Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s? Do you still have the tapes? Is there a TIME LIFE logo at the end? If so, please write to me. Thank you!

THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Big Budgets and Big Headaches — Continued

Gore Vidal’s Caligula

a/k/a Caligula
Caligola
Io Caligola
(1976–1979)

The above full-page $400 advertisement was laid out by Michael Sweret. This identical ad appeared in the previous day’s Hollywood Reporter, which demonstrates that the statement that “Filming Begins Today” should not be taken seriously. The actual start date had already been set at 2 August 1976. The above was printed in two-color in Variety not on glossy paper or on a card-stock insert, but on a regular page of newsprint paper. This was rather atypical for Variety, at least at the time. The color was remarkably dark, smeared, and murky-green. The original page in Variety may have had a beige background. It was really hard to tell for sure, since the two-color process left many artifacts, and the vague splotches of beige in the otherwise-blank spaces may have simply been an accident. I snuck this issue of Variety out of UNM’s Zimmerman Library to take it to a shop that made a color copy for me. And then I snuck it back in to Zimmerman just in time for the librarians to toss all the old copies of Variety into the dumpster, since they were by then available on microfilm. I scanned my photocopy several times in small panels to clean it up, and then I pieced it back together, but it still looked awful. So I separately scanned a much cleaner 5-color copy of Daniel J Maffia’s artwork and laid it over the inferior image as originally published. And so what you see above looks considerably better than the original ad. The above art was Maffia’s second attempt, as Penthouse rejected his first rendering. Maffia was a little bit surprised to see that when the movie finally came out, the advertisements no longer featured his image, but featured instead a photograph of a gold medallion based upon his image. (To see some more examples of Maffia’s works, you may click here and here and here and here.) And, by the way, if you are familiar with Michael Sweret or his works or career, I would love to hear from you.
This original Italian poster from 1979 had an image similar to Maffia’s, and it is unsigned. I wonder if this was Maffia’s first attempt. He no longer remembers. It would make sense, though. Penthouse had little involvement in the Italian release, and may well have given Franco Rossellini the rejected logo to use on the posters. If you happen to know the story, please write to me. Thanks so much! (Click here to order this poster, if it’s still in stock.)	While the poster on the left is a quintessentially simple logo-type poster, the above, on the other hand, is a typical “schmear” poster. Both were used for the 1979 Italian release, apparently to attract two different audiences. I have no idea at all who created it, and would love to learn more — hint hint. (Click here to order this poster, if it’s still in stock.)	This is the US poster as it was finally unveiled on Friday, 1 February 1980 in Manhattan. Later posters would include the distributor’s name, Analysis Film Releasing Corporation. Yet later posters would include the legend “CALIGULA SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE ON PENTHOUSE RECORDS.” Yet even later posters, as a result of legal difficulties, sported a small claim on the bottom reading “© PENTHOUSE CLUBS INTERNATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT,” and there were probably other variations as well, especially in Massachusetts. Then in October 1981 the “R”-rated poster came in two editions, one with a howling error on it. If you know who designed or worked on the gold medallion, or if you know who designed and laid out this poster, or if you know who did the calligraphy (yes, the letters were all painted, not typeset), please write to me. Many thanks!!!

Click here for a Stuart Urban’s behind-the-scenes reminiscences, added on Sunday, 21 March 2004.

Click here for tantalizing information about the mythical 210-minute version.

WHEN I MENTION THAT I’M RESEARCHING AND WRITING A BOOK TO BE CALLED 200 DEGREES OF FAILURE: THE UNMAKING OF CALIGULA, THE REACTIONS ARE SOMETIMES PREDICTABLE. “Why would you want to do that? It’s a terrible movie!” is a frequent response, spoken in irritation, disbelief, and even anger. another reaction has been a burst of nervous laughter. My favorite reaction so far was one that I received at a gathering of musicians, music historians, theatre historians, actors, writers, journalists, dancers, singers, and so forth. When I was introduced as the author of a forthcoming book on Gore Vidal’s Caligula there was a universal gasp of horror. (But I am not being fair. The most frequent response is “What? On what? What’s that? Who? You mean Julius Cæsar? That’s Shakespeare, right? No? Never heard of it.”) Despite its shortcomings and abrasiveness, Caligula, in my view, is simply the most fascinating movie ever made, and that’s a separate issue from its entertainment value or lack thereof. This movie is a test case of everything that can possibly go wrong in a production. For over thirty years I have been gathering materials related to this movie, and for ten years I have been attempting to hammer this material into book form, these past five years with the enormous help of JE Chaffin, a British researcher — and had it not been for his assistance and pathbreaking research I would have had to give up on this monumental task and do something else with my time. after countless thousands of rejected pages, I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Before the end of summer 2010 we should have the first draft finished. We have learned about the numerous conflicting contracts, the people involved, the financing (all the published information is wrong, including the alleged budget of $17.5 million), the on-set complications and challenges, the countless misunderstandings that converted friendships into enmities, the unforgiving and unforgiveable press, the taxes, the copyright issues, the laws, the numerous protracted legal proceedings (including the mind-bogglingly preposterous and endless battles between the two producers), and so on and so forth. Nearly all of this information was kept out of the press for a reason, and what little was reported was so biased and skewed and fractional and tainted that it was almost worthless. The transformation of this movie from a serious political parable into a work of sexual sensationalism is a perfect demonstration of everything that’s wrong with our popular culture, and an analysis of it brings about many surprises and explains more than one would expect. The process of depoliticizing this movie was in itself a deliberate political act. and the legal manœuverings alone serve as an impressive microcosm of everything that’s wrong with our justice system. But the more I learn about these things, the more confused I get about the movie itself.

I got interested in this movie because of Gore Vidal. When I mention now, and the usual response I get is “Who’s that?” Thirty years ago that was not the usual response. The world has changed — and not for the better. If you don’t know, and if you’re curious: Gore Vidal is by far the best writer who ever lived, one of the handful of US-based political commentators worth paying attention to, and one of the most charming people anyone could ever hope to meet. In any case, Vidal resigned from this movie and spent a fortune in legal fees to get his name out of the title and to get his “WRITTEN BY” credit deleted.

Caligula is also what director Tinto Brass is best known for. Most frustrating. Well, like I always say: The one thing in your life that most embarrasses you, the one thing you are most ashamed of, the one thing you hope your friends never learn about, the one thing you try to put into the past so that you can move on with your life — that’s the only thing you’ll be remembered for.

THE ORIGINAL IDEAS THAT SOMEHOW GOT LOST: Vidal wanted to do something that had never been done in the cinema before, and still has not been done, and probably never will be done: He wanted to capture the reality of Rome of the first century. He wanted us to see it, feel it, smell it, breathe it, live it, understand it. Yes, he knew that his source materials (Suetonius and Tacitus) were anything but objective, and may well have been rancidly fictional, but in the end that didn’t matter for the basic conception. Even if the stories that he chose to repeat from the ancient sources were entirely make-believe, they nonetheless gave an accurate picture of the atmosphere and ideas of the times. Further, Suetonius wrote from a point of view that most modern readers would find entirely alien: He chose not to explain why the Cæsars were so wild for total power, simply because he thought it went without saying that that’s what everybody wants. after decades of re-reading Suetonius, Vidal finally recognized that unspoken argument. It was a revelation, and that discovery caused Vidal to be overwhelmed by excitement.

During the Nixon reign, Vidal was thinking a great deal about the ever-expanding American empire, and he thought Nixon quite Caligula-like. He found himself reading and repeatedly re-reading Camus’s play on Caligula, and after a while he thought he should try his own hand at the story. By the unlikliest of coincidences — but yes, it really did happen — at that same time Vidal’s friend Paul Morrissey was thinking about directing a low-budget movie on Caligula’s life at court (no crowd scenes, and using only existing Roman-style European buildings). and by a further unlikely but true coincidence, Morrissey had just befriended Vidal’s film-producer friend Franco Rossellini, who by the unlikeliest of coincidences had been trying to produce his uncle Roberto’s movie on Caligula. Franco showed Paul the treatment that Jean Gruault had written for Roberto, but Paul did not like it at all. He suggested instead that Gore Vidal would be the ideal candidate as screenwriter. The duo approached Vidal to discover, to their amazement, that he was already planning a Caligula. Vidal agreed to do Caligula as a screenplay, and he and Morrissey spent some time together choosing which episodes from Suetonius to include, and they discussed possible actors and interviewed them. But when Vidal then announced his price, the project folded. It was beyond Franco Rossellini’s budget, and there were no known funding sources. Then by the most extraordinarily unlikely coincidence, Vidal’s Manhattan tenant Jack Silverman phoned one day to say he was now head of the new films division at Penthouse magazine, for which Vidal had written occasional articles. Did Vidal have a serious-but-sexy script they could purchase? Indeed! Vidal regarded Penthouse chief Bob Guccione as a friend and with some difficulty convinced him to work together with Franco Rossellini. The writer, though, instantly started accepting compromises about the budget, about getting a different director, and so on and so on and so on. Suffice it to say that if it could go wrong, it did.

Vidal’s first draft of the screenplay (October 1975) was, well, it was a first draft. The less said the better. By the time he got to the sixth draft, and to the final polish of that sixth draft (April 1976), it was easily one of the finest screenplays ever written. Too bad it’s never been published. Not only was it not published, I’m not sure how many people on the production were aware of it. They seem to have known only about the first draft, and that led to the most lamentable conflicts.

Vidal was not at all a fan of Tinto Brass, and initially prevented the producers from hiring him. But when he was back in Los Angeles for a speaking engagement, the producers hired Brass anyway and Rossellini called Vidal proudly with news of this fait accomplit. Vidal was dismayed, but reluctantly accepted him as director. at their first meeting they got along and seemed to see eye-to-eye, but Brass was under contract exclusively to Guccione, not to Rossellini, and certainly not to Vidal.

The breakdown in their working relationship began when Brass, obeying Guccione’s orders, suggested some absurdist sex scenes. Vidal explained that such would be unhistorical, but Brass did not find that argument compelling, as he was more interested in truth conveyed by metaphor than by literalism. Brass tried to make his point by saying that he subscribed to la politique des auteurs, as indeed he would, having come to the movie industry courtesy of the French “Nouvelle Vague.” That’s the last thing Vidal wanted to hear. For in Vidal’s experience, the “auteur theory” was merely a claim that directors used to take credit for a writer’s work, and then to ruin that work — witness The Left-Handed Gun and Myra Breckinridge. Vidal regarded the “auteur theory” as a “French virus” that had infected Hollywood beginning in the late 1950s. In a sense he was right. From that time to the present, directors have tended to get more credit than they deserve, and reference books usually sort films by director even if the director were nothing more than a hired hand brought on at the last minute. Of course, this is the popular misunderstanding, and this is not at all what the “auteur theory” really is. “La politique des auteurs” was a rebellion against poor films, poor filmmaking, poor scripts, and spineless directors who simply did what they were told in order to earn their paychecks. The “auteur theory” posits that the director has a moral obligation to take total charge of and total responsibility for everything that happens on the set, and has a further moral obligation to ensure that the resulting film is of lasting value. also, the “auteur theory” states that the separation of writing and directing duties is a frightful example of restratification, and a near guarantee of a poor film. a good filmmaker, ideally, would do both the script and the direction. In arguing over the “auteur theory,” Brass and Vidal were talking about completely different things and not realizing it. So Vidal told Rossellini and Guccione to dismiss Brass, but the two coproducers would not hear of it. Why would they not hear of it? Simple: Guccione wanted Gore Vidal’s Caligula to be done in the style of Brass’s Salon Kitty, but even sexier. Brass was the perfect, and, actually, the only candidate for such a task.

Vidal thought he had come to an understanding with Brass that no rewrites would be done without his participation. But Brass, with some help from lead actor Malcolm McDowell, rewrote the script. When Vidal started to receive those rewrites, he felt this was a breach of promise. and he despaired when he read those rewrites. Rather than deal directly with Brass, Vidal went over the director’s head and took his grievance to Guccione, who urged him to keep quiet and bide his time, promising that once the cameras were ready to roll, Brass would be put in his place and Vidal would have complete authority over the film. Vidal obeyed, and maintained a perfect silence. So, since Vidal was not responding to the rewrites, Brass assumed that he approved of them.

What Guccione said to Vidal was one thing. What he was doing as coproducer was something else altogether. Brass explained that, as much as he admired Vidal’s script, it was not quite the movie he wanted to make. He had his own ideas about the political arguments he wanted to make with any film he directed. Brass told Guccione that he would direct the film only if those changes were made to the script. Guccione fully agreed, and granted Brass permission to rewrite the script so long as what remained was still basically Vidal’s story and dialogue. Further, Guccione had hired Academy Award-winning artist Danilo Donati (best known for Fellini’s Satyricon and Casanova), who started designing the most preposterous sets and costumes imaginable, filled with four-foot-long rubber strap-on phalluses. any hope of realism was dashed. Visually the movie would look like a porno comic book, with nearly every character wearing see-through costumes, and with almost every niche of almost every set designed to showcase Pompeii-like sexual tableaux performed publicly. Never mind that most of the ancient Roman cultures, especially the peculiar culture of Capitol Hill, were about as openly sexual as the Amish. Guccione was thrilled by the lavishness, flamboyance, and extravagance, and among those who shared his enthusiasm were Franco Rossellini, executive producer Jack Silverman, and Tinto Brass. The producers rearranged the budget to make way for the added expense of the sets. (Supposedly they upped the budget by about $1,500,000 though I have every reason to disbelieve that.) They would soon enough find themselves repeatedly extending the production schedule to allow time for construction. Brass, who was friends with Donati, went along with any changes that anyone suggested, letting the movie take on a life of its own.

When Vidal finally saw the sets under construction, he gave up and washed his hands of the affair. He saw that the movie would be a parody of his script. He judged Danilo Donati talented but nonetheless a moron, he judged Tinto Brass a talentless traitor, and he told producer Franco Rossellini that he wanted nothing to do with this “joke” movie. He finally understood that Penthouse had never had any intention of respecting his script, but that it only wanted to use his name to endorse a sexploitation feature. Vidal would do nothing to stop the movie. Why should he have? The producers and financiers who were funding it were free to do as they wished; after all, it was their money and so it was their movie. Since it no longer represented his ideas and since it would be the reverse of his intentions, all Vidal asked was that he not be credited and that his name not be used in connection with the movie in any way. This is a standard request that screenwriters make when their scripts are changed; such a request is generally honored, and the parting of the ways is generally cordial. In this case, though, the producers vociferously denied his request and soon launched a smear campaign against him.

