Friday, 12 June 2009

Just my little tribute...

Happy birthday this weekend to Malcom McDowell, menacing star of such cult movies as Lindsay Anderson's If..., Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and, er, the notorious 70s "erotic" film Caligula!



According to Total Movie & Entertainment Weekly:
The original premise behind Caligula - the brainchild of Penthouse founder Bob Guccione - was to combine graphic sex and violence with artful, intelligent film-making. But somewhere along the line, despite Gore Vidal's screenplay [NB - Vidal later had his name removed from the credits] and the star power of Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole [NB - all of whom later expressed regret at having been involved], groundbreaking cinema got lost amidst gratuitous smut.

When presented with a cut of the film, Guccione sensed this and decided to appease the "raincoat crowd". So off he went with a camera and a couple of "Penthouse Pets". The result is some of the most bizarre and realistic sex ever captured on film - mainstream or otherwise. Women fellate midgets, the obese serve as orgy centrepieces, and the aforementioned Pets romp from sex scene to sex scene. Art it isn't, but it's awfully mesmerising.
I have never seen this movie, nor do I think I ever will, but from I, Claudius through this film to the Pet Shop Boys' Closer to Heaven musical, the gory story of the mad Emperor Caligula proves endlessly fascinating.


The story of the movie Caligula

The Wikipedia entry for the real Emperor Caligula

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