TW: The images in this article contain depictions of violence and nudity that may be upsetting to some readers and which are entirely NSFW.
On February 15th, 1980—the day after Valentine’s day—CALIGULA made its long delayed, highly anticipated world premier, tanking at the box office but entering the cultural lexicon for all the wrong reasons. What had originally been envisioned by screenwriter Gore Vidal as a historically accurate, emotionally resonant examination of the corrupting nature of power as explored through the life of Rome’s third emperor, the young, incompetent, and highly amoral Gaius “Caligula” Caesar, became a debacle the likes of which the silver screen had rarely witnessed before or since.
On paper, it should have been the spiritual successor to the Cecil B. DeMille epics of the Golden Age of Hollywood: the greatest actors of multiple generations (including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, John Gielguld and Peter O’Toole) coming together to bring Vidal’s script to life with the financial backing of Penthouse’s Bob Guccione and an on-location shoot in Italy with enfante terrible director Tinto Brass. The result was one of the most expensive pornographic films ever made. For myriad reasons– including behind-the-scenes rivalries among its cast and crew, the lack of a clear artistic vision, and sets that couldn’t even be used, Vidal’s historical epic was epic for all the wrong reasons, with Guccione arbitrarily splicing in scenes of hardcore pornography and director Tinto Brass upping the ante with sequences of hardcore, surrealistic violence. When production wrapped an ensuing power struggle between Brass and Guccione meant that the film technically never had an editor (“Edited by the Production” runs the credit), so the final product resembled not so much a movie as a two-hour-plus fever dream of sex, violence, and monsters of the literal and figurative variety.
Were it not for the pedigree of the cast and the cost of the production, audiences could be forgiven for thinking they’d stumbled into an especially well-made grindhouse movie (and, indeed, the film enjoyed a semi-successful run on 42nd Street). The film immediately became a byword for cinematic depravity; a print of the film was seized by U.S. Customs when Guccione tried to bring it to America, and multiple states filed lawsuits to prevent the film from screening. Roger Ebert infamously called it “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.”
An old saying goes that “movies are made in the editing room,” though, and, if the film lacked a clear editor, might that—and not the incompetence of cast or crew—be responsible for the infamous mess of cinematic lore that is CALIGULA? And if that’s the case, might a new editor restore the film to its potential glory and deliver on previously unseen master performances by McDowell, O’Toole, and company? That’s the case being made by CALIGULA MMXX, an entirely new edit of the film being overseen by Thomas Negovan, founder and owner of Century Guild, a Los Angeles art gallery, museum, and publishing company. Upon the discovery of over 90 hours of never-before-scene footage and 11,000 never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes photos, Negovan has embarked upon an ambitious two-pronged project: A completely new edit of the film that uses available footage to bring Gore Vidal’s script to life; and a photography/making of book that explores the film’s troubled production and aims to look at how it ended up the way it did– and what could have been.
Although COVID forestalled the planned release of the new cut in 2020, Negovan has kept hard at work on book and film alike, with the latter slated to drop near the end of 2021. To help raise funds to expand the current length of the book, Century Guild has launched a Kickstarter campaign, offering a slew of rewards from discounted copies of the book to replicas of the movie’s infamous CALIGULA coin. As an incentive to donate, we here at the Daily Grindhouse are pleased to bring you these exclusive preview images from the book, never seen since they were first taken in the 1970s. Dig these seriously fascinating glimpses at life on the CALIGULA set, make a donation to the Kickstarter, and come back soon for an exclusive interview with Negovan about the restoration of the film and some behind-the-scenes stories!
Donate to the Kickstarter here!
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