Caligula Collection

Malcolm McDowell

Teresa Ann Savoy

Helen Mirren

Peter O'Toole

John Steiner

Guido Mannari

Paolo Bonacelli

Leopoldo Trieste

Giancarlo Badessi

Mirella D'Angelo

Anneka Di Lorenzo

Lori Wagner

Adriana Asti

John Gielgud

Bruno Brive

Rick Parets

Paula Mitchell

Osiride Pevarello

Donato Placido

Angela La Vorgna

Mario Di Biase

Gore Vidal

Renzo Rossellini

Enzo Micarelli

Alberto Travaglini

Armando Tortorici

Masolino D'Amico

Guido Rosina

Ivo Palazzi

Giulio Mastri

Oreste De Falco

Paolo De Andrei

Mario Borgognoni

Maria Ruhle

Giuseppe Pennese

Tito LeDuc

Walter Alford

Carla Cipriani

Sergei Prokofiev

Bruno Nicolai

Aram Khachaturyan

Stuart Urban

Massimo Spano

Claire Simpson

Claudio Maimone

Rodney Glenn

Stefano Curti

A.G. Broderick

Peter Boita

Fulvio Armanni

Peter Krook

Olga Rendina

Alba Ravaioli

Otello Polci

Riccarda Pierconti

Franca Paoletti

Adriana Mattiozzi

Agnese Matiozzi

Bruna Mariani

Tonino Manfrini

Romolo Mancini

Luciana Mancini

Lidia Leonardi

Anna Foresi

Adriana Fiorato

Giselda Domenicucci

Iolanda Di Pasquale

Gregorio Simili

Gloria Musetta

Ettore Zampagni

Giovanni Antonio Xaiz

Mario Vitali

Luciano Vinciguerra

Franco Verticchio

Cristo Verrillo

Aldo Venturi

Ettore Trivelli

Antonio Tonti

Silvano Tessicini

Sergio Spila

Ivo Spila

Sabatino Sperandeo

Sabino Schiavoni

Giuseppe Scansalegna

Enrico Sasso

Pietro Santarelli

Calì Said

Maurizio Rossi

Alvaro Romagnoli

Massimo Rinaldi

Franco Rinaldi

Antonio Rinaldi

Roberto Ridolfi

Francesco Quattrone

Marcello Puccio

Enrico Priori

Emanuele Polidoro

Francesco Pizzonia

Antonio Piselli

Silvano Pigu

Roberto Petani

Arnaldo Parenti

Dino Paoletti

Francesco Pandolfi

Frank Palazzo

Alberto Nannicini

Vincenzo Mura

Patrizio Mollichella

Antonio Mollichella

Carlo Milani

Silvano Michisanti

Giuliano Michisanti

Dino Mezzoprete

Michele Mele

Nazzareno Marini

Enrico Maggi

Aldo Laureti

Alfio Lamoratta

Drama

History

Caligola

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Land sakes!!!

They don't make films like this anymore...and that's a dirty rotten shame! =)

Walk through a Bosch painting and marvel at the excesses and debauchery.  Critics don't take this seriously because a porn producer snipped it up and inserted his own scenes. It is what it is.  A near masterpiece.

A distinguished international cast; a screenplay by Gore Vidal; respected, award-winning talent behind the scenes; and millions of dollars at its disposal. What could possibly go wrong? Where would you like to start? CALIGULA (1979) had so much potential. I'd like to think that there's another universe where Vidal's much darker original script was given over to, say, Stanley Kubrick. That world now has a SPARTACUS (1960) for the post-porn age. Instead, we have something closer to CENTURIANS OF ROME (1981) with only slightly less cocaine. Producer Bob Guccione could have made a case for the big budget/star/studio X-rated film, which hadn't really existed in a meaningful way since the early-'70s. But in insisting that his art must be pornographic, he failed artistically 𝘢𝘯𝘥 pornographically: It's not intellectually engaging enough to satisfy the art crowd, and it's not physically arousing enough to satisfy the raincoat crowd. Still, this film remains a one-of-a-kind curiosity. Its enduring infamy allows it to be re-released in various home video editions every so often, bringing in viewers - and more importantly, money - like a carnival barker reels in passers-by to see the bearded lady. Perhaps Guccione knew what he was doing after all.

CinemaSerf

Now I'll be honest, I think John Hurt ("I Claudius" - BBC - 1976) made a better Caligula, but Malcolm McDowell is still pretty convincing as the despotic sexual deviant who held the ultimate power in the Roman Empire for four years. It ought not to have been a surprise that he turned out the way he did when we are introduced to the decrepitly monstrous Tiberius (Peter O'Toole) on his island paradise of Capri. He lives there in a court of acolyte nymphs and "fishes" guided only by the vaguest semblance of decency from his friend Nerva (Sir John Gielgud). When that brief sequence of hedonism is swiftly over, our antihero assumes the throne and proceeds to share it with his sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) with whom he enjoys a pretty incestuous relationship. There's pressure on him to marry, though, and father a legitimate child - so along comes Caesonia (Helen Mirren) - a woman all too keen to father the imperial progeny whilst enjoying a life of luxury and depravity. That's the history bit - which is really all rather peripheral to this shockingly scripted exercise in soft-porn which we are now going to watch in all it's three hour glory. It's clear that no expense has been spared on the look of the film, and to be fair to director Tinto Brass he does offer us quite a convincing glimpse at the excessiveness of a despotic court ruled by a monarch who believed himself a god - and who had few prepared to argue. It's maybe on that last point that "Longinus" (John Steiner) takes a decisive stance. He is the chancellor who increasingly finds himself, along with Praetorian Commander Chaerea (Paolo Bonacelli), more and more disgusted by the antics of this man with the thinnest grasp on reality. There's nudity all over the shop to the point that it becomes innocuous and once you've got used to that the rest of it fails to carry what could have been a blank cheque opportunity to portray the pivot of historical decadence. Instead, we have McDowell hamming it up energetically as he flounces around, scantily clad, but very little else. It's tawdry, no other word for it - and the unwelcome intermission completely throttled whatever pace there was as it sort of lumbered along in the most clunky of episodic fashions to an denouement that history told us about nearly two thousand years ago. It doesn't seem to know whether it's a movie or a sequence of short theatrical plays, Mirren adds precisely nothing and the magnificently odious O'Toole isn't around long enough to make enough of a difference. It's a shambles, certainly, and this ultimate cut is far, far too long - but somehow it's not unwatchable. You might never eat cottage cheese again!

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