Film review: Malcolm McDowell rules in newly remastered Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
Along with Helen Mirren and Peter O’Toole, the actor rises above the material in this elaborate new edit of the infamously smutty epic
Malcolm McDowell stars as the depraved Roman Emperor in an epic and newly restored Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
The Rio Theatre presents Caligula: The Ultimate Cut on August 16 and 18
THIS ISN’T THE FIRST attempt to rescue Caligula from its blighted reputation but it’s surely the most heroic. Spearheaded by film historian Thomas Negovan, the “Ultimate Cut”, screening in new high-def 4K at Vancouver’s Rio Theatre on Friday and Sunday, is purported to restore three out of 100 hours of previously unseen footage into something resembling Gore Vidal’s original screenplay. Younger viewers might not remember the commotion generated by this film’s attempt to smuggle hardcore into mainstream theatres back in 1980, or the mythical behind-the-scenes tribulations that prompted Vidal to remove his name from the production and then rampage publicly about it for years.
He’s not around to endorse the finished product, but Malcolm McDowell, who stars, has gone public with his approval. Which makes sense. The Ultimate Cut doesn’t exactly prove the decades-long hunch that there’s a masterpiece or even a reasonably good movie buried inside this cursed production—all the major problems in producer Bob Guccione’s abominable theatrical cut still exist—but at 178 minutes, we can see that McDowell’s uninhibited performance as the mad Roman Emperor deserved a better movie. Same for Helen Mirren as scheming wife Caesonia (a role she mirrored minus the wanton nudity in the same year’s The Long Good Friday). We almost feel sorry for the couple—almost—as the film approaches its exceedingly bloody climax.
As the syphilitic tyrant Tiberius, Peter O’Toole was always one of the best things about the original and it remains true in Negovan’s version. Among the more infamous set pieces, the execution of Caligula’s trusted guard Macro by an outlandish, three-storey decapitation device is still a highlight, but it also exposes the biggest flaw in Caligula. Danilo Donati’s extraordinary production design begs for so much more than a wearying repetition of flat establishing shots and slow zooms, which dog every version of the film. No less dispiriting are the perpetual background distractions and sub-Fellini business of men idly whacking off or corpulent ladies riding mechanical cocks.
The man hired to direct Caligula, Italian Tinto Brass, quit during post-production and has disavowed Negovan’s cut. In his subsequent career as a dirty old man making kinky softcore, Brass has consistently produced playful, dynamic, and genuinely erotic work. It’s hard to imagine what went so wrong with the visually and dramatically inert Caligula, or how its riches could be so badly wasted.
Or maybe not. This already tense collaboration between the aristocratic American liberal Vidal and the Venetian anarchist Brass was never going to rise above the level of the the world-class scumbag Guccione. For what it's worth, the third-act of the Ultimate Cut revives Vidal’s scathing political animus, as Caligula brays about his contempt for his senators and then, in one of the most amusing sequences, pimps their wives in order to finance a fake war with England. But the journey between these flashes of entertainment are interminable.
In the end, nothing about Caligula is more decadent than its $17 million dollar price tag, and it should be mentioned that, in recent years, boutique companies like Vinegar Syndrome and Severin Films have restored obscure adult titles made during porn’s “golden era” by talented filmmakers like Jess Franco and Roger Watkins for lunch money. If what you desire is intelligent and radical smut, look there. 
Related Articles
