 Starring: Malcolm MacDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren
Director: Tinto Brass
Year Of Release: 1979
Plot: In the middle of the First Century, Caligula succeeds his adopted grandfather, Tiberius, as emperor. Having already had a taste of power, Caligula leaps into his role with wild abandon. Although initially loved by the people, he soon becomes an absolute tyrant. Under his rule Imperial Rome becomes a place of endless orgies and violence, with Caligula doing things like forcing the wives of his senators into prostitution and giving civic honours to his horse. As a result of the increasing madness and utter depravity Caligula is engaged in, others begin to plot against the emperor. |
Caligula is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but is a rather interesting one simply because of what a disaster the whole production became. The story of how the likes of Malcolm MacDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole and Helen Mirren ended up starring in a film featuring hardcore sex (not to mention many of the most bizarre and depraved types of violence imaginable) is a pretty bizarre tale.
Although famed for featuring well-known actors in a film that also included explicit sex, Caligula didn’t start out that way. Originally Gore Vidal wrote his screenplay about the infamous nutty Roman emperor as a modestly budgeted historical TV mini-series that was going to be directed by Roberto Rosellini. Unable to find any traditional sources of finance, Rosellini dropped out and Vidal eventually approached Penthouse founder and publisher Bob Guccione.
Intrigued by the idea, Guccione agreed to fund the film as long as it was turned into a grand spectacle of a movie and that the amount of sex and nudity was increased, so that he could promote his pornographic titles (the original idea was to have Penthouse Pets in the sex scenes). With that agreed, pre-production started on the film, with Guccione as the man who was ultimately in charge of everything, despite the fact he had no film experience.
Although he initially tried to convince big names like John Huston to direct the movie, Guccione then turned to an Italian helmer called Tinto Brass, who had made a bit of a splash in 1976 with the controversial Salon Kitty. That movie had impressed some and shocked others with its story of a Nazi brothel. Salon Kitty’s dark themes mixed with kinky sex impressed Guccione, although in my opinion, Kitty and most of Brass’ other films are pretty dire works, which use a veneer of serious ideas to try and pretend they aren’t just softcore porn.
Like some other Italian directors, Brass is far more interested in the shagging than actually making a worthwhile film, but the inexperienced Guccione chose him for Caligula anyway. It didn’t help either that Brass hadn’t worked on anything even approaching the scale of the film about the Roman Emperor.
By September 1976, Guccione had also lined up a top class cast, built massive sets at an Italian studio, and shooting was ready to begin. However, almost from the beginning the production was plagued with problems.
Gore Vidal gave an interview where he described directors as parasites living off writers, which enraged Brass and caused him to ban Vidal from the set. Guccione felt he had to side with the director, which caused immense problems when production delays, budget overruns and set problems meant the screenplay needed to be rewritten, but Brass wouldn’t have anything to do with Vidal (and started saying he hated the screenplay and that it was utterly dreadful). As a result Tinto and Malcolm McDowell ended rewriting significant portions of the screenplay on the fly, while actors were forced to improvise some of the scenes because there was no script for them at all.
Guccione soon began to feel Brass was a complete megalomaniac but didn’t know what to do about it. The director felt the aggressive shooting schedule was unrealistic for a film of that scope and had only been put in place because the producer didn’t know what he was doing. Guccione meanwhile felt that Brass was spending far longer filming things than necessary and running up massive costs by shooting endless takes and footage, and desperately trying to paper over the cracks in what was becoming an increasingly out of control production.
It didn’t help either that Maria Schneider, who was originally cast as Drusilla, dropped out after becoming uncomfortable with the amount of sex and nudity, and had to be recast.
By the time filming ended, Gore Vidal was trying to publically distance himself from the movie because he’d realised what a disaster it was turning into and how little it had to do with what he’d originally written (he eventually agreed to drop the 10% cut of the movie’s gross that he was due, in order to get his name removed from the credits).
Early in post-production, Guccione got so fed up with Brass that he fired him and took control of the film himself, saying the director was out of control and causing massive budget overruns and production delays that he couldn’t afford to cover any longer.
