A spoiler-free mini movie review.
NO STAR RATING
The following post contains language
that could be triggering.
If one tries to explain why they consider the ‘fall of the Roman Empire’ docudrama Caligula great, civilians won’t get it.
Then you show it to them, and not only will they still not get it, they are unlikely to speak with you again. Caligula is an ugly movie, in technique; aesthetic; and content combined (this is the Theatrical Version I’m talking about, presently).
[cont’d]
The acting, from a procession of mid-century classics (Malcolm McDowell! Helen Mirren! Peter O’Toole!), is melodramatic, and the international ESL supporting cast either had their lines poorly dubbed, or are unintelligible. The story doesn’t advance coherently, as seemingly-major secondary characters abruptly exit, only to drift back in later thanks to the sorcery of cinema, I suppose.
Speaking of, individual shots are stitched together without an eye for pacing or continuity. The movie’s washed-out cinematography is too dark. It reuses the same half-a-dozen music tracks the entire time. It has an infatuation with camera zooms: Revenge of the Sith has nothing on the quantity of extreme close-ups of people screaming “nooooooo” contained herein.
Then there’s the subject matter, which is full of integral world-building moments such as: implied male fisting; full-frontal gay blowjobs; incestual threesomes; vanilla rape; guys jizzing into cups and using it as moisturizer (I wish I was joking); macro-lensed pans across rows of syphilis-stricken genitals; an assembly line of severed heads (literally); disembowelments; buckets of casual grue…
And that’s not including the porn inserts bankrollers Penthouse Magazine filmed second-unit and added before release, without telling anyone!
Caligula’s original 156-minute version is a colossally bloated, self-indulgent, offensive (on so many levels), $20-million (65 today) train-wreck. I now know better than to recommend it to anyone – especially you.
But, a good chunk of its problems can be blamed on a troubled production – with director & Italian sleaze purveyor Tinto Brass, screenwriter & career literate Gore Vidal, and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione’s creative visions clashing – not to mention a patchwork post-production. It’s a fascinating behind the scenes story, probably worth its own limited series, and it’s a miracle a finished film exists at all.
That it exists in the state it does is what makes my heart grow fonder: much like Wood, Wiseau, and late-phase Cimino, Caligula is so bad it is elevated into abstract art. As a film lover, a gorehound, and a fan of cringe, I love its janky ass.
//wd 3.12.2025
Poster sourced from impawards.com. Caligula is available for purchase through Amazon (unsponsored).
theory of a daskeman 