_Caligula_ no stars (out of ****)
Since its initial release in 1979, no film quite like _Caligula_ has ever been made--and with good reason; it is widely known to be one of the worst films ever made, and anyone who's seen it would be hard-pressed to argue with that assessment. But as with a lot of bad would-be art, this cinematic oddity holds a truly bizarre fascination, especially in this fully restored, 20th anniversary edition, which is slowly making its way around to big screens around the country.
On the big screen is the only way one can, ahem, "appreciate" this gaudy, flat-out bizarre exercise in cinematic fragmentation. Whatever chance this film had of turning out well was done in by the participants' conflicting intentions, which can be broken down into three perspectives. From one, there are original screenwriter (the adapter remains uncredited) Gore Vidal and the Serious British Actors (including no less than Sir John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole), who obviously believed they were making a serious exposé of the decadence of the Roman empire, namely the reign of the megalomaniacal title character (Malcolm McDowell). Then there's original director Tinto Brass, whose insistence on filling every last shot of film with some artfully-lit nudity comes straight from the school of mainstream exploitation cinema. Last--and certainly not least--comes (in _every_ sense of the word) producer and _Penthouse_ publisher Bob Guccione, who wrested control of the film from Brass and then shot and edited in some balls-out (literally) hardcore pornography.
The finished product, as one can glean, is one giant mess. Any given scene can shift from McDowell's overacting to nonchalant glimpses of full frontal men and women to explicit closeups of sexual penetration. It makes for a jarring watch--but certainly never a boring one. In fact, it's this identity crisis that lends the film its biggest virtue: unintentional comedy. As disgusting as it is for most audience, how can one _not_ laugh at the film's centerpiece cum shot, which has to be the first and only in screen history that has been scored to a full-blown orchestral crescendo and climax?
These "additional scenes directed and photographed" by Guccione and Giancarlo Lui come out of nowhere and have only tangential connection to the story--no surprise since the main actors were called on to do just that, and only anonymous extras get down and dirty. For example, the film's famous girl-on-girl scene is sloppily intercut with a rather tame threesome between Caligula, his wife Caesonia (Helen Mirren, whose role consists of standing around in various states of undress, spouting very little dialogue), and beloved sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy). The tiny plot "thread" that connects them is that the two women ("played" by _Penthouse_ pets Anneka DiLorenzo and Lori Wagner) spy on the three from a secret room, get hot, and get it on; eventually, their activities win more screen time than those of the three bonafide characters. I must admit that the lesbian encounter is the only hardcore interlude that can be considered remotely erotic, but that doesn't make its inclusion any more ludicrous, especially in light of the fact that the secret room, which is shown in an earlier scene as being dark and empty, features a big, fully made bed and is lit with a seductive red light.
But it's not as if there's a whole lot of plot to begin with, anyway. The apparent point of the film is to show that Caligula was--to put it bluntly--one sick motherfucker. He was hungry for power; he indulged in sexual excess; he exacted violent action upon his enemies. It's a point that comes clear within a half hour at most. But _Caligula_ drives home that point over and over again until, after two-and-a-half-hours, Caligula's reign meets a suitably bloody end. Before that point, however, we see Caligula's sadism in graphic detail; in one especially notorious scene, Caligula's guards cut off a man's penis--in tight closeup--then feed it to dogs. We also see everything--and I mean everything--that goes down (literally) at the many orgies Caligula stages. And then there's Caligula himself. To McDowell's credit, he threw all inhibitions out the window and spared no risk in taking this role. But then there's the matter of the risks he's made to take: he prances around in a skimpy toga; he wildly dances in the rain completely nude; he vomits in slow-motion; he rapes the bride at a wedding reception, then fists the groom; he licks a dead female body up and down; he even gets to sleep with a horse. That McDowell performs these tasks with such deranged gusto actually helps--what would otherwise be stomach-turning and offensive is rendered ridiculously laughable.
Which is what _Caligula_ is behind all the violence, sex, and various bodily fluids: an idea so preposterously bad as to be hilarious (big-budget pornographic historical epic?). The rerelease poster boasts, "Just as shocking twenty years later." Indeed it is, but not in the way intended. Moreso than, say, the sight of a group of guys ejaculating into a bowl (yes, that's in there), what is truly shocking is that _Caligula_ ever got made.
Michael Dequina twotrey@juno.com | michael_jordan@geocities.com | jordan_host@sportsmail.com | mrbrown@iname.com Mr. Brown's Movie Site: http://welcome.to/mrbrown CinemaReview Magazine: http://www.CinemaReview.com on ICQ: #25289934 | on AOL Instant Messenger: MrBrown23
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