The producer then hired his friend, Giancarlo Lui, to re-edit the film (apparently the final movie bears little resemblance to either what Vidal originally wrote or what Brass thought he was making when he filmed it). Seemingly realising that the whole thing had become a bit of a disaster, Guccione also decided to sex things up even more. He personally directed six extra minutes of hardcore sex scenes and inserted them into the movie (and if you ever see the 160 minute, graphic version, you’ll know how ham-fistedly this footage was edited into Caligula, as it’s obvious the sex wasn’t filmed at the same time as the actors). Although Caligula was always intended to be a sexual film, it's unlikely most of the well-known actors would have agreed to appear in the film if they'd known there'd be real sex and blow-jobs in the finished product.
As it wasn’t long after the likes of Deep Throat had initiated the brief porno chic phenomenon, it seems that Guccione thought by adding in real sex, people would turn up even if the rest of the movie was awful.
Even when work was finished on the movie the problems didn’t end, as Brass had decided to sue Guccione for being fired from the production. Although the film was initially due for release in 1977, because of all the problems caused by the clash of strong personalities and having a producer who had no experience making films (let alone one on that scale), it didn’t actually hit cinemas until 1979.
The film was savagely panned by the critics, although it didn’t too badly on its limited US theatrical run due to its sex, which covered everything from incest to fisting, and its violence, which ran from infanticide to castration. Billed as one of the most shocking films ever, it did manage to attract an audience, although while Guccione had originally wanted a grand epic that would gross millions, he ended up with a car-crash curiosity. Caligula is indeed impressive for the amount of cruelty and depravity it contains, but due to its lack of perspective and confusing structure it’s actually impressively boring despite its endless OTT sex and violence.
Unsurprisingly in the UK, we didn’t get the full version with the hardcore sex, as the BBFC wouldn’t give that a certificate. We initially got a shortened, re-edited version, which was done so sloppily that it ended up with huge continuity errors and plot holes. That was the only edition available in the UK for over 20 years, until a new version was put together in 1999, which still didn’t have the graphic sex but got rid of the continuity errors. However it didn’t really help with the fact that whichever way you look at it, it’s an awful mess of a movie.
Over the years there have been endless different cuts of the films, with various different people trying to make sense of what they feel should be a far better film than it ended up as, but it seems the footage simply isn’t there to make a good movie.
Oddly though, despite of (or perhaps because of) all this, Caligula ended up as a fantastic DVD release when the Imperial Edition came out a couple of years ago. Not only did this bring the uncut, 160-minut hardcore version to the UK for the first time, but it also included some brilliant special features. Although many of the cast members had spent decades trying to distance themselves from the film, enough time had passed to get them together to take a retrospective look at the film.
The Imperial Edition features one of the best audio commentaries ever produced, in which Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Ernest Volkman (Penthouse Magazine's On-Set Writer and Reporter) look back on the movie. It provides endless amounts of info about the ridiculously amateurish and insane shoot, with the participants having a very wry sense of humour about the film, where they’re all prepared to say what an abysmal movie it is and the incredibly stories of how awful it was to make. The commentary is massively more entertaining than the movie and utterly fascinating.
Unsurprisingly the ‘making of...’ documentaries and featurettes are also worth a look, detailing quite how ridiculous the whole production was.
Incidentally, the problems didn’t end for Guccione when he released the movie, as in 1981 actress Anneka Di Lorenzo, who played Messalina in the film, sued the producer saying her career has been damaged because the hardcore sex scenes, which had been added without her knowledge, had essentially associated her with a pornographic movie. After a lengthy court battle she won her case, although while she was awarded $4 million, because there was little chance of Di Lorenzo ever being paid the money, the award was vacated.
Caligula may be a truly awful movie and one of the most shambolic major movie productions ever, but it’s an incredible behind-the-scenes tale. It’s just a shame I don’t have the space to do it full justice here, as some of it is absolutely bizarre. Although I wouldn’t recommend watching the film, it’s certainly worth looking further into the making of it, even if only as a cautionary tale of what happens when strong personality like Tinto Brass and Gore Vidal meet someone as inexperienced but with such grand ideas as Bob Guccione.
One day someone’s gonna make a great film out of the story of Caligula, as it is a truly fascinating tale. In fact it’s almost impressive that with such juicy historical tales of sex, violence and insanity inspire them, they managed to screw up the film so badly.
TIM ISAAC
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