FILM FRENZY

Malcolm McDowell (center) in Caligula (Photos: Unobstructed View & Drafthouse Films)

By Matt Brunson

CALIGULA (1980)
★★ (out of four)
CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT (2023)
★★ (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Tinto Brass
STARS Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren

I first saw Caligula upon its original release, when I was all of 16 and living in Portugal. It opened at one of the local theaters in my Lisbon suburb of Cascais, and I went to check it out with my British friends, siblings Peter and Paul (no, they did not have a sister named Mary). The restrictive “adults only” rating meant that neither I nor 16-year-old Paul should have been allowed entrance (18-year-old Peter was good to go), but the theater doormen I encountered during my eight years in the country were (thankfully) pretty lax and rarely did I have trouble gaining admittance to any movie.

I was excited to see this one, and not necessarily for the prurient reasons one might expect from a teenager. At this age, I was already devouring not only movie magazines but also such publications as TIME and the Herald Tribune, and so I was already aware of the film’s outsized controversy. Here was what was meant to be a perfectly respectable, perhaps even award-contending movie — script by Gore Vidal, acting by Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, and Helen Mirren — but it was shanghaied at a late date by producer and financier (and Penthouse founder) Bob Guccione, who had several minutes of hardcore porn footage shot and inserted without the knowledge of the actors or director Tinto Brass. Vidal had already distanced himself from the project after taking offense at Brass’ changes, so perhaps it was a bit of karma that Brass similarly denounced the picture after some additional editing decisions by Guccione along with those newly added XXX scenes.

Once Caligula opened in Italy in 1979 and the rest of the universe over the next few years (including the U.S. in 1980 and Portugal in 1981), controversy became its middle name. The film was banned in some countries, seized and confiscated in others, and heavily edited down in yet others. Portugal was one of the, uh, lucky ones, allowed to bear witness to all 156 minutes. Briefly, the film follows the fortunes of the Roman emperor Caligula (McDowell) as he oversees the murder of his uncle, Emperor Tiberius (O’Toole, uglified and intense), continues an incestuous relationship with his sister Drusilla (one-note Teresa Ann Savoy), marries the promiscuous Caesonia (Mirren), and generally behaves horribly to everyone around him. He deflowers both a bride and groom on their wedding night, betrays his most loyal officer (Guido Mannari) and cheers as his head is chopped off in a most elaborate manner, and orders all the senators’ wives to serve as prostitutes during a night of depraved debauchery with the common folk. It’s no wonder that the esteemed official Nerva (Gielgud), anticipating such atrocities on Caligula’s watch, had earlier decided to take his own life.

Even at the age of 16, when my critical faculties were still developing, I could recognize this wasn’t a very good film. After slowly gaining an understanding of the importance of direction thanks to such efforts as Milos Forman’s 1979 Hair, Brian De Palma’s 1980 Dressed to Kill, and John Boorman’s 1981 Excalibur, I felt a stifling heavy-handedness in Brass’ helming, punctuated by a noticeable lack of flair (Brass had initially shown promise in his early movies but soon settled into directing lewd, leering sex flicks like All Ladies Do It and Cheeky). None of the characterizations seemed particularly deep, with everyone merely milling around so that Caligula could eventually heap abuse on them. And despite all the gruesomeness, the picture often bordered on camp, thanks largely to an all-in performance by McDowell that admittedly impressed me as a youngster even if I could spot the playing-to-the-rafters components (a couple of revisits over the decades revealed more buffoonery than boldness in his interpretation).

There are traces of humor, but they’re rather ineffective, relying too much on the piece’s sadistic bent. Honestly, the funniest moments I associate with Caligula didn’t even occur on the screen. One was that Paul spotted his history teacher at our screening — the man was clearly embarrassed, as if he assumed we thought he was there for the boffing and not the history (hey, we gave him the benefit of the doubt). Another was Gielgud’s honest assessment to McDowell after he visited the set and noticed all the countless nude extras: “Oh, it’s wonderful. I’ve never seen so much cock in my life.” And lastly, there was the final line from Roger Ebert’s immortal no-star review of the film: “’This movie,’ said the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain, ‘is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen.’”

The Unobstructed View and Drafthouse Films labels have recently released a new version of Caligula on Blu-ray and DVD (a 4K boxed set is arriving October 22), and it’s a big deal. Titled Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, it finds art historian Thomas Negovan completely tossing out the original version and using discarded footage to create an entirely new motion picture. That Negovan was able to build a brand new movie out of scratch is impressive no matter the final result. And what is that final result?

Let’s just say that the 1980 version at least kept moving; The Ultimate Cut, on the other hand, keeps the momentum going until the deadly final hour. This edit runs a full three hours — approximately a half-hour longer than the original — and much is the same, despite the use of presumably alternate footage of existing scenes (we’ll have to take Negovan’s word that everything is 100% different, since many shots look exactly the same). There’s still ample nudity, but the sex scenes are more discreet. The violence remains unchanged, with many notorious scenes still intact: the fate of the guard who dared to be drunk on duty, the shocking murder of a little girl, etc.

The Ultimate Cut feels less kitschy and more artful than its predecessor, lending it slightly more gravitas in the early going. But it’s the third act that primarily sinks this. Scenes have been elongated past the breaking point (including the calm before the final bloodbath), and the additional sequences focused on Caligula’s changing moods (brooding here, whimsical there) are lethargic and repeatedly bring the movie to a full stop. On the plus side, there is more Mirren, which is a good thing. (I meant that in terms of more footage of her emoting, but feel free to take it to mean more nude footage, which is also true.) Ultimately, though, The Ultimate Cut is still the same movie as before: same plot, same visual design, same character arcs (or same lack thereof, if you will), same performers. I’m not sure how some can rate the original a disaster and this one a masterpiece, but I’m glad it exists if only to once again show the unlimited potential of the medium. Rebuilding a movie from scratch may not quite qualify as cinematic alchemy, but it’s an impressive trick nonetheless.

FYI, there’s a bit of false advertising when it comes to this home video release of Caligula: The Ultimate Cut. The set claims to also offer the original 1980 version, but instead of that 156-minute edit, this provides a 150-minute cut — one found in a Boston warehouse — that removes all the hardcore footage. With that 156-minute take readily available, it’s odd that this would include an incomplete version, one that basically plays like a Cinemax late-night romp from back in the day. It’s a disappointment mainly for the sake of completion (not to mention for the historical record), but one of the extra features does include a look at much of this hardcore footage. Other extras include audio commentary by Negovan; a piece on the Guccione scandal; and the original theatrical trailer for the 1980 version.