How sad is this?

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

A couple years ago I got a Roger Ebert review book and discovered his 0 star review of it. In it, he writes: "You have heard that this is a violent film. But who could have suspected how violent, and to what vile purpose, it really is? In this film, there are scenes depicting a man whose urinary tract is closed, and who has gallons of wine poured down his throat. His bursting stomach is punctured with a sword. There is a scene in which a man is emasculated, and his genitals thrown to dogs, who eagerly eat them on the screen. There are scenes of decapitation, evisceration, rape, bestiality, sadomasochism, necrophilia." Yes, these scenes do occur, and they are disgusting.However, there are misnomers here. The emasculation is off screen. The dogs do not EAT the genitals, they just lick the blood off. The "necrophilia" is not sex with a corpse. Caligula's wife dies in his arms and he passionately kisses her in absolute grief. So according to Ebert, kissing your dead spouse goodbye makes you a necrophiliac! And the bestiality, while it's still perverted, Caligula goes to bed with an animal, but no further sexual content occurs.As for the other scenes, yeah, there's not much to say to defend them, They are perverted and exemplify the worst of human nature. But maybe that is the point. I thought a movie like this was praising the emperor, the way people cheer and rile you up for Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. But it doesn't seem to. I felt bad when Belfort was arrested. Yet I was satisfied when Caligula got beheaded.Now I should mention that by no means am I defending this despicable content. It is a nasty movie. There are few I could recommend it to.I am also not sure if it IS a 10. But no other rating on any scale seems to fit. I gave it a 10 and put it on my favorites list. But it's not a pure delight. Some scenes made me cringe or fast forward(like a 2 minute lesbian sex scene) but I can't give this another rating.My 10 is not a literal 10. It's more of a "not applicable." Like, I said, there is no rating I could give it. I am left with a film I enjoyed and yet despised. It's one of the best I have ever seen but at the same time it deserves bottom 10 status. If you really want to see this, please do. If you can't bring yourself to do it, that is okay to do.If you read my review of Triumph of the Will, you know I thought it was not good but rather important, Perhaps that, in summary, is why I give it a 10."A haughty spirit comes before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18). This is the story of a sexually perverted ruler's fall. Maybe that is where the majesty lands.

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.

"Critical and commercial disaster.""Worthless fantasy trash."Film is full of explicit sex but it does not make it pornography. Pornography has completely different intentions. Definition of pornography - Pornography is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal. - and this movie simply isn't it. It was meant to shock, not to sexually arouse. Story is historical drama presented in vulgar and shocking way with explicit sex and violence. But definitely is not pornography.Worthless trash ?! I suppose it is question of taste. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It twists actual historical facts but it is movie, not the history textbook. And parody on "Alea iacta est!" is so funny. For me, this is really good movie, at least 8/10.

When a glorified pimp steals control of a masterpiece, and when the moral compasses of all involves withers away, then worlds of cinemas collapse. Logical, no? Once, several years before Star Wars, Gore Vidal wrote a screenplay about possibly the most depraved Roman emperor of Ancient times. It's probably safe to say that his mistake was in asking a porn magazine to fund this movie's production. Throw in the involvement of Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione and you have Caligula, one of the most notorious failures of 70s cinema. While it's not quite as vicious as Cannibal Holocaust, it's still excessively exploitative; while Holocaust used real killings, Caligula used real sex - so as to try to boost sales of Penthouse magazine, apparently. So what grabbed my attention for this film so strongly, especially when I initially thought it'd give me nightmares? I mean it's not like it's entirely historically accurate, is it? Well... it's got Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren, among others. And the musical score is recognisable, at least among classical music aficionados.Well, I took one for the team when I went to pick up a copy of the Imperial Edition DVD set. This included the uncut release... which SHOULD warrant an R18 where I live but somehow doesn't... the 1999 "Rated Version", misrepresented as the "Theatrical Version"... and there's the one I chanced at, the Alternative "Pre-Release" Edition, a new edit created from an earlier cut which re-arranges a few scenes back into their original context, and most of the explicit sexual inserts added by Guccione are removed, filled in by a handful of 16mm behind-the-scenes footage. So, fair enough, it's not so much of a sex film as it was before. But not even that could save Caligula from being one of the most miserable films I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.From start to finish this turkey blows (in more ways than one!), and it's not hard to see why: you have three conflicting artistic differences duking it out, and while sometimes it works, it can't really be excused that sometimes you can forget you're watching a film with explicit sex, and then a helping of genitalia brings you back to earth with an unpleasant thump. Not to mention the violence, as well - in one early scene, a soldier has several gallons of wine poured down his gullet, and Tiberius personally pokes a hole in him... just to prove to us that neither the Ancient Romans nor the Modern Writers have limits when it comes to pointless and senseless violence. Still... I guess it's fair game if, historically, Tiberius ordered to have the scales of a fish rub off a victim's face...And as for the explicit porn - how did this get into public cinemas again? It's clear proof that Bob was a sex tycoon who sneaked back onto the set to film a hardcore porno movie for which - though as I recall, most of the acts are legal - the authorities could shut down the set and sentence everyone to jail. It almost happened anyway - in several theatres the movie was shut down and seized by police! I'm just saying that this is the sort of thing that doesn't bear watching if you aren't in the mood. I'm not going to say anything about them, for obvious reasons. Even if I did, perhaps my arguments would be invalid - except for the fact that they replaced some of the more important scenes.This excessive sex and violence aside, the point is this: Caligula in general is a major dud - a long, drawn-out (seriously it drags on well over two hours!!) piece of work of which not one bit is historically accurate, nor assembled in a historically accurate order. If Bob was holding out for artistic freedom, then he'd failed in that respect because really, even ART has standards! Of course, it's not all bad news... Malcolm, Helen, Peter, John and co. did a fairly good job in their acting, and the music, like I said, is a splendid compilation to listen to. The sets aren't bad either, even if they do represent a nightmarish version of Ancient Rome. Also on the Imperial Edition DVD, there are a few deleted scenes which SHOULD have stayed in the film, as they surely would make it less of a disgrace than it is now. A complete and detailed history of the production of the film is also being written by James Ellis Chaffin and Ranjit Sandhu, with research from Thomas Ryerson, called 200 Degrees of Failure: The Unmaking of Caligula, slated for a release sometime this year, or possibly the next. You can find a lot of their research at their site (caligula.ws). I'm sure that the story behind how Gore Vidal's work fell apart would be a much interesting read, and I'm looking forward to it.