Caligula [1978] - The Citizen Kane of Porn?

[KissArmy]

Caligula was the only porn flick my wife freely admitted to paying admission to see, back in her younger days. She and the group she was with all walked out, though... she said it was just plain bad.

[ShutUpLutz!]

Originally Posted by Jackkull

Just wondering.

Could Caligula be the Citizen Kane of porno films, if only by default...or accident? I mean, how many hardcore flicks have such respectable (and Oscar winning) mainstream stars in their cast? Never mind that they all acted without knowledge of the porno scenes. And how many porno films were made with a screenplay by writer Gore Vidal? Never mind that he had his name removed the credits and called the film "a turkey" on TV. Even without the stars or famous screenwriter, the sets and costumes alone (results of a 5 or 15 million-dollar budget) would qualify Caligula as one of the best-looking Historical porno movies ever made. In comparison to other historical porn films, Caligula IS Citizen Kane! If nothing else, the historical setting of Rome A. D. provides a perfect excuse for all sorts of mindless sex.

What do others think?

You miss the point entirely about Citizen Kane. Much of the mystique around it is due to Orson Wells who was seen as the wunderkind of the entertainment world at that time due to his youth and the hysteria/controversy surrounding his war of the Worlds broadcast. As for Citizen Kane, much of the praise/infamy has to do with the various techniques which Wells pioneered which have since become an integral part of filmmaking such so that now they slide by without so much as a raised eyebrow, but at the time were breathtaking. Also add in the scandal over it being too on the nose regarding William Randolph Hearst, who reportedly paid nearly $1,000,000 to ensure it would take ab eating at the box office and would NOT win Best Picture at the Oscars and tried his hardest to have Wells blacklisted.

As far as porn films using mainstream actors, you can't really say that since NONE of them appeared in any of the sex scenes, that was all edited together later. As for thew plot and set and clothing, hell that was the main game before the advent of videotape in porn. Not stuff like Deep throat or Debbie Does Dallas, but The Opening of Misty Beethoven, Working 8 to 4, the Autobiography of a Flea you take out the sex you have an almost decent movie.

And in the late 1990's early 2000's you had stuff like Pirates, which was a Pirates of the Caribbean ripoff, but had a huge budget and decent script and now with the rise of porn parodies you have people like Will Ryder making stuff like Not The Brady Bunch XXX which if you buy the DVD can be watched with or without sex and is halfway decent.

[bigtrain45]

Since Guccione died, and all of his assets sold off, it's surprising no video was offered for sale, just slides, artwork, furniture, etc. Some of the women from PH in that movie were faves of mine, and it would be great to see some kind of decent porn movie made from all the stuff he shot, which must be somewhere.

[muggly]

I loved the lesbian scene most of all as I could concentrate on the two women instead of a mass orgy.

[PJayBr]

A fine but failed attempt at moving porn into the mainstream. The story isn't quite good enough to hold the attention, and the porn not quite plentiful enough to hold an erection.

[Gordon3]

Citizen Kane of porn? No, because the known version is a Frankenstein of a film. It was an Italian film, with an Italian director, Tinto Brass, shot in a melodramatic style, explicit in both sex (though originally softcore) & violence (quite hardcore, though the gore effects were amateurish), and was political commentary on fascism. Guccione shot a bunch of hardcore, took the original edit from out of Brass' hands, clumsily edited the hardcore footage in, and came out with a failure.

However, there have been a lot of recent developments with the film. A German film student, Alexander Tuschinski, has been allowed to reedit the film based on what he thinks that Brass was trying to achieve. From https://avn.com/business/articles/vi...la-765798.html:

A restoration of the now-classic film Caligula as it was conceived by its original director, the well-respected Tinto Brass, before then-Penthouse owner Bob Guccione took the project away from Brass, had it reedited with the addition of hardcore footage, and released it in theaters around the country in 1979.

But the main thrust of Mission: Caligula is Tuschinski's attempts to find the raw materials to recreate what he feels would be the version of Caligula that Brass wanted to release. In fact, Tuschinski wrote his bachelor's thesis on that very topic—and presented the roughly 100-page dissertation to Holland when she was attending a convention in Cannes, France.

There are a lot more interesting details in the story, primarily about 400 boxes of film reels that were almost destroyed recently. It's likely that both the entire footage that Brass shot and the entire footage that Guccione shot are in that warehouse.

It also appears that this Alexander Tuschinski thinks that there is a significant work in that footage, at least from what Brass shot, so maybe a Citizen Kane of softcore is forthcoming?

For more on Tuschinski's vision, check out a short version of Mission:Caligula on Vimeo, and 106 pages of analysis of the film at http://www.alexander-tuschinski.de/analyses.html .

[boobalu]

As reported at the time. "A movie so bad it gave sex a bad name."

[Staffsyeoman]

As Not The Nine O'Clock News put it on its release... "Sir John Gielgud and Helen Mitten reacted with horror to the film Caligula today, and added there was no mention of the explicit scenes of sex and violence when they read the original paycheck."

Surely, for its impact, "Deep Throat" has to be the Citizen Kane of porno?

[bigtrain45]

Since Helen Mirren was in a couple of the sex scenes, and featured heavily in the "Imperial Bordello" sequence, me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

[scottx]

Would've been better if Helen Mirren and Teresa Ann Savoy had been involved in actual sex …..oral & penetration. I've of loved to seen Teresa riding a cock!