Let me start this review by saying something rather poignant about the process of film making: making film is incredibly expensive. Even the incredibly small timers could be expected to put up at least $10,000 to cover things like actor fees, catering, editing, camera rentals, grips, and so on. For example, Man Bites Dog is considered to be a micro-budget film, and its cost was roughly $11,000. I’m sure The Bunny Game strove to be even more cost-efficient. So say you want to make a film, not just any film, but a FUCKING EPIC film of EPIC PROPORTIONS. The first thing you gotta do is shop around for an investor. Unless you’re the Hiltons with a shit-ton of disposable income, you likely don’t have the cash to bring in A-list actors and a state-of-the-art crew.
This was Caligula’s biggest folly. The story goes that a dude wanted to make a movie about one of Ancient Rome’s most eccentric (read: crazy) emperors. No one wanted to take the risk on his script, but his persistence finally paid off when he met with the guy that created Penthouse magazine. They struck a deal where the movie would be made that would tell Caligula’s story while at the same time promoting the porno mag by implementing scenes of incredibly graphic sex, even if it didn’t serve the film. Somehow, Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell agreed to do the project in spite of these controversial decisions, and the end result turned into a huge mess that no one really wanted to be associated with for a long, long time.
Caligula is a historical erotic sex movie about a guy in Ancient Rome who bangs his sister regularly. He is summoned to the emperor’s court as a rite of succession and he becomes overwhelmed with delusions of grandeur, thinking himself a God in the vein of Julius and Augustus Caesar. He wastes no time in violently deposing his perceived opposition while throwing elaborate orgies and humiliating the senatorial class. He also mocks the traditional foundations of Rome by throwing mock trials of otherwise innocent people, torturing and executing them in horrible fashions. His descent into madness culminates in forcing the Senator’s wives to become prostitutes to help pay Rome’s debt after the death of his sister; at this point, he has fully asserted his Godhood and regards the Senate with utter loathsomeness and contempt. It doesn’t end well for him.
People say that this movie is incredibly controversial and I have to agree. It is riddled with incredibly violent and graphic scenes of castration, decapitation, rape, real sex, and torture. It is interesting to note that there are several scenes that are in direct service to the Penthouse contract–two girls going at it for no real reason as well as the infamously protracted orgy sequence involving the Senators’ wives being two of many examples. I kind of wonder how the movie would have turned out if these obligations didn’t need to be fulfilled and the filmmakers could have just focused on making a historical drama about one of Rome’s most eccentric leaders. There are certainly hints of this in the overall story arc; they really make an effort to keep things serious. Pornographic elements aside, this to me isn’t the most terrible story ever told and is actually constructed fairly well given its tumultuous circumstances. It won’t stand the test of time as a serious piece of art unfortunately, but it is still remarkable in its stunning brutality and moral ineptitude. Watching this film will probably make you cringe, at best, but writing it off completely seems kind of unfair.
ThomFiles 
March 27th, 2015 at 3:47 pm
Preface this by saying I haven’t seen the movie. As for the real Caligula, he had a crash course in crazy. His dad was a popular general, Germanicus, that the people loved. He was the youngest son. Everyone was talking about how Germanicus would be a great emperor, except, he died before the current emperor, Augustus, died. That meant that the new emperor after Augustus was the fallback choice. His issue was he was paranoid of Germanicus’ sons and wife. Tiberius killed Caligula’s two older brothers, exiled Caligula and his mother to a small island. After a time, and no other heir, and killing Caligula’s mother, Tiberius adopted Caligula to live away from Rome on a small island. Tiberius raised Caligula from around 10 or so, and many accounts say this is where Caligula learned about sexual deviance. Tiberius was notorious. After he finally died, when Caligula was in late teens, Rome actually breathed a sigh of relief. Tiberius had been a paranoid absentee emperor for most of his reign, Caligula was the beloved son of the beloved Germanicus, surely he would turn the emperor back. The current debate is if his bout of sickness that almost killed him turned him, or if he had been slowly driven insane from Tiberius. Upon recovering from his sickness, and told by a group of senators that they prayed for his life, if the gods would take theirs, he asked them, “I’m alive, why are you still here? Don’t anger the gods at be.” His rule did change after he had recovered, he had actually started out okay, amazingly enough. But he followed one of the worst emperors, so that bar was low, and after the sickness, he definitely set a new low.