I occasionally take it upon myself to check out highly controversial, often trashy "films." Sometimes the films aren't as trashy as they're made out to be (Last House On The Left, I Spit On Your Grave), sometimes there's actually some substance behind the bizarre content (Visitor Q), and sometimes the films are just downright awesome (Ichi The Killer, Battle Royalle).

Unfortunately, with Caligula, I'm made a big mistake as the movie turned out to be far more trashy than I could have expected. I've decided to review it as both a means to discourage people from seeing it and, well, sometimes I just need to air out.

At its core, Caligula is the story of a Roman emperor's decent into madness as he grows increasingly more decadent and cruel, shown through, among other things, his constant attempts to marry his sister and his killing of close and loyal friends.

The performances in the movie are actually quite good. Malcolm McDowell takes on the lead role of Emperor Caligula Ceaser and gives a performance that makes A Clockwork Orange's Alex look like a psychology professor. Peter O'Toole plays Caligula's grandfather, Tiberius Ceaser, who is similarly creepy (picture the opposite of his Troy character).

Anyway, that's Caligula at its heart, more or less. What we see on the surface, however, can hardly pass as a film. There is more nudity, both male and female, in Caligula than in anything else, I suspect, intended to be a movie (not all of it is even used in a sexual context). The sex scenes in the film are taken to pornographic proportions (I should have known as I discovered later the film was produced by Penthouse) and beyond as the movie also contains several scenes with orgies and fetishes. None of this has any point, of course, except to be exploitative. There's a fair share of violence too, including a giant lawnmower used to execute people.

I've heard some people try to defend this movie, saying things along the lines of the director was trying to show how cruel the bloodline of Roman emperors were. But I think even Uwe Boll knows that when you take a movie to these kinds of heights, you're almost certain to lose your message.

Anyway, that's my review. I've yet to watch another rented film by Takashi Miike, which I expect to be good and have a review for it up soon so as not to just write reviews about how bad certain movies are.

I commend you for sitting through that movie, James.  That is probably one of the worst movies ever created in modern day movies.  I don't even know what compelled me to watch that, but I sadly did and I am not proud of it.  

Nothing in that film is worthy of being reinterrated.  A travesty if you ask me.  

Ahh c'mon, I Spit On Your Grave is fairly trashy...

Caligula's just godawful, cheap porn with expensive actors.  

The original version was actually going to be far superior, an actual Roman epic in the vein of movies like Spartacus. Unfortunately part way through new directors (one of which is essentially a porn director) came in and upped the sex, re-edited the entire picture to such an extent as to cause massively glaring errors in story and continuity, and made the story all but incomprehensible.

A shame, it's another case of what could have been but wasn't.

I've wanted to see this and I still do, just to see how in your face it is.  I've heard alot of the stuff that goes on.  No, I'm not a porn addict by any means, but when you hear about all the weird and bizarre crap that goes on in that film...you just gotta see it!  That's what it is with me anyway.  It's very rare when a film grosses me out, so we'll see whenever I do see this...which will probably be no time soon seeing how lazy I am to get to the theater and/or movie store.

Actually, it was on TV once many years ago and I watched about two minutes of it then switched channels.  I was only 13 at the time, so I guess that was a good thing hahaha.

Oh "Caligula..."

I watched this with a group of people two nights before graduating high school last year.  Don't know why... just seemed like the right thing to do.  So, here's the lesson when it comes to this movie:

Watching it alone?  A bad choice.  Watching it with a group of friends at two in the morning?  Doesn't get much better... unless it's "Alone in the Dark."