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Director: Tinto Brass
Writer: Gore Vidal
Principle Actors: Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud
Cinematographer: Silvano Ippoliti
Music by: Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturyan, Paul Clemente
Caligula is a 1979 NC-17 film starring some of the most famous and greatest actors of the day, including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, and Peter O'Toole. This is also a film that is mesmerizing with its ability to fail on nearly every conceivable level. This movie is not just bad. It is confusingly bad. It's preposterously over the top, makes no coherent sense, and is just plain stupid. The sex is ridiculously over played, as though it were a selling point the director wanted to just capitalize on as much as possible. And for those audiences who might be wanting to check out this movie because of the NC-17 rating, don't. This movie is many things--including bizarre and absurd--but it is not erotic.
This film is about the Roman leader named Caligula and his rise to and fall from power. But don't expect a well-rounded drama from this premise--the screenwriter decided to take a more comedic approach with the story. My readers may already see the error in this. The end product is an insane amount of goofiness that would make Jim Carrey and Mel Brooks blush in shame. And no Roman Emperor drama should be that over the top and nonsensical.
Nearly everyone involved in this production later disowned the film. This includes the actors, writer, and director. It's sloppily done, a pain to watch, and overall nothing more than a confusing mess.
RottenTomatoes Score: 21%
IMDB Score: 4.9/10
Forrestw2rs Score: 0/4
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