Episode 156 – Caligula / Caligula the Ultimate Cut (1980; 2004)/Newsletter #71

A young Malcolm McDowell is on his stomach while a scantily-clad woman sits up beside him looking thoughtful. There are people behind them. It's all very Roman epic.

We take on the notorious Caligula, the story of the third Roman emperor who murdered his way to the throne and married his sister, in two forms–the original Bob Guccione cut with its hardore sex scenes, and the restored Gore Vidal/Tinto Brass version with its more measured editing, and find in the restoration a surprisingly decent film–the original theatrical version, however, lives up to its reputation.

Starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Teresa Ann Savoy, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, John Steiner, and Guido Manarri. Written by Gore Vidal. Directed by Tinto Brass.

Welcome to the Mary Versus the Movies newsletter! What the hell did we just watch?

This week: 8/29/2024

MARY VS THE MOVIES EPISODE 156 – CALIGULA (1980/2024)

I can’t say this is a lost masterpiece—it’s still a violent, exploitative mess. But at least the recut version of Caligula, shorn of its Guccione-filmed hardcore sex scenes that added little to the plot, and scenes re-ordered to follow the original Vidal screenplay, has actual character arcs and political commentary that are as reflective of the disillusioned, paranoid, post-Nixonian 1970s as any political thriller of its time, making it closer to a Roman sword-and-sandal Klute or Parallax View than a sexed-up Hercules Unchained.

Starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Teresa Ann Savoy, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, John Steiner, and Guido Manarri. Written by Gore Vidal. Directed by Tinto Brass.

HOLLWOOD AVALON – WAH WAH (2005)

Special guest Sarah Sahim joins us to discuss Richard E. Grant’s autobiographical film Wah Wah, about the dissolution of his parents marriage and his father’s alcoholism, agains the backdrop of the end of British colonial rule in Swaziland. What does this have to do with King Arthur? Well, as a goodbye gift to the visiting Princess Margaret, the British colonial community puts on a production of Camelot with a black Lancelot. A frustrating and frequently incurious film all around that squanders any opportunity to really grapple with the meaning of the end of an empire.

Starring Gabriel Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, Emily Watson, and Miranda Richardson. Written and directed by Richard E. Grant.

What else are we up to this week?

Mary: So watching Caligula got me thinking old Hercules movies, which got me thinking about Mystery Science Theater 3000—naturally—which made me think about old time TV horror hosts, which got me thinking about the late Joe Flaherty and his character Count Floyd on SCTV. Which is a long way of saying that I recently found full episodes of SCTV on YouTube, and have been enjoying putting them on and remembering how good they were. Whereas Saturday Night Live has the hectic schedule of going on live every week and rarely getting to edit down the show into something good, SCTV, by being only half an hour long and limited to being a fake television station, was able to use those boundaries to make a show with maybe a higher batting average—kind of like the old saw about how the structural limitations of a sonnet works to the form’s benefit. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they had some of the greatest comedians of their generation on-screen and off, some of whom are still active almost fifty years later (which is my way of saying yes, I am going to see Catherine O’Hara in Beetlejuice 2 or whatever it’s called, even if I am keeping my expectations low). And man, do I miss John Candy.

Dennis: