During that whole time, there was always this regret that the original vision Brass had was the superior version but was lost forever. However, the footage from the original was found in some happy vault at Penthouse, so we now have the Ultimate Cut, which restores many minutes of cut scenes and removes the additional hardcore sequences Guccione added. Also added is a classy animated opening credit sequence by David McKean, who did all those cool Sandman comic book covers.
It is obvious that this is an attempt to present a version of this movie to display on your bookshelf rather than hide under your bed. Or, to use modern parlance, a movie you wouldn’t be ashamed to have on your watch list.
Turns out shame is underrated and Guccione was on the right track with his alterations. Not that the 1976 Caligula isn’t dirty enough without the hardcore. Tinto Brass is known in some circles as the Russ Meyer of posteriors and pushes all of his visuals to the borderline without crossing into explicit penetration. Brass also has the right eye for pageantry, with massive wide-shot spectacles, usually filled with nude bodies.
“Tinto Brass is known in some circles as the Russ Meyer of posteriors…”
When the performers aren’t nude, they are decked out in these fantastic outfits by the Oscar-winning Danilo Donati, who totally kicks up the headdress here. There is this brooding ambient score that drenches everything in spookiness. And it is genuinely exciting to see the never-seen sequences that stick out like sore dicks to those of us in the cult realm.
However, Vidal’s screenplay front-loads all of the big events in the first two acts, leaving nearly nothing in the third except an underwhelming sequence where the senators’ wives are made to work in a brothel to raise money for the government. I am talking boring upon boring. Guccione wisely spied that this train goes nowhere and was right to paste XXX-grade patty smack shots all throughout.
Yes, Guccione did take several people’s artistic vision and literally dump a bucket of testicles and urine all over it, but it turns out it really needed it. Without going full-blown filthy, Caligula would have become a buried bomb like Fellini’s Casanova, which also features some great Donati costumes.
So, while I appreciate getting a cult classic a new coat of 4K to be mean for the stream in fine fashion, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is not your grandpa’s Caligula.
"…genuinely exciting to see the never seen sequences..."
