: The Orgy of Power runs 35 minutes and is subtitled in English.

There are also 15 behind-the-scenes segments, Still Galleries and DVD-ROM extras including Press Kit Notes, Bios, a First Draft of Gore Vidal's script and more.  Also worth mentioning are the utterly fascinating Liner Notes by Thomas A. Ryerson and R.J. Buffalo.  Author and Film Buff Ryerson shares his love for the film with us (which is scary, to say the least) while fellow author Buffalo explains (at great length) the history, making, mutilating and re-making of the film. Worry not, folks, Buffalo actually asks everyone out there to keep an eye out for lost film material in the hopes of re-releasing Caligula on DVD (for a third time) at some point in the future (a bold, ambitious move that would make some of Universal's multiple DVD releases of the same title to shame).

We also learn from the notes that Italy, the UK and Australia released alternate versions of the film that are unavailable to the rest of the world due to legal issues!  Frankly, if Buffalo and Image could lay their hands on all of the footage (over 100 hours were shot!), then there would be a remote possibility Tinto Brass could be coerced back into the editing room and we could finally see his original vision. Maybe I'll win the lottery, sprout wings, grow some gills and have an in-depth conversation over a glass of Chivas with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Merlin the Wizard on the first commercial flight to Mars, too!  Hey, anything's possible, right?  

The Bottom Line
With a story so historically inaccurate (or so, we assume) and acting so outrageously over-the-top that they both border on camp (not to mention the post-production assassination via the editing), Caligula deserves a special place in cinematic history between other over-budget disasters such as Cleopatra or Waterworld, over-hyped letdowns like Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and fellow I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Kosher class-icks like Cannibal Holocaust and I Drink Your Blood. 

Everybody should see this movie at least once.