CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT Movie Review | Malcolm McDowell | Helen Mirren

about twoh hour mark I'm like I need to take a break from this just psychologically it's a lot to take in it's Caligula like you've never seen it before because really you haven't you have not seen a single frame of this movie it is Caligula the ultimate cut Lonzo you got to tell us about this movie I am no man as I am all men and therefore I am a god sure so yes in 19 80 there was the infamous Killa which had started out as a movie written by gorvy doll and starring the likes of Malcolm McDow and Helen mirin and Peter oul John gilg good people had high expectations that this would be a thoughtful and literate and provocative film uh but then producer Bob guccion best known as the publisher Penthouse decided there weren't enough titties and so he shot a whole bunch of extra porny footage and suck it in there much to the Chagrin of everyone involved gval had his name taken off Malcolm McDow other cast members really kind of embarrassed by the whole thing but then a couple years ago somebody went through and constructed using alternate takes alternate camera angles and all new footage a brand new cut of Caligula the ultimate cut that is designed to be more in line with what all of these folks apparently had in mind when this movie went into production it is now 3 hours long and it's uh it's hitting theaters on its way to streaming and physical media so basically it tells the story of Emperor Caligula played by McDow who is the uh son of Tiberius whom he basically kills to take the throne and um how he basically you know gives into his Madness and his uh uh excesses he has an in incestuous relationship with his sister Drusilla um he rules with an iron fist sometimes literally um and essentially just event gets to a place where everybody has to stab him because that's what you do with Roman emperors who think they're Gods and and that they can do whatever they want there are certainly more glimmers here of I guess what gorvy doll had in mind in terms of making a film about politics and absolute power and and you know the decadence of of the Roman emperors and that kind of thing and and you know that's certainly I think A step above the kind of smuttiness and nonsense of the original Caligula that said I found this movie really boring like it reminds you why in movies like I don't know Spartacus you know these sort of the the the kind of Roman epics that we're used to like yes you have your Palace Intrigue and your kind of political figurative or literal backstabbing but then occasionally you get like a big battle sequence or something to kind of like liven things up and here you don't get a lot of that you get like a lot of naughtiness in the background some occasional moments that are you know somewhat sexually explicit um but it's mostly just a lot of talking and it's not like Caligula has an arc he's kind of batshit from the moment we meet him in the movie through the end of the film um and so it it doesn't really have a lot to say about the politics of that or any other era although you know certainly those with a mind to do so could read a certain current political figure onto Caligula without too much of a stretch um it's impossible not to but we'll get that in a sec totally the sets are gorgeous they're created by the the legendary Danilo Donado um but they are all shot kind of flatly so yeah it's there's a lot of prenium going on here so you know I I I appreciate the production design but the cinematography kind of undercuts it um the performers are committed to the bit I'll give them that certainly and I think this movie if it's meant to be kind of an antidote to somewhat scrubbed up Roman Empire that we got in you know benhur you know Cleopatra you name it those kind of movies yes they are at least kind of addressing more the sort of like the decadence and the sexual Indulgence of those characters this a movie that still doesn't work but it doesn't work in a different way than the other Cula how about that yeah it never quite reconciles these kind of conflicting instincts here but whether it wants to be this very stately historical epic or it wants to be hot like it never it never really finds a middle ground where those two kinds of film marry comfortably um because the sex as you say which is you know so Infamous in the original Caligula um it becomes backgroundd it's just sort of like cavorting you know and then things that really aren't sexy because you're looking at them like huh like how does the swing work like there are there are certain things that are not sexy there's just like people kind of riding around in veils and then you hear like horn you know like Gro in the background whatever um and so that doesn't really work the production design and the costume design are really impressive like increasingly what Caligula wears gets like more elaborate and more sparkly and more fanciful as as he sees his power I disagree that he has no Arc because in the beginning he just seems impetuous and impulsive and there's a lot of Malcolm mcdow's clock orange character to him there's like a sadistic sort of playfulness to him but as he seizes more and more power the cruelty is the point true and we and we see that at the the wedding scene with the rapes yes which is a place where like I had to stop like this movie is three hours long and um about two hour mark I'm like I need to take a break from this just psychologically it's a lot to take in if you're going to see it in a theater like yeah I watched it in two pieces as well it's a lot to sit through both in terms