Will a new cut of notoriously explicit ‘Caligula’ make this Roman epic even more homoerotic?
Caligula has been called a lot of things. It’s an “infamous sword-and-sandal p*rno dumpster fire,” according to Esquire. In one of his more notorious pans, Roger Ebert called it “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash,” after walking out two hours in.It might even be “one of the worst films ever made,” and that’s according the acclaimed gay writer Gore Vidal—the very man who wrote the script!Nearly 45 years after its premiere, Caligula‘s reputation proceeds it.
Yes, this is a movie with all the trappings of a would-be prestige classic: A sweeping story from antiquity, lavish sets and costumes, and a number of legitimate actors at its center, including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, and the late, great Peter O’Toole…Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.It’s also a confoundingly horny mess, overstuffed with “equal-opportunity nudity” and ancillary sex scenes—notoriously un-simulated—between background actors, which were meant to evoke the boundless hedonism of the era.
Needless to say, many of the more respectable names attached to the film quickly distanced themselves from it. But it’s for those very reasons, Caligula has become a cult classic, the stuff of video store legend.The plot—insofar as it matter—follows young Caligula (McDowell) as he inherits control of the Roman Empire after the death of his depraved greta-uncle Tiberius (O’Toole), descending into bloodthirsty madness as he rules alongside his sister and love Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy), marrying courtesan Caesonia (Mirren), and forcing everyone around him to stroke his ego.
Among other things.Like many others of the Greek and Roman classical era, it’s believed that Caligula was bisexual—or at least was not discerning of gender when it came to his sexual conquests.
