STARTLING REVELATION ! Note added on Monday, 14 April 2003: According to Variety, Caligula received its world première at a private screening during the May 1979 Cannes trade festival (as distinct from the concurrent Cannes Film Festival), and further, its running time was 210 minutes. Here’s the best quote:

...With the biggest investment ever in porn to play with, Brass (and the anonymous editor who contributed a final 150-min. version from the three-and-a-half hour edition seen at Cannes), in a fit of paranoiac obsession, sifts through the pages of first-century Rome under syphilitic Tiberius and epileptic Caligula to demonstrate with violence and horror the unlimited baseness of the human condition and to illustrate an anthology of sexual aberrations in which incest is the only face-saving relationship.... Deletions from the 210-minute version clandestinely screened at Cannes last May, would indicate the filmmaker’s intention to stage a “Fellatio Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.”...(Hank “Werb” Werba, Review of Caligula, Variety, Wednesday, 21 November 1979, p 24)

Well, I’m quite sure it was at least somewhat longer than the 156-minute version released in the US in February 1980, but a claim of 210 minutes seems a bit extreme—even if we take into account the reports of numerous deleted scenes, many of whose publicity stills were published in the May 1980 Penthouse and elsewhere. Even so, this unsubstantiated passing reference has gone into film history, and “sources” from the half-fictional Ultimate Porno to countless official listings matter-of-factly state that the print at Cannes was 210 minutes. Other sources mangle things, and state that the 210-minute version was actually released. How these stories grow! Nonetheless, back in about 1985 or 1986 I tried my luck. I called Penthouse International and asked if I could get permission to view the 210-minute version. The fellow who took my call (I wish I could remember his name) went silent for a moment, and then sounded totally confused. “What 210-minute version?” Was I perhaps referring to a rough cut? No, I said, I was referring to the version shown at Cannes in May 1979. He then sounded even more confused. But, he explained, the version shown there was exactly the same as the version released in the US in February 1980, which had been prepared and completed long before May 1979. When I told him that Variety reported otherwise, he seemed to figure out what went wrong, and attributed the mistaken running time to a typo. That would seem to make perfect sense. Someone means to type “2 ½ hours” but mistakenly types “3 ½ hours” instead—and voilà, history is invented. In any case, from that day until yesterday, I dismissed claims of a 210-minute version. But then I discovered Noel Bailey’s review of the film on the Internet Movie Database, in which he claims to have seen it. Take a look:

When discussing CALIGULA... it becomes necessary to distinguish WHICH version you are referring to. Personally I have had the (mis)fortune to see all three and they vary colossally—trust me! The original Penthouse release which has been screened at mostly underground art houses runs for over 210 minutes and contains scenes that would pale the most ardent voyeur or paedophilic raincoater! Full-on rape with full-blown (poor choice of words, I realise) penetration, sodomy, erections every which way and total hard-core sexual perversion. Violence you just wouldn’t credit to being filmable let alone able to be released etc etc. I really don’t feel inclined to “review” this particular monstrosity. Just take it from me, it projects sick filmmaking to never-again-to-be-approached stomach-churning levels....

Certain that he was mistaken, I wrote to him, and he replied as follows:

Thanks for your email. Nothing I have ever written for the IMDb has attracted the worldwide feedback I have had from CALIGULA.... SIGNS came close but I have probably had 100-plus people at their wits’ end LOOKING for this elusive version—some for 20 years—contact me in the last few months.

Yeah, your Penthouse contact is either wrong or lying because I have seen the 210-minute version TWICE. The first time was late in ’79 at an underground “dive” in London... the kind of place you don’t ask the age of the girls sitting beside you. The other time was in Sydney at a private screening of a friend of a friend (who unfortunately died himself many years ago). As I recall, the print had been illegally pirated from the UK (probably the same one I saw the previous year)... there must obviously BE others out there!

Let me just tell you that the 156-minute version by comparison to the “uncut” monstrosity is little worse than THE LION KING. What is contained in those “missing 54 minutes” beggars belief. Full-on, in-your-face sexual intercourse, sodomy, graphic rape, visceral violence... you name it... all lovingly filmed from, at times, just centimetres from the lens. As I recall, even scenes of way-underage girls doing stuff I’m sure their moms hadn’t taught them. (Bear in mind I can’t say for a fact that the girls I saw were underage—I have a 16-year-old daughter myself that in school uniform you would swear was 12/13... if that!—and with judicious make-up you can weave all kinds of magic.) What I SAW could never have gained theatrical release... my life has not been enriched by seeing it (the second time I was well into the Jack Daniels and ice!!!). Believe me, it is NOT something you would want to take your girlfriend, daughter or wife to see.

But yeah... it exists!

Obviously you have made the study, investigation, analysis and crucifixion of CALIGULA a life’s work... the thing deserves no less!