Unfortunately, in trying to disassociate himself from the movie, Vidal was put into the uncomfortable position of having to discuss it at length with the press, over a period of years, to explain why it was not his. If he had kept his mouth shut, everyone would have assumed he had made the movie. If he opened his mouth, he gave publicity to a movie he despised, that he found personally defamatory, and that was being produced by people who had adopted a new hobby of insulting him daily in the press. and it didn’t help that, almost from the inception, the press went wild with outrageous rumors of for-real orgies and underage sex and women orally servicing horses and so forth, all of which was total nonsense, but all of which was widely believed, and all of which is still widely believed — even by Gore Vidal, who felt, rightly, that his name and reputation were being dragged through the sewer. He filed suit against the production for fraudulent use of his name to promote a movie he felt was injurious to his reputation, and he singled out Tinto Brass as the person most responsible for altering the conception of the movie.

Brass was genuinely surprised by Vidal’s behavior. That was simply because he did not know the full story. Brass’s view was that, by being open with Vidal, by showing him all the rewrites, and by inviting his collaboration, he was fulfilling his end of the gentlemen’s agreement. Since Vidal had chosen not to direct the film himself, but to turn the script over to a director, it was Brass’s understanding that Vidal had effectively ceded his authority in the matter, especially as Vidal’s contract guaranteed him no control whatsoever. Brass had no contractual obligation to involve Vidal in rewrites, and no contractual obligation to deal with him at all; he invited Vidal’s continued participation out of professional courtesy — and out of genuine respect for the noted author. So Brass literally did not understand why Vidal declined to respond to the rewrites or to the requests for further collaboration. and after Vidal declined to respond or to collaborate, Brass did not understand why Vidal belatedly objected to the changes that had all been brought to his attention long beforehand. and once filming started, he literally did not understand why Vidal was continually attacking the entire production, repeatedly making untrue accusations to the press in which he denounced the director as a sex maniac who was filming an unreleasable hardcore porno movie filled with illegal acts for which the authorities could shut down the set and sentence everyone to prison. Vidal was honestly summarizing reports from supposedly reliable sources. Brass assumed Vidal was lying through his teeth in order to sabotage the production. Brass grew exasperated and lost all patience with Vidal, publicly called him a traitor, announced that Vidal would not be allowed on the set (not that Vidal had any intention of visiting the set anyway), sued him for defamation of character, and concluded, understandably but wrongly, that Vidal was simply suffering a massive “ego trip.” (I now know where the filming-of-illegal-hardcore-sex-scenes stories originated. You’ll be able to read about this in the forthcoming book. and you’ll be surprised!)

Vidal did not want an auteur director in part because he didn’t want someone else claiming authorship of his script and then changing it over his objections. Ironically, when Vidal sued to have his name removed from the title and credits, and the producers refused, Brass found himself in the awkward position of being legally liable for someone else’s contractual terms over which he had had no participation or interest. Vidal was clear that he would drop his charges if his name were removed from the film and if a different script were to be used. Brass saw a way out of the morass. Since he had rewritten the script, he thought he could defuse the situation by claiming he was not using Vidal’s screenplay. He repeatedly stated to the press that he and Malcolm McDowell had rejected Vidal’s script and written their own. Of course, that wasn’t true at all. Brass had rewritten and abridged the script extensively, but the dialogue was still mostly Vidal’s, as were the story and the more important the stage directions. We should point out that this was not in keeping with Brass’s normal work ethic; he has never before or since claimed credit for anyone else’s creation or contribution. But Brass’s strategy backfired, for his claim of authorship for a script that was not entirely new but still contained much of Vidal’s writing was the final straw, and Vidal concluded that Brass, in addition to being a liar and entirely untrustworthy, was also a plagiarist. Complicating the matter further was Brass’s contractual obligation to get script approval from Guccione, and Guccione was adamant that the final script be essentially Vidal’s, not Brass’s. It was a no-win situation. and nobody won.

Vidal and Brass are both remarkably reasonable and even-tempered, and so this lengthy and nasty fight is entirely out of character. Why did no one bother to make peace between the two feuding artists? It would have been easy for an arbitrator to settle all the matters amicably at a simple luncheon engagement. But that never happened, and the fury and indignation on both sides increased exponentially, and even now, more than three decades later, the two are not on speaking terms. Apparently it was in a third party’s interest to maintain the quarrelling, the lawsuits, and the discord.

What were Brass’s goals for the movie? I wish I knew. With all the above dissension hovering in the background, would we be right to suspect that perhaps one of Brass’s overriding goals was to make a movie even further removed from Vidal’s intentions? That’s just a guess. I don’t know. Another guess, which is nothing more than an uneducated guess, is that, given the outlandish sets and rubber phalluses and see-through costumes and whatnot, Brass decided that all he could do would be to create a different sort of Rome, not a realistic Rome, not a Hollywood-on-the-Tiber sort of movie Rome, but a Rome as it might have existed in an alternative universe, something so strange and inexplicable, so filled with ridiculously stupid fantasies, that audiences would accept it as an authentic reconstruction. If that’s what he was after, he succeeded — perhaps he succeeded too well. He also had his political ideas. In discussing this movie, Guccione and others frequently liked to quote Lord Acton’s silly dictum that “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That’s not so deep. Brass had a different conception: Power IS corruption. He liked Vidal’s analysis of Roman power, but he wanted to put a slightly different spin on it, and to make Caligula into a deliberate, methodical provocateur.

Of course, the movie as we see it today bears little resemblance to the movie that Brass actually made. When Brass was locked out of the editing room, he sued the producers and won, but the subsequent legal complications and countermaneuverings were so protracted and tiring that he finally gave up and surrendered, letting the producers release whatever they wanted, on condition that he could remove his “DIRECTED BY” credit if he didn’t like the result. He saw the producers’ cut of the movie in court, and he loathed it. He said he couldn’t even recognize it as the movie he had made. Nearly everything was altered: Scenes were trimmed, shots within them were re-arranged, whole sequences were out of order, incorrect sound effects (wailing, ominous sounds, echoes, and so forth) were laid over the soundtrack, the music that was eventually stitched to the movie had NOTHING to do with the story and served only to distract, the dialogue was changed in the revoicing sessions, the story was changed, the pacing was changed, and pretty much all the jokes and visual gags, of which there were plenty, were deleted or so altered as not to register as humorous. Most notoriously, Guccione himself shot reshot much of one scene with hardcore sex footage (to replace Brass’s softcore simulations) and added a hardcore lesbian scene that was never in the script, and he instructed the editors to work these materials in to the final film, though they didn’t fit in any way and were completely ruinous of what little was left of the movie. Also, the countless characters who were wearing four-foot-long strap-on phalluses were all deleted. I wish I could reproduce the unpublished stills, but I don’t have the rights, and even if I did, all those BarcaLounger-sized strap-ons would probably get my site closed down. Those stills are so mind-bogglingly dumb that I wonder what was really going on. Yet, on the other hand, I’m certain that the raw footage from Brass’s earlier Nerosubianco and L’urlo looked perfectly wretched as well, but the final results on screen looked splendid and dazzling and simply wonderful. I am also reminded of Brass’s Heart in His Mouth, which mixed radically different styles and working methods, and which periodically interrupted an elaborate story with nonsensical nonsequiturs, but which worked anyway. Perhaps Brass would have worked the same alchemy with Caligula? Maybe he would have. I think he would have. But we’ll never know for sure. As it stands, the multiple editors who worked on this movie without any opportunity to consult with the director were all convinced that it was a piece of junk, and they did the best they knew how to clean up that garbage. As a result, they created a monumental piece of idiocy. And now, irony of ironies, this is the movie that Tinto Brass is best known for.

No, I cannot reconstruct this movie. Even if all the raw materials (negatives, master tapes, and so forth) were to be located, I would not be able to reconstruct this movie. And I’m sure that not even Tinto Brass would be able to reconstruct this movie, because I’m certain he no longer remembers most of it.

So what do we do? We try to see some of what’s wrong with the movie as it currently stands. A few bits of this movie still flow visually (but not aurally) the way Brass wanted them, sort of. Some of the movie still survives vaguely the way British editor Russell Lloyd reconfigured it. Some of the movie still survives vaguely the way Italian editor Nino Baragli reconfigured Russell Lloyd’s reconfiguring. And after all the chief editors left, changes were still being made, and now, more than 30 years on, changes are STILL being made. The movie as it is currently shown in revival cinemas is not the movie that Brass witnessed in the court room; it’s even worse now.

Worst Editing of the Century?

When British journalist Iain McAsh mentioned that Caligula was Tinto Brass’s best-known work, the director snorted:

My most popular film? I do not consider Caligula as mine. I directed but did not edit it; the film was taken out of my hands. Editing must form part of the director’s work. Why? Very simple. My shooting and directing of the film is like the first draft of a novel when the writer gives the book to a typist. He cannot recognise his own work. In consequence, I shoot with three cameras at the same time and when I look at it on the Movieola then I decide which scene to use which makes the emotion flow (Iain F McAsh, “Take 1 — People on Camera: Bold as Brass,” Films on Screen and Video 5 no 2, February 1985, p 23).

In the final version(s) of the film, the emotions certainly do not flow — and neither does the continuity. Despite the technical assistance of the brilliant Nino Baragli, the result was perhaps the worst travesty of editing in cinema history. People who complain that Caligula is terribly scripted and terribly photographed are actually complaining about the editing, which simply makes the film look as though it had been terribly scripted and photographed. The complaint of poor photography stems largely from the overuse of zooms. More often than not, these zooms were simply the result of three camera crews adjusting to set up for the next close up, the next long shot and so forth. Usually, when a camera zooms the editor should delete the zoom and cut in the footage from one of the other cameras. But for Caligula the zooms were retained, and that was a terrible mistake. (For the record, may I state that I completely absolve Baragli of all blame. He was working under trying and confusing circumstances, and did the best job he could to transform a comedy into a melodrama. He was successful in his endeavor — an endeavor that was probably unique, for I know of no other movie in all cinema history for which such a transformation has been attempted so methodically. While the result is ghastly, Baragli’s skill as an editor is proved beyond question.)

• SCRAMBLING: SCENE 1. The nearly silent beginning of the movie, which now inexplicably appears in the middle of Reel 2 with noises and music and voice-overs pasted all over it.
Most copies of the movie open here, in the middle of this scene. [Frame captures stolen from Maarten Van Druten]

• SCRAMBLING AND DUBBING: SCENE 7 (continuous with SCENE 1). When Macro interrupts the bedroom play between Caligula and Drusilla, he is sometimes seen from the back as he speaks. That was so that the editors could change his dialogue without being noticed. AT LAST, THE ACTUAL DIALOGUE: MACRO: Forgive me, Prince. I'm not interrupting... am I? CALIGULA: Only my dreams. MACRO: Happy dreams? CALIGULA: Is there news from Capri? MACRO: The Emperor commands you to wait upon him. We sail at first light. CALIGULA: What does he want? MACRO: A last look at you, perhaps... He is seventy-seven. CALIGULA: May he live forever. How is Ennia? MACRO: In love... CALIGULA: In hell then, as the poet says. MACRO: My wife won't be happy till she sees you in Capri. CALIGULA: Wait outside. When Macro exits, Caligula begs Drusilla to “Pray to Isis for me,” and they embrace. Drusilla’s final line was added in the dubbing: “I’ll follow you as soon as I can.” No such line was ever spoken on camera. It was added to make the scrambling seem to make more sense. But it doesn’t work. At all.

Almost unnoticeable in long shot: Caligula pounces upon Claudius. At the right of the image is the slave with perfumed ribbons under his nose, always armed with his pooper-scooper. He follows Tiberius around to clean up the droppings. He is almost entirely deleted from the film.

Another shot of the Pooper-Scooper slave. At the left enters the Wine Slave, carrying a jug. As shot, he is always hovering about the ever-more-intoxicated Tiberius, continually re-filling his goblet. He is almost unnoticeable in the final version(s) of the film.

The wine slave with his back to the camera.

AT LAST, THE ACTUAL DIALOGUE: TIBERIUS: Nerva, my dear friend, watch out for Macro when I am dead. NERVA: I know; he hates me. TIBERIUS: Oh yes, because you are good... because you are wise. So when I am gone, watch out for Macro. NERVA: I have taken precautions, Caesar... THAT’S IT. TIBERIUS DOES NOT SAY “AND WHAT MIGHT THEY BE?” INSTEAD, HE SIMPLY CHANGES THE SUBJECT BY SAYING: TIBERIUS: Heaven help Rome, when I am gone. I am old. [To Wine Slave:] Wine!

Wine Slave out of shot

Wine Slave almost out of shot

At last we can see the Wine Slave’s face, in medium long shot. He’s in purple on the right of the screen.

Momentary glimpse of the Pooper-Scooper Slave.

Another momentary glimpse. This time we can almost see the instruments of his trade.

As soon as we see the Wine Slave appear behind Tiberius, we cut to the shot below.

And before we can really realize that Tiberius is again drinking from his favorite goblet, we skip ahead and cut away to the shot below.

The Wine Slave has already started to walk toward his next station.

Marcello Di Falco (who played the lead rôle in Roberto Rossellini’s three-part TV series, L’età di Cosimo de’ Medici) here portrays the orgy master.

• INCORRECT FOOTAGE: SCENE 16. When Nerva is discovered in the warm bath with his wrists slashed, in most copies of the movie we can barely see at the bottom of the screen the foreheads of number of people running by, but we don’t know that they are guards who are filing into the room in response to Tiberius’s distress. (These guards are not in Vidal’s script.) Though we don’t see the guards, we do see the two weeping slaves (who are in Vidal’s script), and thus Tiberius’s command, “Leave us! All of you!” was revised in the revoicing sessions to “Leave us! Both of you!”[Frame captures stolen from Maarten Van Druten]
Also missing from most copies of the movie is this portion of the scene, showing that Macro and Ennia have also heeded Tiberius’s call of alarm. (This publicity still was taken during a rehearsal, for there is no water in the Pyrex bathtub.)

AT LAST, THE ACTUAL DIALOGUE: SLAVE 1: Nerva’s death was terrible for Tiberius. SLAVE 2: The old bastard was left half-paralyzed. SLAVE 3: What's going to happen if he dies? SLAVE 2: We’ll get drunk as lords! SLAVE 3: Tiberius has been good to us. SLAVE 2: He’s been a bastard. SLAVE 3: The bigger the bastard, the better for us. SLAVE 2: You slave! SLAVE 3: Take that back! (Some of the footage is now missing, and it seems that someone walked off with most of the scene and hid it in a Tibetan mountaintop or in an abandoned coal-mine shaft in Siberia where the Penthouse people would never find it. IF YOU KNOW WHERE THIS FOOTAGE WENT, PLEASE WRITE TO ME IMMEDIATELY. IF WE CAN FIND IT, I’LL MAKE CERTAIN IT IS PRESERVED AND MADE AVAILABLE. THANKS!)

They all freeze when they see that someone has unexpectedly gotten out of bed early:

He has heard, but does nothing, for he is immediately approached by...

...Macro, who cautiously makes his appearance...

...in the hall below the Mount Rushmore staircase (realistic, this depiction of Rome, yes?), to introduce Caligula to...

...Charicles, the Court Physician.

The Phenomenal Marcello Di Falco again, in green.

