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Excellent but underrated film

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

For those who doubt that Caligula was a pornographic film: a well-known porn site has the entire movie listed among its other pornographic videos. Though Caligula was a notorious politician, the graphic sexual scenes splattered throughout this film detract attention from the historical merit of what could have been, whether fact or fiction, the profile of a famous, though notorious, figure. The duties and reactions of Caligula's political circle were even unclear. Fortunately for the cinematic world, the careers of Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole and Malcom McDowell seem undamaged by this artistic train wreck. They maintain their strength as acting greats, even though the movie was frightfully lacking in any redeeming qualities.

As a piece of high film-making, this is acceptable trash. It's over-the-top blubbery and overblown. The 'I wanna be Fellini' italo-euro 70's stylings don't help. It's hard to believe that anyone ever thought this thing should be taken seriously... so I don't! I look at Caligula as a blowout-budget b-movie. It allows me to laugh at the effluvia on the screen while simultaneously looking at boobies, and heaven forbid, actual copulation (depending on the version). It saves the film from being a poorly lit, pretentiously staged, unevenly acted pile of rueful garbage. Each and every one of the big names that appeared in this probably rues the day they heard of Bob Guccione, but they all cashed the checks...

I just feel I need to hone in on a movie that, for me, has no redeeming value. It is based on a character from history whose life evolved around the cruelest of actions. I know that for some, the squeamish don't deserve a say in anything. I am not squeamish, but when one sacrifices plot and theme for utter violence, it's hard to watch. I have gotten used to violence since the first Sam Peckinpaugh films where could see graphic dismemberment or worse. In this, it's like a trip to a slaughterhouse. I don't think we should shrink from portraying scenes when they are necessary. This one did nothing for me. Its glossiness and high tech efforts simply exacerbated its lack of a message.

Early this morning I started watching one of the most notorious cult films ever made, Caligula (1979). The full uncut version is available on YouTube (without an 18 and over warning! Kids, do NOT watch this! Seriously!!!). I saw the first half hour of it, tried to go to sleep afterward, and I couldn't (it disturbed me that much). Then I finally went to sleep and resumed the rest of the film when I woke up. It is disturbingly pornographic and violent, and shows the basest of human nature. The back story behind the film is even more interesting than the film itself since it had a lot of big names and blurred the line between mainstream and adult. The 70s were a time of experimentation, but this went way beyond that and it is truly decadent and over the top, showing the licentiousness and depravity of Imperial Rome. There are gruesome things in it that will turn your stomach and wall to wall sex that was thrown in without the actors' knowledge after principal photography was completed. So many of the people involved disavowed this film because it devolved into a different kind of animal than what the screenwriter (Gore Vidal, of all people) envisioned. It's like a car wreck, so horrible, but at the same time, you can't help but crane your neck to look at it. It was done with a lot of style, impressive sets and costumes, and even had a bit of dark humor. It is a fascinating yet bizarre and shocking picture, one of the darkest I've ever seen, despite it being a big uneven mess. The only good people in the film get killed off and the rest are so corrupt and evil. However, you have to consider the time it was made and the time period that it depicts. In a way I have to admire the balls of the filmmakers. Very few filmmakers today take those kinds of risks, to shatter taboos, and dare to show the ugliness of humanity. It is mainly cult filmmakers that make midnight movies such as these that do.I draw the line at this film. It's one of those that you see once and once is enough. The only other one I can think of that goes beyond this is Salo, and I am definitely not brave enough for that one!