An irresistible mix of art and genitals! Featuring real sex (thanks to a porn baron), it was one of the most notorious films ever. Now Caligula's been re-cut using unseen footage By Brian Viner Published: 17:05 EDT, 9 August 2024 | Updated: 17:09 EDT, 9 August 2024 e-mail View comments Despotic, debauched and deranged: the Roman Emperor Caligula was a cruel sadist who reputedly slept with all three of his sisters and wanted to make his horse a consul. He was also so touchy about his bald spot that if he saw anyone standing on higher ground than him, looking down on it, they were sentenced to death.
He was similarly sensitive about his excessive body hair and declared that if anybody ever mentioned goats in his presence, whatever the context, they too would die. Yet for his insane levels of depravity, Caligula surely ranks as the ‘GOAT’ (greatest of all time) – a term we can safely use since the emperor’s assassination in 41AD aged just 28. It comes as no great surprise, therefore, that the 1979 biopic Caligula, starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren , John Gielgud and Peter O’Toole – produced and bankrolled by Bob Guccione, the American founder of the soft-porn magazine Penthouse – remains perhaps the most controversial and notorious movie ever made.
For years it was banned in numerous countries ( Belarus is the only one still holding out), while many cinemas that did show it on its global release in 1980 were picketed by enraged ‘morality’ campaigners. the.