Giuseppe Maffioli as the priest officiating at Tiberius’ funeral	Giuseppe Maffioli as Proculus’ maître d’	Giuseppe Maffioli as Caligula’s maître d’
A number of the extras in this movie appear in several different contexts, and I guess we weren’t supposed to notice. But in the case of this character, I think we were supposed to notice after all. Maybe? Maybe the implication is that the priest, having been appointed by Tiberius, was defrocked by Caligula and had to accept a humiliating reduction in pay and status? And after the horrific wedding ceremony, maybe Caligula took not only Proculus’ and Livia’s pride and dignity away, but their butler as well? Could be. Maybe. Maybe not. Unless more of the movie turns up, we’ll never know. (As a point of interest, Giuseppe Maffioli, or “Bepo” as he was called, was a playwright and chef. He also worked behind the scenes on Gore Vidal’s Caligula as a “food consultant,” though what precisely that entailed I do not know. He does not appear on any crew list that I have seen, and so perhaps he “consulted” unofficially. Click here to read a little tribute to him.)

Bergarius at the inauguration

Bergarius is shocked

Bergarius enjoys the executions

FRIDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 2008 — I was shocked to learn that Eduardo Gustavo Bergara Leumann had passed away after a long illness. Some years ago I had sent him an email message, in English, my only language, asking for an interview relating to Caligula. He responded in Spanish, his only language. Though I cannot speak a word of Spanish, I had no trouble understanding his brief message. He said that he would happy to talk with me of his experiences, but that I would have to conduct the interview in Spanish. For several years I begged my Spanish-speaking acquaintances and coworkers to interpret for me, to no avail (speaking a language conversationally and translating it are two entirely different enterprises). When I could finally afford to pay for a professional interpreter, I learned that Eduardo had died. I offer to his family and friends my most sorrowful condolences. May his memory live on.

Bergara Leumann was a comic performer, a scenic designer, an artist, a playwright, and the star of a television variety show. In Buenos Aires he ran the famed La Botica del Angel, and his presence in Caligula, for me, is the most exciting thing about the movie.
So it is especially annoying that the editors did all in their power to minimize his already-small part.
Please click here to see what little remains of his footage.


Who has the rights to these photos? I would like to license them. Please write to me if you can help. Thank you. And did you record any of his television shows? I would love to see them. If you can loan me the videos, please let me know. I would be forever in your debt.

CALIGULA: Did you see their faces when I told them that they had to swear not only to me but to you? DRUSILLA: They must have been appalled. CALIGULA: I do hope so.

DRUSILLA: But is it wise? CALIGULA (kissing her repeatedly): I can do... anything... I like... to anyone. DRUSILLA: Well don’t start with me. CALIGULA: Who would you suggest? (Hears noise. Approaches listening room. Sees that two guards have been ordered to spy on them.)

But the Prætorian Guards are not spying, like they should be; they are fooling around with one another. Nonetheless, Caligula chases them away.

CALIGULA: Who?

DRUSILLA: Do you trust Macro? CALIGULA: Macro? After all, he did kill Tiberius. I must appoint a new commander of my own choice.

(Chærea enters, with company)

CALIGULA: Ah... Chærea.

Chærea introduces two senators who have a dispute over real-estate development.

Caligula is delighted to make himself useful to his Republic.

Despite being overfed, Senator Acesius (in the foreground) takes the side of the lower- and middle-class residents, favoring mixed-use and racially integrated neighborhoods. The reason he favors such things is that his parents are the landlords and he has a part interest.

The impartial scales of justice.

The worried senator who is being paid handsomely to demolish the historical mom-and-pop shops despite preservation orders, and to evict the tenants and peasant farmers to make way for a Wal-Mart and Eckerd Drug Store with 57 acres of asphalt parking lots over wetlands.

For the curtain call, a brief encore performed in front of a giant painting of a Roman cityscape because the budget wouldn’t allow for the real thing, or even for a scale model. DRUSILLA: That is your man. CALIGULA: Chærea? No. He’s boring... boring... boring... DRUSILLA: He’s perfect. CALIGULA: I’ll do it for Rome. I’ll do anything for Rome. DRUSILLA: You’ll make a memorable emperor. CALIGULA: I know. Isn’t Rome lucky? They start playing as two children.

Buzby Berkeley to the rescue, with a rotating overhead camera. [Frame capture stolen from Maarten Van Druten]

Nothing to liven up a party like a mass execution, yes?

As the head-mower is approaching Macro, Caligula has fun by ordering Proculus tossed in front it as well. Proculus defeats the machine, and Caligula crowns him a Roman hero. There then follows a comical coda, which is now missing. If you know the whereabouts, please write to me. Thanks!

SCENE 34. INT. CLERKS’ OFFICE. After squandering his valuable time raping some newlyweds, Caligula reports back for duty, which consists of mindlessly placing his seal on each sheet of a huge ream of documents. He throws a tantrum, refuses to continue, and tells instead of his plans for an artificial famine, a conquest of Persia, a public library that would not include such boring old sods as Homer or Virgil, a bridge across the Bay of Naples, a ship with a garden, a flood in the amphitheatre so that the Greeks and Persians can conduct a sea battle, an edict that Romans no longer be so ugly. Longinus’s response to every idea: “Yes, Lord.” “Can’t you ever say anything except ‘Yes, Lord’? No wonder life’s dull.” He leaves the room making monkey sounds. (Romans of the time did not have a word for “sods.” And who’s the dude with the hair?) The next scene is the storm at night when Caligula becomes convinced that Gemellus is trying to kill him.

Caligula is ill, and his horse is confused. Or is it the other way around?

At long last, what you’ve all been wondering about — the actual dialogue: ACESIUS: Just listen to the crowds.... LONGINUS: How the people love him! SENATOR: Yet nobody is safe with him. CHÆREA: The Empire is safe. SENATOR: The Empire? But he’s a tyrant! CHÆREA: Better tyranny than anarchy. I know your feelings... but personal feelings must not affect us. A few families in Rome may suffer, but the Empire is stable. There could be far worse horrors — revolution, war, civil chaos — if Caligula were to die. ACESIUS: It looks as if he’s going to die anyway.

Scene 40A was the sylvan idyll, fragments of which now wrongly open the movie. Marco Fornier perceptively pointed out that Tinto Brass later used this very location for the sylvan idyll in Capriccio.

• SCRAMBLING AND TRIMMING: SCENE 42. For only a moment, we catch a glimpse of Caligula playing with an adorable little pet rat who is harnessed to a rather beautiful little toy chariot. This was nowhere in the script, and so we can safely conclude that the rat and the toy chariot were last-minute improvisations. Later on, the editors and sound recordists and mixers added the sound of the rat howling in distress, giving us quite a wrong impression of what Caligula is actually doing. Next time you watch this scene, shut off the sound so that you can pay more attention to the visuals. You will see that the rat had no objections at all. After a few moments of play, Caligula looks up with apprehension at a bird of ill omen which has just flown in. But we don’t have any idea why on earth we’re seeing this. In the movie as currently assembled, this precedes the birth of Caligula’s daughter.

Fortunately, this publicity still is taken from a little further back, and we can see some of the context. Thus can we see that there is simply no way this scene could possibly have preceded the birth of Caligula’s daughter.

Having heeded the warning of the bird of ill omen, Caligula rushes in a panic to the bedside of his sister, who has been suffering for months with the plague.

When beloved sister Drusilla dies, Longinus learns that life on Capitol Hill is a freak show.
Caligula carries his sister’s body across the veranda to take her back to his Palatine palace. Note the anachronistic Roman ruins painted on the wall of the set and some gigantic studio lights blazing overhead. Much of this Eastmancolor movie was actually lit for black and white, as this still illustrates. This portion of the scene is deleted from most copies.
Back at the Palatine Palace. If you see a copy of the movie with this shot, you’re missing the previous shot. If you see a copy of the movie with the previous shot, you’re missing this shot.

• TRIMMING AND INCORRECT FOOTAGE: SCENE 50. This shot is from Camera 1, and quite obviously either Camera 2 or Camera 3 would have concentrated on the little interaction on the left of the screen, consisting of a silent squabble between High Priest Bergarius and the “Little Giant,” which we can barely notice in the movie as it stands. (This action does not appear in Vidal’s script.)

After having returned from his flight to the Suburra, Caligula enters the Senate House to declare he is now a god. He announces, “The period of mourning is over.” He pulls down the black drapes. “One month of free games and free food for every citizen of Rome.” The senators hail Caligula the god. CUT TO a scene that Gore Vidal clearly did not write:
• DELETION: SCENE 51. INT. CALIGULA’S ROOM — DAY Caesonia massages the badly bruised Caligula.
Caesonia chides Caligula for having the senators declare him a god. Caligula asks her, “Yes, I’m a god in human form. You believe that, don’t you?” Caesonia answers Yes, to which Caligula retorts, “Then you are as stupid as the rest of them. I’m surrounded by hypocrites! Monkeys! Forever chattering about love and service and loyalty! Monkeys!”
Caesonia cries that she doesn’t want Caligula to die. Caligula replies, “You must be unique.”... “We have our daughter... we could have a son. We could be happy....” Caligula is cynical: “A happy family on the imperial throne? That would be a novelty!” Caesonia is worried: “But... do you have to make your contempt for the institutions... for everyone... so obvious?” “Yes.”
Caligula turns over on his back, points to his midsection, and instructs Caesonia to conclude with a sexual massage.
• DELETION: SCENE 52. JUPITER’S TEMPLE — DAY Caligula replaces the marble heads of statues of the gods with plastic replicas of his own head (which in some angles resemble Gore Vidal’s face far more than Malcolm McDowell’s). He wanders among the images of himself, as Longinus worries about the deficit. Caligula cuts him short, preferring to talk about starting a war. He demonstrates his new march.

• DELETION: SCENE 53 (continuous with above). In speeded motion, Caligula raises funds for his war by accepting tithes from his Roman citizens. The “Little Giant” helps to collect the offerings in baskets, which Caligula pours down a chute to a room beneath Jupiter’s base. (As you can see, the above shot was filmed with a 1:1.85 aperture in the camera. So much for the IMDb claim that this move was shot at the Academy 1:1.375 format.)

• DELETION: SCENE 54 (continuous with above). Caligula continues his rewriting of the rules by illustrating a political parable, sacrificing a priest rather than a bull to the gods, much to the priest’s surprise. Caligula proclaims that he is now king of the gods, outranking Jupiter. The emperor’s lackeys then toss out the animal sacrifices to a hungry crowd. (A few moments of the filming of a take are included in the documentary.) MUCH OF THIS FOOTAGE OF THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER WENT MISSING YEARS AGO AND IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE FILM POSSIBLY FOR THE SIMPLE REASON THAT SOMEONE WALKED OFF WITH SO MUCH OF IT!!!!! BITS AND PIECES OF THE WORKPRINT ARE STILL AROUND, THOUGH THE SCRATCH TRACK HAS BEEN HORRENDOUSLY DEGRADED. BUT PARTS OF THE NEGATIVES ARE GONE. THE NEGATIVES THAT SURVIVE WERE NEVER EDITED, PROVING THAT CLAIMS ABOUT THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER BEING INCLUDED IN SOME PRINTS ARE COMPLETELY WRONG. IF YOU KNOW THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE MISSING FOOTAGE, PLEASE CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY!!!!! I SHALL MAKE CERTAIN THAT IT IS PRESERVED AND MADE AVAILABLE.

After Caligula has his guards toss out the sacrifices to the hungry crowd, he poses as Jupiter with his thunderbolt, making childish buzzing noises as though his lightning were striking people in the crowd. (The above shot is cropped in the printer at 1:1.85, though as you can see from the fuzziness of the top and bottom of the image, this was not shot at 1:1.85. It was shot with a slightly taller aperture, perhaps 1:1.75 or a manually filed aperture just a smidgin taller than 1:1.85. Here it is correctly cropped by the lab at 1:1.85 probably as a precautionary measure to check for misframes in shooting so that they could be corrected in the final print.)

The “Little Giant” suffers from an unseen blow.

Caligula orders the senators’ wives to prostitute themselves for his new boat-shaped Imperial Bordello.

Typical behavior at a typical Roman victory banquet. (Lots of sex in Roman pop art, therefore lots of sex in Roman life, right? Right. When future historians, thousands of years from now, try to reconstruct social life in the USA, will they base it primarily upon Cotton Mather’s and Jonathan Edwards’s sermons, as we do, or will they base it primarily upon Internet porn, and conclude that Americans did nothing but party at orgies all the day long?) The orgies of simulated sex in this movie were supposed to be a preposterous and humorous running gag. But now with the movie so entirely altered, the humor is all gone.

If the unlikely legend of Caligula making his horse a consul is truthful, it could be counted as one of his few known sane acts. Gore Vidal and Anthony Barrett, separately, have argued that a horse would make a far finer politician, leader, and rôle model than any of its human rivals. I am in full agreement, and am deeply suspicious of anyone who would attempt to make the contrary case.
This still was probably never published prior to the latest DVD release (see below). It reveals the ceremonial beards.
		Since this is impossible to see in the scan to the far left, here is an enlarged detail. Note that the “Little Giant” is also wearing a ceremonial beard — on top of his real beard.
Dialogue from the never filmed Scene 57 was cannibalized and put to use here, as Caligula names his horse Consul in the name of the People of Rome, rather than the People and Senate of Rome. Chærea and Longinus grumble: “The Senate count for nothing” and “He has mocked the gods and humiliated the Senate.”

The assassination that Caligula has been looking forward to. (There. I did it. I ended a sentence with a preposition.)

And throughout the film important dialogue was deleted. Granted, this amounts usually only to a few lines here and there, but they are essential lines, without which the entire film is rendered senseless. Only the vaguest hints of the original ideas remain, but they are unnoticeable on a first or even a second viewing. The most interesting bit of dialogue that remains in the film is the only clear indication of Brass’s intentions:

Cæsonia: “But they are senators and consuls. They are important men!”

Caligula: “So important that they approve all I do? They must be mad. I don’t know what else to do to provoke them.”

(Contrast this with Vidal’s original dialogue (p 160): Cæsonia: “They are consuls...important men.” Caligula (scornfully): “Consuls! Consuls are nothing. Claudius is a consul, and he’s a half-wit. Aren’t you, uncle?”) But now, with the film so sliced and diced, these ideas are hidden, undeveloped, lost in the tedious jumble. Even the enormously complicated plot gets lost, as scenes and shots are badly trimmed in favor of close-ups of genitalia. With the balance of the film thus compromised, the illusion is that the narrative is almost nonexistent.

Further, the film includes embarrassing footage that Brass would obviously have considered outtakes and tossed into the rubbish bin; for instance, the shot of the killing machine not moving ahead toward Macro but just having its blade make a circular imprint on the ground, the three-eyed monster asleep with its fake eye open, Drusilla still breathing (though almost imperceptibly) moments after she has died, Cæsonia twitching her leg after being murdered.

