Caligula

[Danolo]

I just watched this movie. It was made in 1979 and I didn't see it then, probably because it was banned.

This was the raunchiest, porn-like movie I've seen in a long time.
There were scenes of every type of human sexual experience that one can imagine... and much of it was explicit and up-close-and-in-your-face.

I cannot say I was at all turned on by what I saw.... it was all just too much.

I may delete it from my computer, because I just can't see myself ever watching it again.

 

[Lenny Weinrib]

Mmmmm Helen Mirren!

 

[Mr Bret]

I actually saw it when it first released and was in theaters.
I was young at the time and it certainly put all kinds of ideas in my head.

I do remember being somewhat repulsed by some of the gratuitous, over the top violence.

I'd almost like to see it now, to see how my more eye would perceive it.

 

[james t kirk]

If you read about the production of the movie, it was a complete shit show of a production.

If I recall, the major actors in it - Peter O'toole, Sir John Gielgud, and even Malcolm McDowell were so repulsed by the final version that they wanted their names taken off the billing, but Bob Guccione of Penthouse refused.

If I also recall, there were a series of directors, and each was incompetent with a differing vision and each reshot the movie in their own vision. In addition, Guccione had final cut on the movie and HE wanted more kink and raunch added to the final cut, so he commissioned the filming of additional sex scenes which were never in the script using porn stars and then spliced them in. I haven't seen the movie in years and I'm not sure if I ever saw the unedited movie, but what I did see was largely garbage. You could definitely discern when the famous Guccione sex scenes were spliced in.

I remember only Peter O'toole giving a decent performance. The rest was terrible.

Guccione fancied himself an ART-TEEST who could do anything in life. Unfortunately for him, he was not. (He was great at nudie magazines and great at painting (believe it or not), but he was a terrible terrible movie maker (he was completely out of his element) and he was an even worse business man, often making foolish investments that cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. (Casinos and various other ventures he knew nothing about). At the end of his life, he was penniless and living in the garden shed out back of his old house. But hey, he lived life large and had a lot of fun and banged a lot of Penthouse pets.

 

[Yoga Face]

(He was great at nudie magazines and great at painting (believe it or not).

 

[Insidious Von]

If I had not seen John Hurt play Caligula in I Claudius I may have watched this film. As it is I passed on it and have no desire to ever do so.

What today is deemed as "The Golden Age of TV" got started with I Claudius (1976). The BBC threw out the rule book making it. I watched it again from the beginning and it's lost none of its power.

 

[Aardvark154]

Still think that the opening credits (first 30 seconds) were among the best ever. Even without knowing that the snake is an European Adder, it just screams venomous and the music fit so very well.

 

[Thunderballs]

I remember how BG used to pose in bed with the Pet of the Year. I guess it was his creepy way of saying he got to fuck them. He always struck me as a slimeball.

 

[Moviefan-2]

If you read about the production of the movie, it was a complete shit show of a production.

I can believe it. The movie is a piece of crap.

That's not any kind of moral judgment on what was depicted in the movie. I mean the film itself -- the quality is horrible.

If I had not seen John Hurt play Caligula in I Claudius I may have watched this film. As it is I passed on it and have no desire to ever do so.

What today is deemed as "The Golden Age of TV" got started with I Claudius (1976). The BBC threw out the rule book making it. I watched it again from the beginning and it's lost none of its power.

Since the thread is about Caligula, I loved the line in I, Claudius where Tiberius tells Caligula and Claudius about a plot against him, and Caligula replies, "People really are despicable."

 

[renaissance]

http://www.tube8.com/erotic/teresa-ann-savoy-caligula/2606371/

I sure enjoyed it back in the day

 

[oil&gas]

Still think that the opening credits (first 30 seconds) were among the best ever. Even without knowing that the snake is an European Adder, it just screams venomous and the music fit so very well.

Speaking of music for the film I presume the title music was done
by Bruno Nicolai although there was another obscure composer involved
in scoring Caligula. Sadly Caligula is one of the very few assignments Nicolai
received since his rift with Ennio Morricone in the mid 70s. Nicolai's music
notwithstanding poor quality of the films rivals the works of Morricone IMO.

 

[maxwellsmart]

Bob Guccione lost 100 million US $ on that film and it was the beginning of the end for him.
What he really was good at was standing up to censorship and was a tireless champion (and limitless benefactor) for individual rights as far as free speech.
The movie was ugly. Guccione was far from ugly and part of the early contributors to let us have this forum.

 

[Insidious Von]

I Claudius has a 9.0 rating on IMDB, that's in line with The Wire, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos.

It's also one of only three series from before 1990 to make the top 30 list. The others are MASH, The Twilight Zone and Monty Python's Flying Circus.

 

[Insidious Von]

Here's an interesting bit of trivia and a link between I Claudius and Caligula.

At the time that I Claudius made it's initial run, Sian Phillips ( who played Augustus's wife Livia) was married to Peter O'Toole. While playing the part of a conniving woman, well practiced in the art of poison, she was nursing the legendary Irish actor while he battled stomach cancer. His excessive drinking had finally caught up to him. By the time he made Caligula the cancer was in remission - the luck of the Irish, stomach cancer is 70% lethal. Not yet fully recovered he must looked quite haggard while making Caligula.