'Caligula' was a notorious, bloated, deboched epic whose production history became legendary. Disowned by its writer, it's principle director and stars, in part because the producers edited (additional) hard core pornography into the film for theatrical release. 'The Ultimate Cut' seeks to return the film to something closer to what the filmmakers thought they were making at the time. This is essentially a completely different film, constructed entirely form alternate takes, there is not a frame of the original film present.
Now this is the only cut of the film (of which their are several) which I have seen. I find it hard to know just what to make of the thing. It's not good, it's very lengthy, very talkie, very sexual and kind of boring. This should have been an epic, but outside of a single coliseum scene, it feels like a pornographic film made by the BBC. Helen Mirren is in this (alot of Helen Mirren), Peter O'Toole and Malcom McDowell. I broke this up into three roughly hour long parts. It was a slog, especially that last hour. I'm not sure exactly what was had in mind, but this film appears to be unsalvagable. *
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