Brass is a master at making his extras come to life for us with strategically placed close-ups of peripheral characters and small, throwaway, naturalistic actions. These are the atmospheric elements that cannot possibly be scripted but that must nonetheless be included in any narrative film. They can only be invented once the sets and props are in place and the full cast costumed and assembled. It is only in rehearsals that actors can come to feel their rôles and the director and technicians can finally see an established environment and work out how best to put it to use. It is these little, everyday impromptu actions that give a film believability and naturalness and rhythm, that bring a relief to the narrative. But these close-ups and small actions are now almost all deleted, deliberately, with odd editing choices designed to downplay or eliminate as many as possible of the details and minor characters that Vidal had not scripted. Without this relief, the film becomes painfully tedious. Further, nearly every scene is missing its beginning and ending, and the film jarringly jumps from situation to situation. The only scene that seems to run through to its proper end is Cæsonia’s first sexual encounter with Caligula, which trails off with one of Brass’s trademark pans away from the action.

There was another change as well, but it’s difficult to determine exactly where the Brass/McDowell changes end and the editors’ changes begin. The dynamic between Chærea and Caligula was de-emphasized. Chærea was a Roman war hero who first sprang to fame in 9 CE when he managed to cut his way out of the calamitous massacre of the Teutoberg Wald, where Varus and his three Roman legions were trapped in the forest by the Germans. Chærea escaped with 120 cavalrymen; they were practically the only survivors. Later in 14 CE, Chærea distinguished himself again in helping to put down the Rhine mutiny. (Caligula, a small child at the time, was there at the camp.) Upon the execution of Macro, Chærea became commander of the Prætorians. For all his macho prowess, it is recorded that Chærea had a rather high-pitched voice which was something of an embarrassment to him. Caligula teased him relentlessly, giving him demeaning passwords such as “Venus” and “Priapus,” etc. It was apparently this sense of personal insult, rather than outrage at Caligula’s crimes, that drove Chærea to assassinate him. Though Vidal never described Chærea’s voice in the script, he did manage to capture this relationship forcefully. Vidal had Chærea take a keen interest in Proculus’s career — which Caligula mischievously interpreted to mean that Chærea fancied Proculus; later he even ordered that Proculus’s castrated genitals be sent to Chærea as a “token of their love.” Brass/McDowell downplayed this point, eliminating Chærea’s professional interest in Proculus; in the movie Caligula orders that Proculus’s genitals be sent to his widow Livia. Yet it is clear that Brass and McDowell left some of this personal conflict intact, as there are two surviving references to Caligula’s taunts in the final film: the “big boys” exchange during the bordello scene and Caligula’s choice of “scrotum” as password, moments before Chærea kills him. These now-meaningless remnants lead us to suspect that there was more going on. Chærea was portrayed by the well-known Paolo Bonacelli, whose voice we never hear on the soundtrack. Les Hodgson and the postproduction crew hired deep-baritone Joss Ackland to revoice his part. This dilution of Chærea’s motivation was arguably a bad move.

The inclusion of scrap footage and wrong camera angles, the cuts, the trims, the scramblings, the altered dialogue, the distortion of motivation, and the jarring mistimed edits were all attempts to simplify the film. The unintended effect, though, is to ruin the pace, sense and feel of the story, making the film seem much longer than it actually is. And these were not the extent of the changes. The music score, written at least in part prior to filming, was by Fiorenzo Carpi, who had also done the music for L’urlo, La vacanza, and Salon Kitty. Partially arranged fragments of working sketches of the original music for the Isis pool dance and Cæsonia’s dance can still be heard in the making-of documentary. They are a mysterious-sounding oriental-style compositions, which fit rather well with the time, locale, and mood of the film. But this score was abandoned. Guccione (possibly through his daughter, Toni Biggs, a music major) wanted something more accessible, and he wanted to use ballet music by Prokofiev as well as a piece he had heard only by chance on a British TV series called The Onedin Line. That music, of course, was by Khachaturian. Franco Rossellini obliged, hiring his friend Franco Mannino to write a score with an impossibly short deadline. There was also a condition: Mannino would need to write the score without having seen the film. Mannino conducted the prescribed ballet music, and he further composed a beautiful score that has never seen the light of day simply because it had nothing to do with Caligula. Penthouse rejected Mannino’s score immediately, but nonetheless had to send out press releases. Since there was no music score, the publicists invented a fake name for a composer: “Paul Clemente.” Whoever would eventually be hired to compose the music score would have to agree to this pseudonym. The person hired was Bruno Nicolai, who ironically had conducted Carpi’s score for Brass’s Salon Kitty. Nicolai’s score was powerful, cutting, memorable, brilliant, but it simply didn’t belong in this movie. Additionally, Biggs even composed a pop song of her own, “We Are One,” based on the adagio of Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus, as a Christmas present for her father in December 1977. To his daughter’s delight, Guccione pronounced that the song would be the perfect title tune for Caligula and that he would ask Barbra Streisand to sing it. Mercifully, this never came to fruition (Valerie Rae Clark: personal communication with James Ellis Chaffin, 17 February 2005).

Though it was a travesty of Vidal’s intentions, Caligula may have nonetheless been a good film in its own right — had Brass been allowed to edit it. As it currently stands, Caligula is certainly quite bad. Even if all the important scenes had been retained, the production’s strange editing style would still have rendered a poor film. And even with many important scenes deleted, the film could nonetheless have looked slick and engaging had the editing created an easy and pleasing visual flow. Many regard the end result as unwatchable trash. The opening scenes are butchered to focus more on genitalia than on characterization, and so from the start the film begins to alienate people. Then about fifteen minutes into the film we see the perpetual surreal freakshow in Tiberius’s hideaway, and it’s too painfully bad even to be laughable. Brass/Donati had changed Vidal’s frightening gallery of sex slaves into a jokingly surreal vision (copied from the “erotic” art found in Pompeii and elsewhere), but the editors then turned it into a pathetic absurdity. Before the end of the first reel, the film loses all its credibility with the audience. And that’s what would happen if you took a comical work, chopped out all the humor, and then attempted to refashion the remaining fragments into a serious drama. The result would simply be unendurable, as this film proves. (Here’s a comparison that maybe a few readers will be able to relate to: The best movie ever made is The General, a stirring silent adventure/drama by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton. When a good-looking, uncut, print is presented with sensitive live musical accompaniment, and when the film is projected at a speed that is just a little above reality, it’s a showstopper, and it’s guaranteed to bring down the house and generate gales of uncontrollable screaming laughter. When slowed down to camera speed and presented with serious music, it is almost lethal; it becomes humorless, tedious, pretentious, and stupefyingly dull — even though no image has been altered. When modern-day editors attempt to “improve” the film by reordering scenes, performing trims, and replacing the intertitles with subtitles, almost no one can sit through the result. The editors of Caligula took that experiment to the next level, by altering probably one-third or more of the images, and altering the sound track, the dialogue, and the story as well.)

Though editing cannot convert a fantasy into a history, it can easily convert a provocative Grand Guignol into an offensive sensationalism. Brass is comfortable and serene about sex, and he understands grotesque art as a political statement about power and its perennial abuse. Guccione, as demonstrated by his Penthouse magazine, is obsessed with sensationalism and has sometimes used his publications specifically to offend. Brass attempted a disturbing work of political art, which Guccione and his team found they could edit into a salacious exploitation film.

On the positive side, though, there are some wonderfully moody touches that give us an idea of what the film may have been had Brass been allowed to finish it: Nerva’s suicide, Caligula’s romp through the slums and a few other little bits and pieces are strikingly beautiful and atmospheric. Also, the acting is first-rate and the lighting and the plush sets are second to none. Yet the mutilations visited upon the film make the positive qualities seem absolutely senseless. Vidal’s reputation survived unscathed, as no one believed he wrote the final shooting script, and thus gave him no credit or blame for the result. But the saddest irony was reserved for Brass, who should be known for such brilliant works as In capo al mondo, L’urlo, and La vacanza, but is instead known in the US only as “the director of Caligula,” with the general assumption being that he has only made porn.

Do you enjoy solving mysteries? Hope so. It’s my favorite hobby. Here we have a mystery. Pay attention to the clues: The divan on the left is distinctively 1970s imitation leather, a common office item. The lighting is not designed, but is simply office lighting with sunlight streaming in through Venetian blinds. So this is probably a test shot. But if so, what is it a test of? These extras are too well-costumed and made-up to be mere auditionees. They have already been cast. But who are they? Are they in the final cut of the film? I don’t recognize any of them. And why was this shot taken? Whom did it help, and how and why? Was it just a souvenir?

Though Caligula earned handsome profits in most of the few cinemas that played it, its release was limited. So for reasons that remain somewhat mysterious, Guccione flew Baragli to Manhattan to edit a new and much shorter version of the film that could be shown in mainstream cinemas in the US, even in the Bible Belt. It seems that 500 prints were made. With 53 minutes removed and more alternative footage substituted, this new “R”-rated version played for a while in about 170 cinemas in the US beginning in October 1981. Over the course of the next few months, it opened in different regions of the country. After its initial one- or two-week runs, it was farmed out to other cinemas and then pretty much vanished four months later, though occasional repertory bookings continued until about October 1982, when it finally ran out of steam. The “R”-rated version currently available on DVD is NOT — I repeat, NOT — the same as the version released to cinemas in October 1981. It does not contain the alternative materials, but covers the omissions with irritatingly choppy video edits and repeated footage. The reason for this we shall reveal in our book.

As of October 1999, with video sales, Guccione reported that the film had grossed $30 million worldwide. Factoring in time and inflation, that is hardly a success story. How true that figure is, I’m still trying to work out.

Some years later, Franco Rossellini was finally able to release a modified version of the movie in Italy. He hired editor Enzo Micarelli to recut Baragli’s edition of the movie and to restore some missing footage. For instance, he included the lamely assembled sequence of Proculus being tossed to the killing machine. He also deleted probably all of Guccione’s inserts as well as some incomprehensible fragments, and made hundreds of trims to pick up the pace. The result, seemingly about 124 minutes long, was an Italian-dubbed film called Io Caligola, which translates as I, Caligula, an obvious play on the title of Robert Graves’s popular novel I, Claudius, which had by then been turned into a popular British television series. (The comma between the two words of the title, by the way, does not appear on the film’s opening credits.) Numerous derivations of this verion have been floating around ever since, rumored to be as short as 84 minutes and (with clips of the sequestered 1979 version of Caligola somehow cut back in) as long as 130 minutes. The entertainment value and technical quality of these different editions vary wildly. The best of them, though still unsatisfying and often confusing, is largely superior to the version(s) seen elsewhere. But beware: Some of these Io Caligola editions are even less interesting than the standard 156-minute American version.

Can Somebody Help?

Back in September 1981 the following mysterious little book was published by a mysterious little company called Eyecontact Publishing:

I purchased this book the instant I learned about it, and I read it numerous times. But the more I learn about Caligula, and the more I re-read the book, the more confused I get. I would like to speak with the mysterious people who worked for the mysterious Eyecontact, who address was 465 Lexington Avenue, New York NY 10017 — which was an apartment building with six office spaces on the first and second stories. The only two people known to be associated with Eyecontact were Brenda K Goodman, who was in charge of publicity, and Ruth Ross, who did the layout and design of the dust jacket. There are countless Brenda K Goodmans and Ruth Rosses in the world, and how to find those two particular ones, I don’t know. My guess is that they were both freelancers. Eyecontact seems to have been set up to publish only this one book and then vanish without a trace. And that’s exactly what happened. If you know anything, anything, anything at all about Eyecontact, please write to me. Infinite thanks!

One more hint: Eyecontact had a logo. Here it is:

That looks like a photograph, not a drawing. If so, then someone posed for it. Who? Does anybody recognize that eye?

Comparisons: Take a look at “Comparison Review: CALIGULA vs IO CALIGOLA,” by Maarten Van Druten.

	At last, a version worth purchasing, watching, and studying! Will it be perfect? No. Will it contain all the known footage? No. (Legal restrictions.) Will it be what Tinto wanted? No. Will it be in sequence? No. Will it make sense? Not really. Will it give you a vague impression of what the movie was supposed to have been like? Yes! This is an important first step toward an eventual restoration. Let us hope that this release begins to shake loose the missing materials that are scattered about and hidden away in various mysterious locales. Let us hope, also, that it finally convinces various parties to amend previous legal settlements. Release date: Tuesday, 2 October 2007. To quote from the press release: HOURS OF SPECTACULAR ALL-NEW SPECIAL FEATURES! • Two revealing new full-length audio commentaries with stars Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren • Comprehensive new video interviews with director Tinto Brass and actors John Steiner and Lori Wagner • New high-definition transfer of the unrated, uncensored feature film • Alternative pre-release version of the film with never-before-seen footage • Startling audio commentary with on-set writer Ernest Volkman • “The Making of Caligula” documentary (two versions) featuring interviews with Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Gore Vidal and many more • Hundreds of astonishing, never-before-seen photographs from the set • Theatrical trailers • Bonus CD containing the full released soundtrack (first time on CD) plus 40 minutes of film score never before available (no, sorry, at the last minute there was some sort of lawyerly problem and this had to be dropped from the release — DRAT!!!) • DVD-ROM extras including Gore Vidal’s original screenplay [but only his first draft, not his final draft], three Penthouse magazine features, an interview with Bob Guccione, press kit notes, cast and crew bios and filmographies and more! • Eye-catching embossed collectible packaging with new liner-notes booklet • AND MORE! [Among the “MORE” will be over two hours of behind-the-scenes and outtakes.] [And AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH a bunch of my mistakes — MY mistakes, my very own personal special mistakes — made their way to this DVD set. Just goes to show you: Try never to pollute the information stream, because it’s nearly impossible to clean it up again.] NEWS STORIES Frightfest, 16 April 2007 DVD Beaver, ca 26 September 2007 DVD Drive-In, ca 29 September 2007
The Japanese edition, which has more scenes from a workprint, scenes missing from all release editions in part because they were never re-recorded and because the negatives vanished. It also has another few minutes of recently discovered raw footage from another missing sequence. This footage, totaling 30 minutes altogether, was not included in the above US DVD box set simply because it was not discovered until the masters had been finalized. This Japanese set deletes the interviews with Lori Wagner and John Steiner as well as Ernest Volkman’s commentary. The PDF supplements were also deleted, presumably because the distributor didn’t think that many Japanese-speaking customers would be able to read them. Genitalia were all digitally fogged, which necessitated a generational loss. The booklet from the US release is included, translated into Japanese, and with some more illustrations. If you are fluent in both Japanese and English and if you’re in the mood to check the translation for me, please write to me. Thanks! (In case you’re curious, the above box art was just a pre-release draft; the final version is rather different.) (Region 2 NTSC, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)	The British edition, which has the extra 30 minutes found on the Japanese set. For no discernible reason this 4-disc set also includes the video abridgment that first made its appearance in November 1999. Here it is wrongly announced as the “THEATRICAL VERSION.” (Apart from the standard 156-minute US version, the true “Theatrical Versions” are the 14 August 1979 Italian version, the 30 October 1980 UK ‘Modified Version,’ and the 16 October 1981 “R-rated” US re-release, any one of which we would have joyously welcomed, as they differed from all other versions: The original Italian edition was edited slightly differently, and the ‘Modified Version’ and the R-rated version contained footage not seen anywhere else. The R version made an appearance in a terrible-looking DVD in the UK, product number PENT 2136, but it ran a few minutes short of the original version as shown in the US. Alas, the November 1999 atrocity provides nothing new apart from an even choppier look.) This set does not include the brochure, without which the “ALTERNATIVE VERSION” is deprived of explanation. (Region 2 PAL, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)
This was posted in late October 2006, or maybe even earlier than that. The advertisement for this box set really got my hopes up, as it clearly announced the November 1979 Italian edition of Caligola, unseen since November 1979, when the Italian court banned it. Oh how I wanted to see this. But, alas, after this announcement went out, the plans changed, as Raro’s main distributor refused to have anything to do with it. (When the above link changes, as it must, click here for an archived copy of the original page.) Raro does, though, still hope to release the November 1979 version of Caligola some time later. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.	Well, it was too good to be true. Raro updated their web site on Wednesday, 22 November 2006, and showed us that this is what we’re going to get: The same old revised Io Caligola, with nothing new, and derived from a previous video of poor quality, which in turn was derived from a poor print. If the opening explanatory caption is to be believed, the original film elements have gone missing. Whatever. (Region-2 PAL DVDs, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment. And, once again, the above link will almost surely change, which is why I archived it here.)

