Caligula (R-rated Version)

Rating:
Summary: Tasteless Pornography Posing as a Historical Drama
Review: Tinto Brass' and Bob Guccione's pornographic backgrounds with 'Penthouse' did very little for this film in terms of artistic quality as a drama or historical thriller. Not surprising if you see that Tinto Brass' only contribution to film is pornographic in nature. Instead, history was used as a flimsy backdrop for a purely modern pornographic film. An utterly tasteless film in which no amount of acting talent could possibly save from its horrible screenplay, mediocre direction, and tasteless emphasis on sex.

The film covers the reign of Caligula, the Roman emperor who reigned for only 3 short years after succeeding Tiberius. The Roman emperor who would become infamous for his demented cruelty and sexual perversions. Although it would be impossible to remove sex or violence from a film about Caligula, the screenplay in this film mostly emphasizes his sexual exploits to bring its Penthouse tramps to the forefront. The acting is clearly of secondary importance in the film as demonstrated by measely dialogues whose lines were mostly extracted from the anecdotal history of Suetonius. There's no real character study of any of the personnages: the dialogue is simply used to foreshadow or introduce another risque sex scene. The sexual scenes are so pervasive that it isn't worth seeing the rated version because it has nothing to show. Absent the erotic scenes, the backdrops are cheap and not even historically faithful. If the collective talents of Malcolm McDowell, Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud and Helen Mirren, can't make a film any good, then it must really be very bad.

Avoid this film at all costs unless you want to see it for its pornographic quality (an oximoron in my book.) See John Hurt's excellent performance of Caligula in the 1975 BBC miniseries 'I, Claudius' if you want to get a glimpse of the man as a historical character instead of a porn idol. As far as other films involving erotic magazines, try Hugh Heffner's production of 'MacBeth' directed by Roman Polanski instead of this cheap film: at least Heffner and Playboy knew how to choose a good director to make a good film.