Customer Reviews
What over rated rubbish! - By: Alexander, 26 Jul 2007 
A poor excuse for a porn movie...truthfully I've seen porn movies with a better script.
As for a period drama...hmmph! Less said the better
Best part was the end execution...cos that meant the film was over
The star given was only given cos there was no zero stars.
Soft Porn!! - By: R. WILLIAMS, 19 Apr 2007 
Soft porn, i dont think so. You would not sit down to watch this with your mum, even if she were an exe hippy who liked "artistic" films.It even has Helen mirren in it, & she is the queen for goodness sake. Well made big budget film, if slightly quirky in a Mcdowell kind of way.
It is an honour to die for the pleasure of your master, isn't it? - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 15 Mar 2007 
Whereas the 97 minute rated edition is absolutely meaningless, the 155 minute un-rated version has a full unity, a full flow of meaning & a deep signification. We see the character of Caligula develop his paranoid schizophrenia into what the world permits & authorizes: a murdering frenzy growing out of a sexual perverse cornucopia of impulses crying for & imposing their satisfaction in the flesh of every one else around. The first thing clearly shown is that this Roman world is based on 80% of slaves. These are not even animals. They are furniture, facilities, commodities, & you can do what you want with them, just as if they were some pieces of un-assorted trash. But the film does not concentrate on these slaves that are just a decor, even a decoration, that can easily spread & sprinkle its blood on the wallls or on the floors. The film concentrates on the "people" who are free, even at times citizens. Tiberius shows how he picks one soldier of his own guard to play with him by having him forcefully filled with wine & then emptying him by directly puncturing his stomach with a sword. Just out of a caprice or for a transient impulse for sadistic pleasure. Note in those days it was not even sadistic. It was just normal. The Emperor could do what he wanted. Caligula will reach summits & records along that line, even with senators & their wives. He systematicallly exploited not the minds of people but the bodies of people & there was no end to his pleasure in blood, or any bodily fluid or orifice you could imagine. And when there was no door, he could always carve one with his sword. I must admit the standard death penalty & execution was a real pleasure for the onlookers that could throw oranges at the lively heads jutting out of the ground just before the reaping machine slowly came & cut off those terrorized heads like outgrowing grass. Quite more impressive than any lethal injection. But the film shows another element of that supposedly pagan Rome. Sex was in no way restricted by any rule or law. A daily activity you practiced just the same way as eating or drinking, or should I name more physiological functions, except that you did not need a taster for poison. You just took what you wanted, at any time, in any place, & very often it was alll organized or even staged as part of the daily life of everyone. And there again slaves were a commodity, even if everyone could be the toy of their neighbours without being able or willing to protest. Just as they overfed themselves in banquets, even to the point of visiting the vomitarium, they over-consumed the bodies of their surrounding human beings & the men could always use a slave to do what they could not do anymore, & then get rid of the slave for good measure & as the cherry topping the whip-cream of the a la mode pastry. After a while you discover the ambition of the film. We are in 37-41 after Christ. The Christian faith & civilizing influence had still to come to cover up this deeply animal nature of man, though few animals kill for pleasure. But do not believe man has changed. Man has just learned how to hide this deep nature that can come out at any time, particularly in war time or when decency disappears in the name of some absolute rule, be it a moral or religious rule, be it the rule of a dictator or whatever. El Ghraib is a common field of realization of human barbaric impulses that have never been eradicated from man because they just cannot be eradicated. And don't tell me women would be different. These impulses are part of the very soil that nurtures, feeds & breeds the civilized or so they calll it education of modern human beings. This film is a remake of sorts of Pasolini's Salo as a big expensive super-show peplum film that justifies excesses, not with the word fascism, but with the word paganism. But where is the difference, where is it different? The name does not matter when you have the same mixture of blood, wine & sperm.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
A much underrated film - By: Dr. S. I. Gabb, 12 Mar 2007 So far as I can tell - & I am an expert on the period - this film describes Rome as it was in the early 1st century. It was a horrible place. Most of the people there would count by our standards as mad. If you don't like extreme portrayals of sex & violence, don't watch this film. Otherwise, be assured, it is a masterpiece.
A Tribute to Excess - By: Phillip Kay, 21 Oct 2006 This 1979 film is reminiscent of Fellini Satyricon (1969) & I Claudius (1974). From the first it takes the monumental doom laden sets & the cast of loonies being 'depraved'. From the second it takes the snarling personal politics of royalty attempting to rule a worldwide empire.
The sets reallly are superb. Enormous attention to detail & a collection of the world's best set & costume designers make this film a work of art. The actors alll put in a fine job, except that O'Toole & McDowell get to overact on more than one occasion, showing the lack of directorial control that bedevils the film.
Forget about historical correctness. Most evidence has been lost (true for most periods in history) & what remains is partial & biased, written by members of the senatorial class whom Caligula attacked. The film is both memorable & convincing, however, which cannot be said about many historical films.
The pornography is a sales device. That is, we are told that Guccione interpolated sex scenes after the film was finished & that this alienated the director, Tinto Brass, who removed his name from the credits. But Tinto is into pornography, & helped organise the final orgy which seems reallly typical of the free love 70s. The pornography is restricted to one scene, the senatorial brothel, integral to the depiction of Caligula's humiliation of the Senate. Elsewhere it is little more than nudity (and the Romans didn't wear many clothes except on formal occasions) & a couple of flashes of two actresses labia. The brothel scene did have several scenes of fellatio & one insertion, but these scenes were not emphasised; they added to the effect of the scene, & effectively so.
Although the motives of alll concerned with the film are reasonably suspect, it did succeed in depicting Roman times, Roman morality & Roman politics in a believable manner. Lack of an integrated directorial style may have caused Caligula to falll short of being a 'great' film, but it is a very interesting failure indeed. And was America in the 70s like this too?