Above is probably the first advertisement ever, spread over three pages in the Wednesday, 24 March 1976 weekly Variety.

This ad was printed in half-tone black-and-white in Variety, though it was obviously created in color. My photocopy was quite defective — streaky, uneven, and distorted — and it took some doing to make this semi-restoration. The untitled Fellini film was never made, as Guccione found it insufficiently sexual. So Fellini offered another, older, script, La città delle donne (The City of Women), which Guccione accepted, but only if Fellini would agree to shoot it in English as a hardcore sex film, with graphic close-ups, preferably with Dustin Hoffman as the lead and other Americans in the principal rôles. Fellini refused those conditions, Guccione called him a prude, and so Fellini resigned. Eventually Guccione came through and agreed to let Fellini have his way, but then he withdrew funding just as cameras were ready to roll. (The reason will be revealed in the forthcoming book, 200 Degrees of Failure: The Unmaking of Caligula.) Franco Rossellini’s cousin Renzo, head of Opera Film Produzione and Gaumont Italia distribution, came to the rescue and produced the film. Guccione was credited in the original release prints, but his credit was soon thereafter deleted. The two other movies mentioned in this ad I don’t think were ever made. Dotson Rader’s The Dream’s on Me was apparently adapted from his 1976 novel of the same name, but I’m pretty vague about the Robert Klane thing. What little I know comes from John Mahoney, “Book and Movie Tie-Ins — Scenes from a Marriage of Convenience,” The New York Times Book Review, Sunday, 13 March 1977, pp 1, 11, esp 12: Twentieth Century-Fox is less happy about its deal with Robert Klane for Fire Sale. Klane, who wrote the novel and screen adaptation of Where’s Poppa? won’t surrender publication rights to the new comedy. He is so confident about the success of the film that he is holding out for a higher bid on paperback rights. Klane says he will continue to do his own screenplays and novels, which he views as two entirely different arts, and claims that he sold the rights to a project titled That’s It, to Bob Guccione of Penthouse Productions principally because Guccione understood the writer’s desire to develop it as a novel first. “Who are these people who take screenplays and turn them into books? What sort of talent do they have? What involvement and passion can they invest in another person’s work?” asks Klane. If you know anything more about these three movie projects, please contact me. Thanks a bunch!

THE OTHER PENTHOUSE MOVIES

When Penthouse first announced its involvement with Gore Vidal’s Caligula, its statements to the press were a bit surprising. No mention was made of the pre-Penthouse gestation of the film, which has led nearly everyone ever since to assume that Penthouse initiated the project. Wrong! Minimal mention was made of the producer, Franco Rossellini, or of the studio, Felix Cinematografica S.r.l., which has led nearly everyone ever since to assume that Bob Guccione was the driving force behind the movie and that Penthouse provided all the funding. Wrong! But plenty of mention was made of this being Penthouse’s first motion picture, following three recent and respected movies in which Penthouse had merely invested:

Chinatown, released 20 June 1974

The Longest Yard, released 30 August 1974

The Day of the Locust, released 7 May 1975

All three were produced by Long Road Productions for Paramount release, and the first of the three, Chinatown, even had a small Penthouse credit:

Despite that admission, though, the spokespeople insisted that Penthouse had not been involved in any other movies, and that Gore Vidal’s Caligula would be its first production. Yet when we test that claim (all claims should be tested) we discover that Penthouse had in fact been involved in other movies, which had not been successful. It was thought best to pretend that they had never happened, But they had happened, and here they are. What follows is a list of the Penthouse movies that I know about.

A NAME FOR EVIL (1970/1973)

The above two frame grabs are from A Name for Evil (working titles: The Grove and In the Beginning) copyrighted 1973 by Penthouse Pictures Inc. But it was not filmed in 1973; it was filmed earlier, mid-July through mid-September 1970, in and around Vancouver, BC, even though the story took place somewhere down South. Shall we do some research? Good! Let’s do some research!

1947, 1st ed, 2nd printing

1969, mass-market paperback

Beautifully written book about a delusional husband convinced of a ghost’s malevolence. Not a horror story by any means, though it is certainly tragic, as the husband’s paranoid fantasies ruin the lives of those around him. As with any good book, it is completely unfilmable. That, I suppose, is why the movie that followed really had nothing to do with it. And I suppose, also, that the author, Andrew Lytle, like most writers, needed the money and reluctantly licensed all rights to a production company that he knew would make mincemeat of his original work.

First let’s go to some clippings.

Notice the production names: Girard, Sherman, Centennial, MGM. Not a peep about Guccione or Penthouse. That’s because there was nothing to peep about. In a syndicated article by Earl Wilson, which I found printed as “Culp Takes a Cold Swim,” in The Bucks County [Levittown PA] Courier Times, Monday, 3 November 1970, p 23, we read:

Then nothing happened. Why? Well, take a look at the Hollywood Reporter, Friday, 6 August 1971:

That sounds to me like what business folks call “undercapitalization.” C Robert Jennings, in “‘Slug-Like Vancouver’ — Filmland on the Fraser?,” Winnipeg Free Press, Wednesday, 24 November 1971, p 22, interviewed the screenwriter/director:

Now that is fascinating. The movie was “still-unseen” and Centennial Productions had filed for bankruptcy. With that background, there is no doubt about what happened next. Stone et al won the suit and acquired the film, which it would sell off at cost just to get rid of it. So in 1972 Guccione launched a separate corporation, Penthouse Pictures Inc, to isolate/insulate his other organizations, and had the new corporation purchase all rights from Stone et al. With copyright ownership, he was free to have his employees make the film more commercial. There is no telling what condition the movie was in when Penthouse Pictures acquired it. It may or may not have still been the authentic version. It may well have been tampered with by Stone et al or some emissary thereof. But it is unquestionable that Penthouse commissioned a firm to film something new, and it was actually quite beautiful to look at: a psychedelic multiple exposure of a topless dancer, as well as a dancer in a skeleton outfit, all accompanied by an acoustic guitar. That footage was intercut into a domestic scene, as though it were a flashback of some sort. But by the time the movie finishes, we realize that it was not a flashback after all; it was merely meddling by Penthouse. Penthouse further enhanced the film with a country singer surrounded by three nude women. Thanks to a newspaper article, we have an approximate date for when this happened (and we learn about yet another tentative title). Mary Murphy, “Movie Call Sheet,” The Los Angeles Times, 2 December 1972, p A6:

Billy Joe Royal’s performance was force-fitted into the scene of the hoedown, but the footage simply did not match, and the intercutting is rather jarring. I wish I could see how the scene originally played. Penthouse then hired an editor to simplify the movie, cutting it down to 74 minutes. In this short version, characters and relationships were never developed or explored, leaving so many loose ends that it’s no wonder people had trouble following the narrative. I would guess that the original was far more ambiguous and a bit challenging, and that the haunted-house story was a suggestion, planted into disordered minds, that flowered under duress. It was surely not only the Robert Culp character who was affected, but the Eggar character too, as well as many others. But I can’t be sure of details, for the evidence is too sparse. Of this much am I certain, though: The horror was only a small element in what was originally a more complex story. By the time Penthouse got through chopping away, the minimal horror was emphasized to the detriment of everything else. Also, I am CONVINCED that the opening and closing credits were all redone at Penthouse’s orders. Any mention of Centennial Productions was deleted. The clever, skillful, depressing artwork under the opening credits simply COULD NOT have been part of the original movie. Does anyone know who did those little paintings? On the off-chance that you’re interested in these technical details, in an open-matte projection, such as on the DVD, we can sometimes see the table that the paintings are resting on. The table, actually, seems to be an old-fashioned animation stand, with peg holes at the top to help with registration:

Does anyone know what the original opening credits looked like? The soundtrack seems to have been enhanced as well. Most of the film was shot in direct sound and was obviously — obviously — never looped (revoiced). And yet every now and then there actually is a bit of revoicing, and it’s painfully apparent, especially regarding the character of The Major. Am I right to suspect that Penthouse hired a firm to re-record certain segments?

By early 1973, with one further title change, the movie was finally ready for release:

and you might also want to click here

At the very top, hard to read in this low-resolution reproduction, is a little box that says:

...which was not true. Yes, it was featured in the March 1973 Playboy, but it was never featured in Penthouse. You figure it out. I give up. Underneath it says “Presented by PENTHOUSE PICTURES.” The poster also says that this is from Cinerama Releasing. (I never understood how Cinerama degenerated from being a beautiful 4-strip widescreen 8-track process to becoming a mere distributor of Grade-Z movies.) In my quick searches, I find that the movie opened on Wednesday, 28 February 1973, as part of a double bill with Asylum on screen 2 of the Union City Drive-In in Union City, California, and at the Island Drive-In in Alameda, California (it may have opened earlier elsewhere), and that it was advertised in the Oakland Tribune and in The Hayward Daily Review though it was never reviewed.

The Oakland Tribune, Sunday, 25 February 1973, p 6EN: “Selected theatres thruout the Bay Area” is what it says.

The Hayward Daily Review, Wednesday, 28 February 1973, p 21: The reality was a bit different. When it premièred as part of a double feature at two drive-ins, its chances for recognition were crushed. It was forever typecast as a drive-in cheapie unworthy of review or any sort of attention.

Other than that, all I can find are the occasional playdates here and there in smaller markets, beginning in the spring of 1973 and meandering around the country through to the end of 1974. According to the application submitted by Penthouse Productions to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences making the movie eligible for the 46th Academy Awards, the movie opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, 4 April 1973, at the Baldwin Theatre, with a running time of 85 minutes and without an MPAA rating. The application was wrong. It took a bit of searching to check that claim. The running time was almost certainly 74 minutes, and the MPAA rating was R, but it did indeed play at the Baldwin, which I would not otherwise have understood. Here’s the eye-catching advertisement:

Penthouse, as owner, and Cinerama, as distributor, should have done a little better than that, surely!

It would be most helpful if we could find the original version of the movie so that we could compare it with the release version. Does the original still exist somewhere? Or even the script would help. Does anyone know where the script is? Oh well, maybe it’s not that important, for while this movie does unquestionably have its virtues and some genuinely lovely moments, it was probably never really any good, and I’m pretty sure that even in an authentic version it would be nothing to get excited about. Robert Culp was ecstatic about the movie as it was in production, but I imagine he would have been disappointed had he ever seen the original cut. And if he ever saw the release version, he probably wanted to commit hara kiri.

If I may be permitted to read between the lines, it seems that Penthouse/Cinerama had the idea that this movie could be released to individual cinemas and generate word-of-mouth, after which it would get bids and play the larger cities. But apart from the magazine pictorial, the movie was not really advertised at all, and so the strategy ended in abject failure. A Name for Evil was usually mentioned only in the 6-point daily list of other-movies-now-playing. So obviously it never picked up any bids, it never played in New York City, as far as I can tell, and it was just dumped off onto cinemas that couldn’t find anything else to play. And what should one expect from such a treatment? How could such a lackadaisical promotion possibly generate any excitement at all? People don’t see movies because they’re good, and they don’t avoid movies that are bad. People see the movies that the mainstream media tell them to see, and they like the movies that the mainstream media tell them to like. Yes, this is a social-economic experiment, it is behavioral control, and it is mind control — and it works!!! Penthouse tried — and tried, and tried, and tried — to buck the system, and to get a movie to sell on its own merits. A few movies are truly “discovered” by the public and develop a small coterie of fans solely on merit, but I know of no movie that ever became a major success by virtue of its quality alone. Maybe it can be done, but I don’t see how. It certainly couldn’t be done with this movie, because there’s nothing especially likeable about it. And when poor or nonexistent advertising makes a movie invisible, the perception is that it must be a cheap and incompetent indie to be avoided. Surely that’s what happened here.

I don’t know how much Penthouse paid to acquire the movie, though I imagine it was somewhere in the area of the $1.2 million that Stone et al were seeking in damages and compensations. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that was the price. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Penthouse got all its studio work and advertising materials and office and clerical help and 35mm prints and shipping/postage for free and had no taxes to pay. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the average admission price was $1.50. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the film usually played on a 35-65 policy. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Penthouse and Cinerama split that 35% profit equally. That would mean that Penthouse earned about 25 ¼ cents per ticket. To earn back its $1.2 million investment, it would need to sell 4,571,429 tickets. I don’t think that happened, do you?

According to word on the Internet, there was also a TV version of this movie, with alternative footage to replace the nudity. Was it Penthouse who prepared that? Or Cinerama? Or someone else? Does Penthouse still even have the rights? (Incidentally, the IMDb also supplies yet one more alternative title: The Face of Evil, but when or if or under what circumstances that title was actually used, I don’t know.)

After its one and only movie, Penthouse Pictures Inc closed up shop forever, to be replaced by Penthouse Productions Ltd.

Did anyone see A Name for Evil in 1973 or 1974? If you did see it back then, or better yet, if you worked on the movie, please contact me. Thanks so much!

