I’m going to start this off by admitting I consume a fair bit of fucked up media. Not because I’m a disgusting sadist (at least I hope), but because I’ll read about how harrowing something is to witness and my brain will go “it can’t be that bad, I bet I can handle it.” It’s like I’m trying to earn Girl Scout badges for having sat through all of Salo or whatever.
So when I went down a 2am wiki hole and read about Caligula’s bizarre and troubled production history- and how it was one of only two films Roger Ebert ever walked out of- I immediately went “this is something I absolutely must subject myself to.”
Based on my (weak) research, they gave Gore Vidal 20k to write the script and then were like “this is too gay we have to redo it.” Then basically post-production they filmed a bunch of hardcore porn scenes and spliced them throughout the film to spice things up, pissing off Tito Brass in the process (you can very easily tell which these scenes are). He ended up taking his name off the production. The thing is almost 3 hours long and there’s almost no plot. Just young Malcolm McDowell prancing around, being unhinged, framed by naked extras in almost every scene. Weak attempts at political drama and character development punctuated by weird sex and cartoonish violence.
Before I really dive in, here’s some gems from the notes I took during the film as a primer:
- Man on stilts with a boner????
Caligula follows Caligula, obviously, from his ascent to Roman imperium to his assassination after just 4 years of rule. And going mad with power. And committing sex crimes and killing everyone for treason. That’s about it. There’s a lot obviously borrowed in the film from Roman historians , especially re: Tiberius being a lecherous creep chilling on an island manor with a pool full of young boys. I’m going to credit Gore Vidal for that though, because the film as a whole has no historical integrity. All the women have Flavian hairdos for some reason
Torn Apart by Wild Dogs 