of its length and in terms of just the oppressive nature of the sadism and again I realize that that is the point and that is what they're trying to convey to us about Absolut power corrupting absolutely and that manifests itself in ways that are really shocking but also you know it's Caligula getting everyone to go you know and and just you know and stop start hop up and down crawl you know just the most Primal kinds of orders that he is barking at them because he can I I do think it there's an extremism eventually to his his lust for power here that's fair that's fair he he does he does get worse as lby proceeds but but you see him in bed with his sister the first time you see him he's having sex with his sister yes the first of many times in this film Helen mirin's really great in this cuz this is like young young Helen Mir in this in this version than there was in the first one there's about N9 minutes of her the first time around here there's you know a lot more and she gets a lot more to do right a lot more do she's very very very sexy here but also like you see some of the seeds of the the kind of quiet power that I think she's known for in a lot of her roles and so um she is very good here I have never seen the original Caligula have you I have uh the day I turned 18 a bunch of friends of mine rented it on VH and brought it over and some friends yeah it was a scarring moment but uh I have seen yes I have Zena and so is this better I mean again it is it it feels like more of an actual film you know like there's there's a lot more dialogue and a lot more um a lot I mean seriously there there's like so many kind of just random inserts of like people [ __ ] in the in the other one that don't really have anything to do with anything but they just oh the audience isn't going to be here for all these conversations you know so this one is definitely much more of like I said there's more Helen Mir and I'm sure there's a lot more of the guy who plays Linus who's the sort of like the guy who gets stuck carrying out all these commands and you can tell he's just like there's a slow boil going and eventually that's going to go off so yeah there's way more Palace Intrigue in this version which is the point I guess because that's what we get so much of this is a far nobler failure than the original cleal the original cleal is not even a noble failure it's just like what the hell is this thing you know and um you know I I remember when that movie came out uh I was obviously way too young to see it I was like 13 but there it was the subject of an obscenity trial in Atlanta where I grew up so every day in the paper they sent the film critic to cover the trial and she would file a post a thing every day about well here's what happened and then they said this da and then they you know and then at one point like the jury and everybody had to go see the movie and she wrote about that and it was this whole ongoing thing so I remember being very very controversial and talked about and whatever when it originally came out but um yeah it's not the original's not good and this one's better but maybe still not good Elanor Ringle Gillespie Elanor Ringle Gillespie yeah she is the film critic I grew up reading that's so great um yeah I think MCA McDonald's good in it so you know he can be but he's he's impossible not to watch there's a fascinating kind of like creepy quality about him and unpredictability to his presence that is very watchable John gilg good brings to it what you would think John gilg good would bring to this thing which is like it's as though we were watching you know Caesar and Cleopatra or some other Shakespeare adaptation he you know he has that great plumy old theatrical sense Peter oul is great in his handful of scenes um you know yeah Helen Mir is terrific I I look kudos to Malcolm McDow for taking this on and for like totally plunging into it I mean he is naked or Nearly Naked a lot in this movie which for somebody of his stature in like the late 70s was you know still kind of a big deal um he's not phoning it in in any way but I just think that the movie ultimately is really repetitive and I if if Vidal had larger points to make about politics and certainly he covered this era in his novels and and other stuff like that I don't think this is the most successful manifestation of that idea from him yeah it does take a lot long time to get going too it's very very talky and dry off the top but eventually it gets better um so what you number them like a five and a half I mean there's there's a lot of good pieces here and some really cool sets that are shot like [ __ ] uh but but yeah ultimately I I I found this to be a let down I would say 5.2 and a lot of that just has to do with what it took to reconstruct this you know vision of it that's amazing and I love the idea of like you know if you had told me before I saw it yes we've taken this maligned film that at one point had promise of being something better and we put it back together and we've really tried to capture what the what the original screenplay was about I'm like yes great I want to see that and then you see it like well better luck next time but yeah theoretically I love the idea of this and I love you know there's everybody's always talking about the day of the clown cried and whether or not we're ever going to get to see footage of that Jerry Lewis never really finished that movie so like if somebody if somebody gets access to that footage and wants to then try and compile it into something I mean sure why not go for it interesting experiment all right will you see Caligula the ultimate cat let us know