CALIGULA

Mad this. I had heard about this abortion years ago, but only now got a chance to have a look at it in its full, uncensored, erm, "glory". An extremely OTT retelling of the debauched reign of Roman emperor Caligula, it was the brainchild of some wildly ambitious porn barons with delusions of cinematic grandeur. Its like nothing youve seen before...it almost needs its own deranged genre.

 It's consists of about 2 and a half hours of static camera shots of vast and expensive theatrical sets, intercut with Malcolm McDowell as the infamously mental emperor/despot/horse-botherer and clumsily edited-in porn shots. Proper porn too.But dont go thinking this is in any way erotic, we're talking about thirty-year old hardcore here! This means paedobeards, pasty flesh, flabby arses and enough pubic hair to completely stuff a lifesize rubber Brendan Grace sex doll. Unbelievably, the movie cast also includes Peter O'Toole, Helen Mirren and Sir John f**king Gielgud. How?? It beggars belief.

Plot? Caligula poncing around in a miniskirt. Kills the venereal-looking and crazy Tiberius (Peter O'Toole, clearly off his head). Random shots of people doing naughty things. Senators shouting at each other. Roman soldier gets a cord tied around his bits and forced to drink huge amount of wine before being stabbed in the bladder. Random orgy shot. Couple get raped and fisted by Caligula as a wedding present. Shouting. Orgy stuff. Scene where prisoners are buried up to their necks while a giant spinning beheading combine harvester type thing slowly moves over them. Random oral sex scene. Man gets stabbed repeatedly, urinated on then gets willy cut off and fed to dog. More orgy rubbish. Malcolm McDowell runs around in the nude. Malcolm McDowell stabbed by some guy. THE END. May not all have happened in that precise order, but you could probably swap most of these scenes around in any order and it would work just as well ie excruciatingly badly.

The story behind this classically-themed cowpat is fascinating - what a gloriously ill-conceived and disastrously realised mess it is. It's terrible but if its on and youre in the vicinity..you'll watch it. Its like watching a giant golden bus full of morbidly obese nude babies falling over the side of a cliff in slow motion...you just cant look away. But you will feel more than a bit...eugh...afterwards. But at least Sir John f**king Gielgud didnt get his knob out. That's dignity Sir John.

That's dignity.