Caligula

Caligula (Italian: Caligola) is a 1979 erotic historical drama film focusing on the rise and fall of the Roman Emperor Caligula. The film stars Malcolm McDowell in the title role, alongside Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Steiner and John Gielgud. Producer Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse magazine, intended to produce an erotic feature film narrative with high production values and name actors.

Gore Vidal originated the idea for a film about the controversial Roman emperor and produced a draft screenplay under the working title Gore Vidal’s Caligula. The director, Tinto Brass, extensively altered Vidal’s original screenplay, however, leading Vidal to disavow the film. The final screenplay focuses on the idea that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The producers did not allow Brass to edit the film, and changed its tone and style significantly, adding graphic unsimulated sex scenes featuring Penthouse Pets as extras filmed in post-production by Guccione and Giancarlo Lui. Brass had refused to film those sequences, as both he and Vidal disagreed with their inclusion. The version of the film released in Italian cinemas in 1979 and in American cinemas the following year, disregarded Brass’s intentions to present the film as a political satire, prompting him to disavow the film as well.

Caligula’s release was met with legal issues and controversies over its violent and sexual content; multiple cut versions were released worldwide, while its uncut form remains banned in several countries. Despite the generally negative reception, with some critics also citing it among the worst movies ever made, the film is considered to be a cult classic with significant merit for its political content and historical portrayal.

The script was later adapted into a novelisation written by William Johnston under the pseudonym William Howard. In 2018, Penthouse announced that a new Director’s Cut of the film was being edited by Alexander Tuschinski, with the approval of Brass’s family. No release date for that cut has been confirmed. In 2020, another version of the film was announced to be released in the fall of that year, edited by author and historian Thomas Negovan to follow more closely Gore Vidal’s original screenplay instead of Tinto Brass’s or Bob Guccione’s vision.