Word: caligula
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MARRIED. Malcolm McDowell, 37, impish English actor (A Clockwork Orange, Caligula); and American Actress Mary Steenburgen, 27 (Goin' South); he for the second time, she for the first; in New York City. The couple met two years ago while playing strangers who fall in love in the film Time After Time...
Guccione refuses to call Caligula pornography. Because of its historical accuracy in the depiction of Roman decadence, Caligula begs to be taken seriously, unlike such gross, reactionary trash as Dawn of the Dead or sexist, abusive trash like Deep Throat. This film insults the audience with its pretensions...
...Caligula opens with the portentious pounding of a drum, as a Bible passage about gaining everything but losing one's soul (get it?) appears on the screen in blood red. We then see a cheery young Caligula frolicking in carnal bliss with his sister, Drusilla. But soon, with neither reason nor warning, ambition seizes Caligula. He thinks that his grandfather, the Emperor Tiberius, wants him dead, so he has Tiberius killed and assumes his reign. Caligula thinks he's a god; he says so at least half a dozen times in the long, tedious course of the film...
MALCOLM McDOWELL, in the title role, struggles to keep himself from drowning in this cesspool of a movie and fails. His Caligula is sufficiently cruel and sadistic, but the performance lacks wit and imagination. After a while, McDowell becomes as tiresome as the two-and-a-half-hour film itself. This is especially disappointing because, nine years ago, McDowell proved himself an excellent actor by tackling the almost impossibly difficult role of Alex in Stanley Kubrick's A Clock-work Orange. In that film he portrayed a character as villainous as Caligula but, mainly through the control of his extraordinary...
Curiously, the chic Penthouse perusers haven't come out in full force to see Caligula, especially at $7.50 a pop in New York and $6.00 in Boston. After 31 weeks in New York and Los Angeles the film has grossed less than $5 million, a rather paltry sum for such epic trash. But Bob Guccione won't starve. If the chic desert him, there will always be horny old men and pubescent boys...