WATCHED! (1973/1974)

Had it not been for this movie, I would never have learned about Michael H Metzger. It’s more than worth reading the profile of him penned by Nicholas Pileggi and published in The New York Times on 16 May 1971, pp SM34+. I never thought I would have any sympathy for any law-enforcement agent, but this case is a little bit different, for a merciless sadistic psycho finally saw the light and mended his ways, only to be persecuted for it by his former colleagues. He quit law enforcement and switched sides to become an attorney for the accused. In defending one case, he obtained drug samples for testing at a lab superior to the one that the prosecution had used. And for that he was busted on a possession charge. He knew the methodology of the prosecution well enough that he was able to extricate himself from that morass, and Pileggi commented:

What Metzger’s arrest and pretrial hearing did was to bring into public focus one of the murkiest areas of law enforcement today. His case was unusual only in the fact that the defendant had the technical knowledge to put up a defense and the money (it cost him $25,000 in fees and expenses) to afford it. The overwhelming number of men and women arrested every year on narcotics charges, however, are not so fortunate. They are the real victims of abusive police practices and of what the legal profession has come to call the victimless crime.

Unfortunately, as we read in “Drug Prosecution of Coast Lawyer Will Be Resumed,” The New York Times, 2 January 1972, p 45, his “not-guilty” verdict was appealed. (Weren’t we all taught in school that this can’t happen?) Pileggi’s story was compelling, and it is not surprising that a movie would be forthcoming. Barbara Bladen, in her column “The Marquee” in The San Mateo Times, Monday, 7 August 1972, p 14, published a profile of Stacy Keach, the 31-year-old rising star. Among other things, she noted:

...He’ll be moving to San Francisco next month to write and film the Michael Metzger story about a New York prosecuting attorney who while handling narcotics and draft dodge cases, became disillusioned by the corruption within the police department. He moved to San Francisco and turned defender.

John Parsons, a New York documentary filmmaker, is cowriting for the 90-minute project that has NET support....

That calls for further study. John Parsons was an investigative reporter for WCBS-TV 2 in New York City, but lost his job and found himself working in the same capacity at the public-television outlet WNET-TV 13 in the same city. In his new job he had made a documentary program on NY DA Frank Hogan, which, judging from an article by John J O’Connor, “District Attorney Hogan Viewed by WNET,” in The New York Times, 1 December 1971, p 95, was none too complimentary. Among those he interviewed on camera was Michael H Metzger.

So Keach, Parsons, and even Metzger himself set out to make a dramatic TV movie for WNET, but it didn’t turn out the way one would have expected. There was more than the usual amount of “artistic license,” and at the end the Metzger character, called Mike Mandell and played by Keach, turned out to be the looniest and most dangerous character in the whole story. (Actually, considering the obituary in the link above, where we learn that Metzger shot his wife with a bird rifle and then killed himself, perhaps Keach and Parsons knew exactly what they were doing. Bear in mind that it’s not well-adjusted, emotionally balanced, fair-minded, serene people who choose to go into law enforcement.)

After that, the story of the movie gets murky. The final shooting script (no, I have not seen it) was a work, basically, of pure fiction, and as such would certainly not have been approved by the documentary department of WNET. So it is not surprising to read about a different producer taking on the project. Take a look at this announcement from the 4 September 1972 issue of Boxoffice:

Then a second company, Praxis, was added, and the title was changed to Goodnight, Mike, as we can see from A H Weiler’s column in The New York Times, 12 November 1972, p D11:

The movie was completed in 1973 and bore a 1973 copyright, but by the spring of 1974 it still had not been released. Penthouse, as you can see from the above, was not mentioned in any way. So my guess — only a guess — is that the Penthouse managers saw an opportunity when they learned about this movie. The entertainment value was rather low, but it was nonetheless an intriguing little movie, with top-notch direction and startlingly naturalistic acting, and it featured in the lead a magnificent performer. Despite its promise, it had unaccountably been collecting dust on a shelf somewhere in Hollywood. Take a look at this excerpt from an article by Robert F Hawkins, “Penthouse Mag Goes ‘Conglomerate’,” which appeared in the weekly edition of Variety on 22 May 1974:

The above sentence seems, on the surface, to be about two stories: (1) the Keach movie and (2) the Alice Cooper movie. Actually, it is about a third story as well: (3) the misleading statements made by Penthouse to Hawkins. The implication of Hawkins’s sentence is that the movies were in “active production” by Penthouse, whereas in fact they had already been completed, and not by Penthouse.

After the Stacy Keach starrer had collected dust for over a year, Penthouse licensed or purchased the distribution rights for what I presume was a rather small amount of money, in full expectation of being able to rent it to exhibitors. Unsatisfied with either of the proposed titles, the Penthouse executives had probably three or four hundred board meetings and ultimately settled on the simpler and more ominous Watched!, emphasizing the surveillance aspect of the story.

According to IMDb Watched! was released in September 1974, but I can’t find any evidence of a release anywhere. Actually, it was presented at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in Manhattan on Wednesday, 11 September 1974, apparently as part of a film festival or trade festival. To quote from the review by “Robe” in Daily Variety, Tuesday, 17 September 1974 (and republished in the weekly edition the following day):

Penthouse Prods. release of a Palmyra Films production.... Part of a package of films shown at the Atlanta Film Festival and brought into New York by the Carnegie Hall Cinema, this theatrical debut for television writer-director John Parsons is an often erratic effort to make a worthwile statement about surveillance but falls short of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” for the time being the definitive work on the subject....

“Robe” continued with some criticisms I don’t really understand, unless the gripe is about supposed surveillance footage looking too elaborate to have been shot with hidden cameras, or maybe the imposibility of 8mm silent footage being shown on a 16mm projector with dialogue track. I don’t know:

Technically, the film is a mixture of misused professional talent and unrestrained amateurism. The camera work (four cameramen are credited) is choppy and lacks control. This is surprising considering the fact that Parsons’ experience has been in tv, where tight control is the first thing learned. There is apparently little interest for the commercial market unless the “surveillance” angle is exploited.

I had been unaware of any Atlanta Film Festival held in 1974. There was no mention of Penthouse anywhere in the on-screen credits, and neither was there any mention of Praxis. So “Praxis” was either a misprint or it had bailed out of the project. Or maybe it was a silent partner. I don’t know. This is the production credit that we see on screen:

We need to find out what exactly Alive Enterprises and Palmyra Films were. Palmyra was either a DBA or it was a one-shot production company, as it seems not to have done anything else. If you know something about it, please contact me. Thanks! Alive Enterprises, though, is a bit easier to trace. It is an indie that handles, among other things, the Alice Cooper band. That ties in perfectly with the article excerpted above.

Apparently, Penthouse was unable to interest any exhibitors in booking the film. My guess — again, only a guess — is that Penthouse Productions Ltd, as the brand-new kid on the block, was simply not recognized as a valid distributor and was ignored. The workings of the movie business are not significantly different from the workings of the mob. Newbies are not welcome.

Further to confuse/elucidate the issue is the IMDb, which claims that the VHS of Watched! was released by Penthouse Video in 1984. It was not; it was released by Vestron Video in 1984.

So whoever compiled the info for IMDb apparently crossed some wires. The Vestron VHS of Caligula sported a ‘PENTHOUSE VIDEO’ attribution on the spine, and for an IMDb informant to report that the Vestron VHS of Watched! was also released by ‘Penthouse Video’ is pretty good evidence that the informant got the two tapes at the same time and confused them. And indeed, Vestron released both on VHS in 1984, together with a series of other ‘Penthouse Videos’. Caligula was released in early April and Watched! was, I suppose, released on that very same day. So what does that tell us? After having been stuck for a decade with an unsellable film, Penthouse at last was able to reduce its losses slightly with the onset of the home-video age in the mid-1980s. Now at last Penthouse could give the movie some sort of release courtesy of VHS and possibly Beta. Penthouse probably licensed Caligula and its ‘Penthouse’ video series to Vestron Video only on condition that Vestron take Watched! as well.

The VHS cover above supplies us with another maddening clue, quoting, without attribution, one or two reviews from unnamed critics at the mysterious Atlanta Film Festival from 1974(!?!?!). There’s something else curious about the VHS cover as well. Do you see what I’m talking about? There is no rating. Normally videos at the time carried a G or PG or R or X somewhere on the front and/or back cover. But not this one. Yet the Variety review by “Robe” explicitly supplied the film’s rating: R.

This movie was offered to video shops, as far as I can tell, with no fanfare. As a straight-to-video title, it garnered no reviews and died the quietest of deaths. (Why did the video shops take this unknown and hence unrentable movie? Well, back in those days, a videocassette retailing for $59.95 or $69.95 or $79.95 or $89.95 would wholesale for two dollars, or maybe three or four dollars, or five at the most. So in a bulk order of several hundred titles, what was the harm in risking an extra two dollars if there was a small chance of a payoff if a Stacy Keach fan spotted it on the shelf and was happy to fork out the $89.95 or whatever on it? I don’t know how video shops work now, but that’s about how they worked back then.) Penthouse did not wish to be named, surely because it did not want to be associated with a failed movie.

The irony is that this movie is actually pretty good. It was certainly better than most movies of the time, and better than anything being made in Hollywood now. If some museums and archives and the occasional revival house were to promote this as Stacy Keach’s great lost movie, it would probably be received quite well and audiences would be surprised that this movie had slipped them by. It would be nice if someone were at last to give this movie the public recognition that it deserves.

The Vestron VHS edition of Watched! is a full-screen transfer and I assume it was cropped from a masked-in-the-camera 1:1.85 original, though I can’t be certain. It was certainly not shot in a taller format designed for cropping at the cinema. If you know where a 35mm print is located, do let me know, as I would certainly like to examine it. Thanks!

As for Hard Hearted Alice (compound modifier wrongly unhyphenated), Penthouse had a little more luck — very little. The movie was previewed in July 1974 under a new title, Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper, and then it was gradually released beginning in August 1974. (When I got the DVD, I was thrilled beyond words to see that my friend James Randi performs in it! He plays the Dentist and the Executioner, and he created the magic tricks of the beheading and whatnot.)

As far as I know, this advertising campaign was the first public announcement of Penthouse Productions Ltd, and it was unquestionably a last-minute decision to use that wording in the ads. On the commentary track to the DVD, lead singer Vincent Furnier says that Penthouse distributed the movie, and he significantly makes no mention of Penthouse having been in any way involved with the actual production of the movie. He’s surely right. And when we look at the credits, this is what we see:

General Media International Inc was the name of Bob Guccione’s umbrella Corporation, and it was a name he seldom printed anywhere, preferring to list only his smaller Limited Companies. So this credit is a bit surprising. There was no mention anywhere in the opening or closing credits of the name Penthouse. Now, a “PRESENTED BY” credit is not the same as a “PRODUCED BY” credit. As the presenter, General Media Inc/Penthouse Productions Ltd simply purchased or licensed the distribution rights to a pre-existing movie, just as Furnier implied. It is easy to see why Penthouse thought this movie would be a good bet to earn an easy income. Anyone even vaguely aware of popular culture in 1973/1974 would have recognized that the Alice Cooper band needed no promotion; the band was so wildly popular that its name alone sold the product. Since the title by itself was expected to attract sell-out crowds, there was no need to spend the usual six million on saturation advertising. Instead, Penthouse would start it off in small towns and small cities on single screens and let it build up a reputation, after which it would be picked up by major cinema chains. So it seemed like a good deal, a natural, a plan that couldn’t go wrong. And yet this movie sank with barely a trace and never played in the major markets. After poor audience reactions, the comedy routines (which are unfunny unless you’re in an exceptionally giddy mood) were deleted and clips from old Hollywood movies were substituted in their place. I guess that happened after the July 1974 previews, though I can’t be sure. The recent DVD release is of the original version. Why did the movie fail? I really don’t know. Maybe fans were happy only with something new, and had already had their fill of the “Billion Dollar Babies” tour, the songs of which were readily available on LP? Or maybe the movie was so poorly promoted that it simply passed under the radar? Maybe. Heaven knows. A little over a year later Penthouse got fed up and sold the movie:

LA CITTÀ DELLE DONNE (1979) maybe doesn’t really count. It was a Franco Rossellini Production for Felix Cinematografica S.r.l. which Guccione had contracted to fund, though under the Viva imprimatur, not under the Penthouse name. He seems to have paid for at least some of the preproduction, but then withdrew just as the cameras were ready to roll. Franco Rossellini’s cousin, Renzo, came to the rescue and had his company Opera Film coproduce it and his company Gaumont Italia release it. Nonetheless, Guccione got a credit in the original release prints, which was almost immediately thereafter deleted.

As you check around the reference sources, you will notice a number of other movies and TV programs that were presented by Penthouse Productions or Penthouse Presentations or Penthouse One Presentations, but they had nothing to do with Guccione. That was a different Penthouse, which predated Guccione’s use of the Penthouse trademark, and it has caused much confusion. The non-Guccione Penthouse productions that I know about are The Secret Night Caller (1975), The Shari Show (1975/1976), Secrets of Three Hungry Wives (1978), The Great Cash Giveaway Getaway (aka The Magnificent Hustle) (1978–1980), The Secret War of Jackie’s Girls (1980), and Dial 911 (aka The Two Lives of Carol Letner, 1981). I spent several days of my life trying to track down information on these productions, and so I hate to delete my research, especially since someone might find it useful. So if you want to know about this other Penthouse, click here.

After these attempts to break into the market, the Penthouse managers temporarily halted activities and they retired Penthouse Films International Ltd altogether. A few years later the sands shifted. The executives decided to start up again with a recycled name, Penthouse Productions, and they further established Penthouse Home Video, and together those two entities unleashed a number of videos for the home market. The titles published at IMDb — Penthouse, IMDb — Penthouse Productions [us], IMDb — Penthouse Home Video, IMDb — Penthouse Video, and IMDb — Bob Guccione don’t look too promising: Penthouse Love Stories (1986), Penthouse: Fast Cars Fantasy Women (1991), Desire (1991), Penthouse: Ready to Ride (1992), Virtual Photo Shoot: Volume One (1993), Tonya and Jeff's Wedding Night (1994), Secret Lives (1994), Penthouse: 25th Anniversary Swimsuit Video (1994), Penthouse: 25th Anniversary Pet of the Year Spectacular (1994), Kama Sutra: The Art of Making Love (1994), Kama Sutra II: The Art of Making Love (1995), Penthouse: Pet Rocks (1995), Penthouse: The Wild Weekend with the Pets (1996), Penthouse: The Art of Massage (1996), Penthouse: Showgirls of Penthouse (1996), Penthouse Pet of the Year Play-Off 1996, Miami Hot Talk (1996), Sex Off the Runway (1996), Lipstick Girls (1997), Penthouse: Confessions (1997), Venus Descending (1997), Love Games (1998), ESP: Extra Sexual Perception (1998), Penthouse Girls of the Zodiac (1999), Penthouse Pet of the Year Play-Off 2001 (2000), Call Girl (2000), Fashion (2000), Penthouse: Harlots of Hell (2000), Dangerous Things (2000), Dangerous Things 2 (2000), Sex Opera (2000), Amy and Julie (2000), and Penthouse: Pets in Paradise (2001). I have not seen, and shall not see, any of these videos. The titles tell me more than I need to know. Nonetheless I am curious about the business side. What studios were used? What were the costs? Who provided the funding? What was the advertising/release strategy? How well did these videos do? So if you worked on any of these videos, I would be more than happy to hear from you!

