CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT (1979; 2023)

Hoping to class up his act at Penthouse Magazine, owner/publisher Bob Guccione took a page out of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy playbook and tried Quality Cinema on for size; just as Hef did with Roman Polanski on Shakespeare’s MACBETH/’71.  Going all the way back to ancient Rome for a conveniently sex mad Caligula, Guccione loaded on A-Listers (Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud), an original Gore Vidal script and artsy Italian director Tinto Brass.  Sadly disappointed with the results, Guccione knew just what was missing . . . Sex!  Straight & Lesbian scenes to balance all the perversion & gay action.)  Releasing his own cut to general derision (and surprisingly decent box-office), his fling with the movies all but over.  Twenty-four years on, Thomas Negovan located original elements in the Guccione estate and, voila!, that long missing first cut now available.  Don’t worry, still lots of sex, now mostly with characters in the story, with McDowell offering a ‘floppy’ dance and lots of tush (excellent tush Malcolm!), Mirren specializing in pendulous side bosom shots, and various supporting players ‘supporting' each other.  If only Brass weren’t such a deadweight to any dramatic push.  A tableaux vivant for every occasion as Caligula declines from blue-eyed bad boy to bottom-seeking bitch boy to inventively insane sadist.  Designed to look like an enormous SPQR floorshow for the tourist trade,*  Brass’s approach half Federico Fellini (think SATRYRICON/’69)/half Ken Russell (think THE DEVILS/’71), but the worst half of each.  You can see what this might have been during Gielgud’s brief screen time before dying with unsettling serenity.  Elsewise, the large production seems prepped for next month’s exclusive fuck-of-the-month layout.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *What did ancient Rome look like?  One of the few convincing recreations can be found in, of all places, the otherwise only intermittently satisfying Richard Lester adaptation of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM/’66; all thanks to art director Tony Walton (Julie Andrews’ first husband), whose down-at-the-heels urban neighborhood convinces in a way more serious films don’t.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-funny-thing-happened-on-way-to-forum.html