Noel Bailey

Well, to put it mildly, I was flabbergasted! If this report is true, then the print must have been made by someone who snuck into Twickenham Film Studios (or into the anonymous lab that made the Cannes print) after hours, bringing his own raw stock with him. ADDENDUM ADDED ON THURSDAY, 17 APRIL 2003: I wrote back, asking for particulars on the when’s and where’s and how’s, and especially about how the exhibitors announced it without getting caught, and how they got everyone to keep quiet about it. He replied:

The screening in London was at some late-night club not too far off Leicester Square as I recall... might have been along Shaftsbury Avenue. Never knew what it was called... smoky, seedy and for the most part mega-dingy. Late late underground London Town club life doesn’t usually come with full-addressed memory hehe! Was there at the invite of an acquaintance simply to “see something pretty hot.” The title CALIGULA was not mentioned beforehand. HAD it been I might have paid more attention as I was aware of problems surrounding the film’s production even then! It was shown in a small private room just off the main bar... perhaps 20 or 30 of us were there in varying stages of inebriation. There were no attempts at secrecy... just looked to me like a private porn show in the offing, “Debbie Does Tottenham Court Road” or whatever! As it turned out that’s basically what it was... simply a 17-million-dollar work-out! Presumably it was on 35mm film as it was just fed reel to reel through a standard projector and using a portable screen would barely have been two metres square. [Sounds to me like 16mm.—RS] Bear in mind that particular night I, and as far as I know no one there, had any reason to believe that what was being screened was pirated, contentious (well, beyond its content, anyway) or in any shape or form clandestine. It ran for well over three hours... that I DO recall! I saw no one approached to keep their silence on the matter! I certainly wasn’t.

It was only when I actually saw the film at a theater in Sydney the following year that I realised what had been cut out (and I think THAT screening barely topped 120 mins).... I acquired the 155-plus-minute version on Beta tape 5 years later.

Now... I DO have a problem unveiling details of the Sydney screening for the simple reason that it was at the home of a well-known (at that time at least) Sydney television personality... one I had known for well over fifteen years in 1980. Being in the television and entertainment industry... John (not his real name) had “connections” in the business obviously and he invited me to see this “uncut version,” quite unaware that I had already seen it. At the time, I didn’t even know it WAS the same “cut,” but on viewing it, this proved to be the case. He DID confirm that it had been shipped from the UK and that there were “those who would seek to refute its existence.” It was screened at his home in Sydney’s exclusive Eastern suburbs. There were less than 10 people there that day!

And that’s not all! Check out the interview with a fellow to whom the Caligula SuperSite provides the protective pseudonym of Lucky Fellows. He appeared in Guccione’s inserts, and states:

...The first time I saw the finished film was at Cannes in the middle of May 1979. I was on holiday from university. My mail had been forwarded to me, and there was a personal invitation for a private screening. So off I went!... [The next time I saw the movie was in] September 1999, when Penthouse re-issued it in theatres again. It was then I noticed that the version that was shown originally at Cannes was three and a half hours long, and the version that ended up in the theatres was just over two and a half hours. The shorter version was more interesting.

So, my basic question remains unanswered: If this did actually exist, what was in that extra hour? Just 30 or 40 minutes of porn shot by Guccione, spliced into a working print of the film? The sex footage couldn’t have been by Tinto Brass, who shot only one actual sex scene (the homosexual guards hiding in the spy room), which lasted only a brief moment. What would the extra violence have consisted of? The priest’s skull getting bashed by a mallet maybe? Again, that was the only one of Tinto’s scenes of violence that didn’t make it to the release version of the movie. If there was a 210-minute version, it could not possibly have been the version edited by Russell Lloyd, because his version had no usable sound and never got past the rough-cut stage. Could a pre-release Nino Baragli version have contained more non-sexual scenes, with an added three or four reels’ worth of porn shot by Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui? Likely not, as most of the scenes that were not included in the 156-minute version were never completely edited. Actually, some of them were never edited at all! I have recently confirmed that NO ONE at Penthouse knows anything at all about there ever having been a 210-minute version.

BUT... here’s what this may have been, after all. Malcolm McDowell saw a private trade screening in Hollywood. When? Well, certainly after May 1979, and certainly before February 1980. “They had included two 20-minute segments of hardcore porn.” Well, undoubtedly, those two segments could only have been the lesbian tryst and the Imperial Bordello. Twenty minutes each!?!?!?!?! That must have been sheer torture to watch. Okay now, suppose that, in every other way, the edition was identical to the 156-minute version currently available, which includes a grand total of six minutes of added hardcore porn. If that was the case, then the version McDowell saw must have run about 190 minutes, not 210. That could well have been the version presented at Cannes. But we may never know for sure, because all known copies seem to have completely vanished! NOTE ADDED ON SUNDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2007: There is a grand total of one ex-Penthouse employee who confirms the reports of a longer version, and he remembers it being about four hours long. It was just the 156-minute version with the lesbian and Imperial Brothel scenes greatly padded with Guccione’s material. The padding was clearly done after Nino Baragli had left the project. Question: Who would want to watch a narrative movie only to have it stop for an hour or so to switch to a plotless porn movie? Answer: Nobody.

Regardless of all that, if this is for real, then we MUST find it and we MUST get it preserved in an archive. Who wants to help? PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU HAVE ANY LEADS, OR, INDEED, ANY INFORMATION AT ALL ON THIS ELUSIVE VERSION. THANK YOU!