After Penthouse’s bankruptcy, purchase, and reorganization in 2003–2004, the new regime decided to continue and accelerate the Penthouse Productions activities. You can see the result in the lists published at IMDb — Penthouse and at IMDb — Penthouse Home Video [us]. I have not seen any of these later movies, and, judging from their freakish titles, I would not like to.

So now you know a very small part of Penthouse’s secret history, the history that the old regime at Penthouse never wanted you to know about. Now that I’ve told you about those secrets, why don’t some of you tell me about the hotel/convention-center/residential project planned for Atlanta, Georgia; or the Penthouse Atlantic Hotel and Penthouse Casino planned for Atlantic City, New Jersey? Who wants to tell me about all the magazines: Lords, Leisure, Longevity, Photo World, Forum, Viva, Omni, Variations, and any others? Who wants to tell me about Minotaur Press and Odyssey Press? Who wants to tell me about Newsconcorp? Who wants to tell me about the proposal for off-shore powerboat racing in the UK? Who wants to tell me about the proposal to re-open Manhattan’s Copacabana Club? Who wants to tell me about the proposed London weekly and about the proposed Bravo? You can tell me. I won’t bite. Click here to reach me. Thanks!

ANICA — Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali

ANICA — Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali

A Penthouse Films International and Felix Cinematografica S.r.l. Production

Bob Guccione and Penthouse Films International present

Caligula

A Penthouse Films International and Felix Cinematografica S.r.l. Production
Copyright © 1979 Penthouse Films International, Ltd. (as advertised; later disputed)
Principal Photography: 2 August 1976 – 31 December 1976

SCREENINGS AND RELEASES (partial list)
Location	Cinema(s)	Date	Distributor	Length
London, England	UNKNOWN (work-in-progress trade screenings)	13–17 Nov 1978	Felix/Penthouse	Unknown, prob circa 160 min
Brooklyn NY	US Attorney General’s Office, Eastern Division, New York	?? Apr 1979	Penthouse	156 min
Washington DC	UNKNOWN (screening for the US Dept of Justice)	?? Apr 1979	Penthouse	156 min
Cannes trade festival	UNKNOWN (world première, 3 screenings)	11 May 1979 (& 1 or 2 other dates?)	Felix/Penthouse	prob 156 min or maybe circa 170 min (not 210)
Various Cities	UNKNOWN (trade screenings) (According to Malcolm McDowell, the trade print had an extra 15 min or so of porn added.)	Jul(?)–Dec(?) 1979	Penthouse	Unknown, prob circa 170 min
Meldola, Italy	Cinema Nuovo Censor clearance challenged by a local citizen. Court upholds censor board’s decision to allow showings anywhere in Italy.	14–20 Aug 1979	PAC	Italian version: 150 min
Meldola(?), Italy	Cinema Apollo (private screening for court case)	31 Aug 1979	PAC	Italian version: 150 min
Rome, Italy	6-cinema showcase: Holiday, Nuovo Star, Radio City, Ritz, Royal, Vittoria Seized by police on 15 Nov 1979. Court overturns previous ruling, and prosecutes not the censor board, but the Italian producer and distributor for the crime of obeying the law. This version of the film is banned in Italy to this day.	10–15 Nov 1979	PAC	Italian version: 150 min
Italy	UNKNOWN (11 other cities) Seized by police on 15 Nov 1979.	10–15 Nov 1979	PAC	Italian version: 150 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Magno Screening Room (private screening)	17 Nov 1979	Penthouse	156 min
New Haven CT	York Square Cinema (exclusive screening for Yale University Law School) (see also 16 Apr 1980 below)	27 Jan 1980	Penthouse	156 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Trans-Lux East (renamed Penthouse East) $7.50	1 Feb 1980 – 29 Jan 1981	Penthouse	156 min
Berlin Film Festival (18–29 Feb 1980)	Royal Palast	?? Feb 1980	Penthouse	156 min
Washington DC	Georgetown (aka Dunbarton) $6.00	28 Mar 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
San Francisco CA	Lumiere $6.00	28 Mar 1980 – 18 Sep 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
New Haven CT	York Square Cinema (see also 27 Jan 1980 above)	16 Apr 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Hollywood CA	Holly $7.50 All shows canceled on Sat–Mon, 26–28 Jul 1980, when the print was stolen. A replacement print was rushed in by Tuesday morning.	18 Apr 1980 – 25 Jun 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Vienna, Austria	Gartenbau Kino	25 Apr 1980 –	Tobis Filmkunst	circa 150 min
Germany	UNKNOWN (25 cinemas at first, soon after 50 total, then 100, then 130)	25 Apr 1980 –	Tobis Filmkunst	circa 150 min
Wilmington DE	Budco Branmar Twin	25 Apr 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Philadelphia PA	Midtown (screen 1) $3.00 mat, $3.50 night (normal prices)	25 Apr 1980 – 21 May 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
	(screen 2) $3.00 mat, $3.50 night (normal prices)	19 Aug 1980 – 4 Sep 1980
	(screen 2) $4.00	19 Sep 1980 – 2 Oct 1980
Oakland CA	Rockridge Showcase	25 Apr 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Palo Alto CA	Aquarius	25 Apr 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Rego Park, Queens)	Drake	9 May 1980 – 31 Jul 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Midwood, Brooklyn)	Avenue U	9(or 16?) May 1980 – 17(or 31?) Jul 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Hartford CT	UNDETERMINED	ca 9 May 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Holyoke MA	Holyoke Mall at Ingleside (Closed by police)	15 May 1980 – 16(?) Jun 1980	Newsconcorp(?)	156 min
New Bedford MA	State (aka Zeiterion, 684 Purchase St) (Run canceled by management as a precautionary measure)	16 May 1980 — 17(?) Jun 1980	Newsconcorp(?)	156 min
Huntington NY	Balcony (carved out of the Huntington Theatre)	16–22(?) May 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Providence RI	UNDETERMINED	16 May 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
CT	TWO MORE BOOKINGS, DETAILS UNDETERMINED	ca 16 May 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NJ	THREE MORE BOOKINGS, DETAILS UNDETERMINED	ca 16 May 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Portland OR	Mt Tabor $6.00	16 May 1980 – 27 Aug 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Philadelphia PA	Goldman (screen 1) $3.00 mat, $3.50 night (normal prices)	23 May 1980 – 12 Jun 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Doylestown PA	Barn 5	23 May 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Madison WI	Esquire (aka Bartell Community Theatre, 113 E Mifflin St)	30 May 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Seattle WA	Town $5.00	6 Jun 1980 – 30 Jul 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
	"	12 Sep 1980 –
Boston MA	Saxon $6.00 (Seized by police on fourth day)	13–16 Jun 1980	Newsconcorp	156 min
Kansas City MO	Fairyland Twin Drive-In (screen 1). Double-featured with The Innocence of Susan. $2.50 (normal price). (Booked for a 2- or 3-week run, but canceled after 1 week possibly in response to political pressure.)	20–26 Jun 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
	(No double feature) $2.50 (normal price).	5–18 Sep 1980
France	UNKNOWN (14-cinema showcase in Paris + 10 suburban + 56 cinemas elsewhere)	2 Jul 1980 –	AMLF-Paris	136 min (20 min cut)
San Juan PR	Cinema Condado (Repeatedly closed by police)	4 Jul 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Philadelphia PA	Regency (screen 1) $3.50 (normal price)	4 Jul 1980 – 13 Aug 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
	(screen 1) $4.00	12–18 Sep 1980
Denver CO	Vogue (originally the Mission; now Vogue Lofts, 1465 S Pearl St)	11 Jul 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Pittsburgh PA	Chatham $5.00	18 Jul 1980 – 11 Sep 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Canarsie, Brooklyn)	Canarsie Triplex (screen 3)	8–11(or 17?) Aug 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Netherlands	UNKNOWN (25 cinemas in 22 cities)	14 Aug 1980 –	Tuschinski Film Distribution	156 min
NYC (Middle Village, Queens)	Arion	15 Aug 1980 – 6 Nov 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Boston MA	Cheri I-II-III (screen 3) $6.00	15–28 Aug 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
	(screen 2) $6.00	29 Aug 1980 – 25 Sep 1980
[NUMEROUS LOCALITIES] MA	UNKNOWN (saturation booking throughout entire state)	5 Sep 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Columbus OH	University Flick $5.00	5(?) Sep 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Bay Ridge, Brooklyn)	Fortway Triplex (screen 2)	19 Sep 1980 – 23 Oct 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Chicago IL	Davis $7.50	19 Sep 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Bronx)	Circle	3–9 Oct 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Dayton OH	Kon-Tiki $5.00	[UNDETERMINED]	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Albuquerque NM	Don Pancho’s (2108 Central Ave SE) $5.00	3 Oct 1980 – 25 Dec 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Bronx)	Palace Twin (screen 1)	10–30 Oct 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
	"	28 Nov 1980 – 18 Dec 1980
New Hartford NY	Cinema 6 (1 Sangertown Sq, evenings only) $5.00 (screen 1) (Seized by police)	24 Oct 1980 – 11 Nov 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Fairlawn OH	Village (55 N Miller Rd) (Run canceled by court order)	24 Oct 1980 – 13 Nov 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
On about 27 Oct 1980 Caligula got its first video release, courtesy of film pirates. A vendor in Albuquerque offered me a VHS for the modest price of $150 but, tempted though I was, I turned it down. I asked him who who his supplier was, but that, apparently, was the wrong question to ask. If you have this original bootleg, please let me know as I would LOVE to examine it. Thanks!
London, England	Prince Charles	30 Oct 1980 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
NYC (Brighton Beach, Brooklyn)	Oceana Triplex (screen 3)	31 Oct 1980 – 6 Nov 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
	"	28 Nov 1980 – 4 Dec 1980
Copenhagen DK	Grand	?? Nov 1980 –	Constantin Film ApS	156 min
Minneapolis MN	Cedar (416 Cedar Ave S)	7 Nov 1980 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Astoria, Queens)	Strand Twin (screen 1)	14–20 Nov 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Little Neck, Queens)	Little Neck	14 Nov 1980 – 25 Dec 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Tokyo, Japan	UNKNOWN	21 Nov 1980 –	Nippon Herald Films	[UNK] (350 foggings & cuts)
NYC (Borough Park, Brooklyn)	Walker	28 Nov 1980 – 4(?) Dec 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Sunnyside, Queens)	Center Twin (screen 2, then 1)	28 Nov 1980 – 18 Dec 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Tokyo, Japan	UNKNOWN (3 more cinemas)	28 Nov 1980 –	Nippon Herald Films	[UNK] (350 foggings & cuts)
[VARIOUS LOCATIONS] Japan	UNKNOWN (about 150 cinemas)	28(?) Nov 1980 –	Nippon Herald Films	[UNK] (350 foggings & cuts)
Amherst NY	Evans Art (Evanstown Plaza, 428 Evans St) $5.00 (Booked for 4 wks, seized by police, then canceled after 6th day to avoid legal proceedings)	5–10 Dec 1980	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Boston MA	Beacon Hill (screen 1) (only 3–4 days/wk) $6.00	23 Jan 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Borough Park, Brooklyn)	Beverly Twin (screen 2)	30 Jan 1981 – 5 Feb 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Quad Cinema (screen 1 thru 19 Feb, then screen 4) $6.00, then $3.50–$4.50 (normal prices) beginning on 13 Feb	30 Jan 1981 – 5 Mar 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Movieland $6.00, then $5.00 beginning on 13 Feb	30 Jan 1981 – 14 May 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Olympia (screen 3) $6.00	30 Jan 1981 – 5 Mar 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Liberty $5.00	30 Jan 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
London, England	Classic 2 Haymarket and ABC Fulham Road	ca 6 Feb 1981 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Chicago IL	[TWO UNKNOWN CINEMAS]	6 Feb 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Prospect Heights IL	Palwaukee $7.50	6 Feb 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Edinburgh, Scotland	ABC Film Centre 1	15 Feb 1981 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Bristol, England	ABC New Centre 1	15 Feb 1981 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Liverpool, England	ABC Futurist	15 Feb 1981 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Montréal PQ	Cinéma de Paris	20 Feb 1981 –	Films Mutuels	153 min (3 min cut)
Sweden	UNKNOWN	?? Feb 1981 –	Pinguin Films International	156 min
Glasgow, Scotland	La Scala	?? Mar 1981 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Aberdeen, Birmingham, Dundee, Manchester, Newcastle, England	UNKNOWN	?? Mar 1981 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Leeds, England	ABC Film Centre 1	2 Apr 1981 –	GTO	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Melbourne VIC, Australia	Australian Twin Cinema (272 Collins St)	19 Jun 1981 – 21 Oct 1981	Roadshow Distributors Pty	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Sydney NSW, Australia	Barclay (131 Russell St)	19 Jun 1981 –	Roadshow Distributors Pty	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg 149 min
Vancouver BC	Towne Cinema (919 Granville St; aka Studio [1949 and renamed Studio again in 1984], Eve [1972], Lyric [1978; not to be confused with the previous Lyric]; Paradise [1988], now The Tonic Bar [1999])	3 Jul 1981 –	Roke Distributors	156 min
Calgary AB	Towne Cinema (617 8th Ave SW) (Seized by police after one week)	9–16 Oct 1981	Roke Distributors	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg (1 min cut) 148 min
	" (Reopens after acquittal)	5(?) Dec(?) 1981 –
Edmonton AB	Towne Cinema (118th Ave & 124th St) (Seized by police on opening night)	9 Oct 1981	Roke Distributors	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg (1 min cut) 148 min
	" (Reopens after acquittal)	5(?) Dec(?) 1981 –
Toronto ON	[UNKNOWN]	9 Oct 1981 –	Roke Distributors	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg (several cuts) 148(?) min
[VARIOUS LOCALITIES] ON	[UNKNOWN] (7 cinemas)	9 Oct 1981 –	Roke Distributors	‘Modified Version’ w/ altern ftg (several cuts) 148(?) min
Danbury CT	Trans-Lux Palace	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Stamford CT	Trans-Lux Ridgeway	16–22(?) Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Clifton NJ	Nathan’s Clifton	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Cranford NJ	RKO Cranford	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
East Brunswick NJ	Loew’s Route 18 Twin	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Edgewater NJ	Loew’s Showboat Quad	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Edison NJ	Plainfield-Edison Indoor	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Freehold NJ	Music Makers’ Quad (later Freehold Cinema 6)	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Hackensack NJ	RKO Oritani	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Jersey City NJ	Loew’s Jersey City Triplex	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Middletown NJ	Middletown	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Morristown NJ	Brandt’s Community	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Newark NJ	RKO Branford	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Parsippany NJ	Loew’s Troy Hills Twin	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Sayreville NJ	Redstone’s Amboy Eightplex	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Somerville NJ	Somerville Drive-In	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Toms River NJ	Music Makers’ Dover Twin	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Wayne NJ	RKO Wayne	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Amityville NY	Almi/Century’s Amityville	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Bayshore NY	Loew’s South Shore Mall Twin	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Cedarhurst NY	B.S. Moss Central Triplex (screen 2)	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
New Hyde Park NY	Almi/Century’s Park East (2349 Jericho Turnpike) (often listed as being in Garden City)	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Hauppauge NY	Brandt’s Hauppauge	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Hicksville NY	Cinema 5’s Hicksville	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Hicksville NY	North & South (screen 2)	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Huntington NY	Almi/Century’s Whitman	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Merrick NY	Brandt’s Merrick	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
New Rochelle NY	Loew’s New Rochelle Twin	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Bronx)	Lightstone’s Palace	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Brooklyn)	Loew’s Paradise Quad (screen 4)	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Brooklyn)	Cinema 5’s Albemarle	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Brooklyn)	Loew’s Alpine Twin (screen 2)	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Brooklyn)	Almi/Century’s College	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Brooklyn)	Loew’s Metropolitan Quad	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Brooklyn)	Florin/Creative’s Plaza Cinema (screen 2)	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Brooklyn)	Florin/Creative’s Ridgewood (often listed as Queens, but actually Brooklyn. Please help save the theatre!)	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Loew’s State II	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Manhattan)	Loew’s Orpheum	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Eltingville, Staten Island)	Ackerman’s Amboy Twin	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Astoria, Queens)	Astoria	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Bayside, Queens)	Bayside	16–22 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Elmhurst, Queens)	Loew’s Elmwood Twin	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Flushing, Queens)	Parson’s Twin (screen 1)	16–22 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Flushing, Queens)	RKO Keith’s Triplex (screen 3 then 2)	16 Oct 1981 – 5(?) Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Glen Oaks, Queens)	Almi/Century’s Glen Oaks	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Jamaica, Queens)	RKO Alden	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Patchogue NY	Patchogue Drive-In (aka Sunset)	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Pearl River NY	Venturini’s Central	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Peekskill NY	Lesser’s Beach Cinema	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Roslyn NY	KB’s Roslyn	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Shirley NY	Florin/Creative’s Shirley Twin	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Spring Valley NY	Cinema 45	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Stony Brook NY	Loew’s Stony Brook Triplex	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Wantagh NY	Cinema 5’s Wantagh	16 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
West Milford NY	Music Makers’ Abby	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
White Plains NY	Maxi’s Colony	16 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Yonkers NY	B.S. Moss Movieland	16–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Melbourne VIC, Australia	East End Cinema (100 Bourke St)	22 Oct 1981 – 2 Dec 1981	Roadshow Distributors Pty	‘Modified Version’ w/altern ftg) 149 min
Bridgeport CT	RKO Merritt	23 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
North Miami Beach FL	163rd Street & Patio Theatre 3-Plex (screen 1) (also at six other cinemas and three drive-ins)	23 Oct 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Albuquerque NM	Lobo	23 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Bronx)	Palace Twin (screen 2)	23–29 Oct 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Valley Stream NY	Redstone’s Sunrise Eightplex	23 Oct 1981 – 19 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Stamford CT	Trans-Lux Avon I II (screen 2)	30(?) Oct 1981 – 12(?) Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Santa Fé NM	Capital (formerly the Pickford Theatre, then the St Michael’s Village Theatre, St Michael’s Village Shopping Center, 1640 St Michael’s Dr)	30 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Oyster Bay NY	The Movies aka Pine Hollow	30 Oct 1981 – 5 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
East Meadow NY	Flick 1 & 2 (screen 2)	6–12 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
NYC (Manhattan)	86th Street East	6 Nov 1981 – 12(?) Nov 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Norwalk CT	Cinema 1 & 2 aka Garden Cinemas (screen 1)	13–19 Nov 1981	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Elyria OH	[UNKNOWN — NOT ADVERTISED] (Loew’s chain)	20 Nov 1981 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Winnipeg MB	Towne Cinema 8	22 Jan 1982 – 18 Mar 1982	Roke Distributors	‘Modified Version’ w/altern ftg (2 min cut) 147 min
	"	15–28 Jun 1984
	(Double-billed with Flesh Gordon)	29 Jun 1984 – 5 Jul 1984
Charlotte NC	[UNKNOWN]	?? Jan 1982 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Gastonia NC	Webb (booked according to Variety 20 Jan 1982, but need to confirm)	?? Feb 1982 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Salina KS	Sunset Cinemas Twin aka The Movies 1 & 2	5–11 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Quakertown PA	Quakertown 3 (screen 3)	5 Feb 1982–	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Bell CA	Liberty	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Canoga Park CA	Baronet	19 Feb 1982 – 11 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Cerritos CA	Alondra	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Covina CA	Covina Drive-In	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Cypress CA	Cypress Twin (aka Family Twin, 9823 Walker St)	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Fountain Valley CA	Family Twin (17161 Brookhurst)	19 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Gardena CA	Roadium Drive-In	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Hawthorne CA	Hawthorne	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Los Angeles (Highland Park) CA	Highland	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Hollywood CA	Clinton	19 Feb 1982 – 11 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Hollywood CA	Oriental	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Los Angeles CA	Gordon (aka Regent Showcase)	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Montclair CA	Montclair	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Oceanside CA	Camino Cinema 4	19 Feb 1982 – 18 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Orange CA	Villa Park Twin aka Village Theatre (Screen 2)	19 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Palmdale CA	Palmdale Drive-In	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Panorama City CA	Americana	19 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Redondo Beach CA	Marina Cinema (300 S Catalina Ave)	19 Feb 1982 – 11 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Riverside (Arlington) CA	Arlington	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Rosemead CA	Rosemead	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Santa Fé Springs CA	La Mirada Drive-In	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Tarzana CA	Movies	19 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Thousand Oaks CA	Melody (Parkoaks Plaza, 1792 N Moorpark Rd)	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
San Bernardino CA	Studio	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
San Diego CA	Sports Arena Six	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
San Diego CA	Century Twin (4370 54th St)	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
San Jacinto CA	Hemacinto Drive-In	19–25 Feb 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Downey CA	Avenue (Neighborhood theatre/cinema built in 1922. The city government recently voted unanimously to demolish this building in 2012, much to the annoyance of the residents. Please sign the petition to save it!)	26 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Goleta CA	Magic Lantern	26 Feb 1982 – 11 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
La Verne CA	Mt. Baldy Drive-In (3515 White)	26 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Norco CA	Crest Drive-In (nr 3rd & Hamner)	26 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Twentynine Palms CA	Smith Ranch Drive-In	26 Feb 1982 – 4 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Los Angeles CA	Four Star	5–11 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Cedar Falls IA	Cinema III aka College Square Cinema	5–11 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Logansport IN	UA Theatres: The Movies at Cass Plaza (321 E Market St) (screen 2)	12–18 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Encinitas CA	La Paloma	19 Mar 1982 – 1 Jun 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Oceanside CA	Star	19–25 Mar 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Winnipeg MB	Cineplex 7 Cinemas aka Eaton Place 7	9 Apr 1982 – 27 May 1982	Roke Distributors	‘Modified Version’ w/altern ftg (2 min cut) 147 min
Palatine IL	Willow Creek (double-billed with Three Brothers)	24–30 Sep 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
Palatine IL	53 Drive-In 1, 2, 3 (screen 2)	1–3 Oct 1982	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	‘R’ w/altern ftg 103 min
At about this time Caligula received what appears to have been its first official video release, on Beta and VHS in the UK. The video was of the re-edited UK version, which later came to be known as the ‘Modified Version,’ and it was issued on the Electric Video label. It was also at about this time in the US that the ‘R’ version finally petered out, and the 156-minute version was given a re-release in 100 new prints.
Manlius NY	Manlius	31 Dec 1982 – 3 Feb 1983	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Norwalk CT	SoNo Cinema	22–25 Jan 1983	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Long Beach CA	Art	1 Jul 1983 –	Analysis Film Releasing Corp	156 min
Venice CA	Fox Venice	12 Aug 1983 – 1 Sep 1983	Penthouse (Analysis went out of business in Aug 1983)	156 min
In late August or early September 1983 Caligula, in both the 156-minute and 103-minute versions, was made available for nontheatrical distribution in 16mm. “Nontheatrical” generally means university film clubs and movie series, classroom use, as well as showings at libraries and clubs and other similar venues.
Clifton Park NY	Cinema North	23 Sep 1983 – 20 Oct 1983	Penthouse	156 min
Vestron licensed pan-American video rights in autumn 1983 and presented its line-up of upcoming Penthouse videos to retailers and distributors at a January 1984 consumer-electronics show in Las Vegas NV. It seems that the Beta, VHS, CED, and LD editions of Caligula were on sale by early April 1984.
Rome, Italy	UNKNOWN (revised Io Caligola)	31 Mar 1984 –	PAC	New version w/altern ftg 123 min
Milan, Italy	UNKNOWN (revised Io Caligola)	31 Mar 1984 –	PAC	New version w/altern ftg 123 min
VARIOUS LOCATIONS, Italy	UNKNOWN (revised Io Caligola)	?? Apr 1984 –	PAC	New version w/altern ftg 123 min
Hermosa Beach CA	Bijou Cinema Two	15–17 May 1984	Penthouse	156 min
Long Beach CA	Art	29 Jun 1984 –	Penthouse	156 min
St Louis MO	Varsity (closed by County Prosecutors)	13–16 Jul 1984	Penthouse	156 min
Santa Fé NM	City Lights Cinema (formerly the Bijou Theater, Pen Road Shopping Center at Bonanza Plaza, S St Francis Dr nr Cerrillos Rd)	4–9 Oct 1984 (late show)	Penthouse	156 min
North Hollywood CA	UA Movies aka UA Valley Plaza 6	12–13 Oct 1984 (midnights)	Penthouse	156 min
Hollywood CA	Vista	9–10 Mar 1985	Penthouse	156 min
The Twentieth-Anniversary US Re-Release was issued 19 ½ years after the original US première. The press release promised that this would be the “uncensored director’s cut” which, of course, did not exist. The poster promised this would be “DIGITALLY REMASTERED & FULLY RESORTED.” The print was actually rather awful, with an emulsion gouge on the interpositive during one scene, and with a new 5.1 Dolby stereo track needlessly synthesized from the original mono. Guccione had promised to reinsert 12 minutes of footage deleted prior to the original release, but didn’t realize that those scenes literally could not be reinserted. Thus there was no resorting; the sorting was the same as it had always been. In some venues this did quite well, but then the distributor suddenly ceased business and the re-release was stopped dead in its tracks. Note the line breaks, which force “AN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY GORE VIDAL” to the beginning of a line, as well as “DIRECTED AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY GIANCARLO LUI AND BOB GUCCIONE.” See how one can mislead by telling the truth? Note that Franco Rossellini’s name is as buried as it had ever been previously. And what’s that about “CALIGULA SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE ON PENTHOUSE RECORDS”? It was? In 1999? Really? I don’t think so.
NYC (Manhattan)	City Cinema: The Village East (screen 7)	17–30(?) Sep 1999	Independent Artists Co (new firm founded by N Lee Lacy in Feb 1999)	156 min
NYC (Manhattan)	City Cinema: Sutton (screen 2)	17–22 Sep 1999	Independent Artists Co (N Lee Lacy)	156 min
Los Angeles CA	Nuart	24 Sep 1999 – 30 Sep 1999	Independent Artists Co (N Lee Lacy)	156 min
Pasadena CA	Laemmle’s Colorado	1–7 Oct 1999	Independent Artists Co (N Lee Lacy)	156 min
Hollywood CA	Laemmle’s Sunset 5	1– Oct 1999	Independent Artists Co (N Lee Lacy)	156 min
Los Angeles CA	Los Feliz 3	8– Oct 1999	Independent Artists Co (N Lee Lacy)	156 min
Buffalo NY	Angelica Film Center & Café 8-Plex aka Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre (screen 4)	22 Oct 1999 – 4 Nov 1999	Independent Artists Co (N Lee Lacy)	156 min
San Diego CA, San Francisco CA, Denver CO, Chicago IL, Boston MA, Detroit MI, Minneapolis MN, St Louis MO, Houston TX, Seattle WA	[I DON’T HAVE ANY SPECIFICS]	ca Sep & Oct 1999	Independent Artists Co (N Lee Lacy)	156 min
UK	Film Four (Cable-TV premium channel)	31 Oct 1999	[UNKNOWN]	142 min (overspeeded to 137 min)
23 November 1999 saw the ‘Twentieth-Anniversary’ LD and DVD releases of the 156-minute edition as well as of a new 102-minute ‘R’ edition, poorly edited from the 156-min version seemingly on a home computer. If you have the ‘Twentieth-Anniversary’ (ID9060GM) laserdisc available at a reasonable price, please write to me and I’ll buy it from you.
Cleveland OH	Cleveland Cinémathèque (11141 East Blvd)	20 & 22 Jan 2000	[UNKNOWN] (Independent Artists was insolvent by Dec 1999)	156 min
USA/Canada	Cinemax (Cable-TV premium channel)	27 Feb 2000, 2 Mar 2000, 13 Mar 2000, 10 Jul 2000, 13 Jul 2000, 31 Jul 2000, 1 Aug 2000	(?)	‘R’ without altern ftg (unique to video) 102 min
IF YOU CAN ADD TO THIS KNOWLEDGE, PLEASE WRITE TO ME! THANKS! AND IF YOU HAVE STORIES TO TELL ABOUT SEEING THIS MOVIE WHEN IT WAS NEW, OR ABOUT WORKING IN ANY OF THE CINEMAS THAT PRESENTED IT, I’M ALL EARS!!!!

Filmed in English.

Original research and commentary copyright © 2009 by Ranjit Sandhu and James Ellis Chaffin. All rights reserved.

Click here to go to the next movie

Click here to read Stuart Urban’s reminiscences about being an assistant editor to Tinto Brass for Caligula

Click here to read about the mythical 210-minute version of Caligula

Click here to read what the performers had to say about Caligula

Click here to read excerpts from critical reviews of Caligula

Click here to read about the various video editions of Caligula

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And, of course, don’t forget the joke:

We all missed our opportunity. This poster, which was NOT on display when I saw this five-minute movie, was auctioned at Christie’s for a mere €5,625. What a bargain! By the way, if you’ve seen this movie, think again. There’s a long version and a short version, and there’s a long ending and a short ending, and they can be and have been combined in all possible different ways. How many more versions there might be, I don’t know.

WHO KILLED CALIGULA?

In June or July 2009 or thereabouts, I learned about this new HiDef 3D feature project, but I was sworn to secrecy. Now that the secret is out, there’s no longer any reason for me to keep it a secret: Who Killed Caligula? What this will be, I don’t know. A remake? A revision? A farce? A Javanese Wayang shadow-puppet play? I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to it, whatever it turns out to be.