Diabolical Dick(tator)

Blu Review: CALIGULA
18 – 152mins – 1979
Written by: Gore Vidal
Directed by: Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione
Starring: Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Helen Mirren, Teresa Ann Savoy
__________________

Oh.

My.

Good.

God.

This is a genuine warning, CR@B fans: Any readers who thought Spartacus: Blood and Sand's penchant for fruity language and fruitier displays of T&A was too extreme for their chaste sensibilities – click away now. Seriously. This Penthouse co-produced picture is in a league all its own. 20,000 leagues under dignity, to be precise, and this rant– sorry: review does have to address some of these base issues in order to fully justify my shock.

Caligula, the infamously controversial taboo-flaunting “porn epic” has – for many years now – been floating around the foot of my “must see” film list. Not because I'm a giant perve (we-e-e-e-ell), but because I simply had to see a legitimate historical biography starring respected Hollywood thespians (just look at that cast!) which also features real hardcore pornography and explicit sexual violence – it just beggars belief! Rest assured you'll never look at The Queen the same way again...

But before I tackle the smut (oo-er), I will first flag up my concern over the casting: Fragile lead Malcolm McDowell didn't convince me at all as Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as the eponymous Caligula. Weedy and unimposing, he lacked any sense of gravitas necessary to lead an empire. Would his people really have bowed to his every demonic demand and sardonic whim? What the A Clockwork Orange actor does bring to the role, however, is a pair of authentically mad eyes, which, considering the Roman Emperor's obvious detachment from reality, does serve the immoral bastard well.

At a bum-numbing three hours, this notorious affair is a real schizophrenic failure: the “serious” drama segments concerning Caligula's murdering of his mad predecessor, Tiberius (O'Toole), and fall from grace once he has ascended to the throne and abused his power to the utmost, are overlong, undramatic and simply not in the least gripping; while the repeated insertion of shocking full frontal fetishistic sex scenes, castration, brutal murder and rape is distasteful and disturbingly off-putting to the extreme.

Supposedly representative of the decadence and debauchery prevalent in the Roman powerhouse, Caligula instead comes off as desperate – it's no wonder so many involved in the troubled three year production have since disowned what is little more than the highest budgeted porn film ever made. They can claim all they want that the explicit footage belatedly shot and inserted by Penthouse's Bob Guccione ruined their vision, but even without the all-too-obvious additions, Caligula is still an absolute mess! Almost ever other scene takes place in some new, vast and extravagant set – and yet all the camera is interested in is entwined naked bodies in all their up-close vulgarity. Trust me: you see e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

In one such jaw-dropping scene, Caligula is partaking in a menage a trois with his wife (Mirren) and beloved – in the carnal sense – sister (Savoy) while two random slave girls watch the incestuous depravity from a private room, becoming so turned on that they end up having lesbian relations themselves. The camera continues to dart between these two graphic displays for what feels like ten minutes too long, before jumping to the following morning as if nothing out of the ordinary has taken place. Just another day at the amphitheatre, then?!!

The eponymous mad-man is just so thoroughly detestable that you never once feel for this sister-fucking, mass-murdering, trust-abusing, backstabbing despot who sees no issue with torturing an innocent man until death, then encouraging his bevy of under-dressed minions to “seductively” urinate over the poor man's corpse!! Yet, when a blackbird flies into his bedroom, he squeals like a sissy!! Exactly how we are meant to embrace the “tragic” story of how his own inner circle eventually turned against him is beyond me. Just to preserve my sanity I had to view this obsene monstrosity in three instalments and I could easily have given up after each sitting. The things I do for you guys...!!


In a CR@B Shell: Eschewing art in favour of grot, this is a sick, pitiful and sorry exercise in torture – namely, ours! I really don't know how they got away with making this shameful and indecent mockery to the medium of film, but if you want to watch porn, then just watch porn and leave Caligula to rot like it deserves. Scandalous.
aaaaa

Day of the Woman

Blu Review: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
18 – 113mins – 2010
Written by: Stuart Morse
Based on the 1978 film, written and directed by: Meir Zarchi
Directed by: Steven R. Monroe
Starring: Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Andrew Howard, Daniel Franzese, Rodney Eastman, Chad Lindberg, Tracey Walter
___________________________

“Sorry? Sorry isn't good enough.”

My mother has always been outspoken in her abhorrence of any film which derives entertainment from real life misery. Well known examples include Titanic, United 93 and pretty much any war film ever made. While I Spit On Your Grave may not be based upon an actual documented case, anyone with taste will be hard-pressed not to be repulsed by its all-too-horrifically-plausible set up. Is it really entertaining to watch a girl get brutally raped by a gang of lowlife degenerates, then set about exacting ghastly revenge on her attackers?

Needless to say my mother isn't even aware I watched this recent remake of the highly controversial (and for many years banned) 1978 Meir Zarchi torture flick. It definitely isn't for family viewing, the easily upset or quickly offended. Although in its defence, anyone who does decide to watch a film titled I Spit On Your Grave knows all too well what they are letting themselves in for and can hardly bemoan that it isn't The Last Unicorn.

From a technical standpoint it is hard to knock the film – it doesn't look as cheap as you might expect, the downcast colour palette compliments the tone ideally, and the actors do a disturbingly authentic job – but proficient editing is hardly what this film is going to be remembered for. While Meir Zarchi's prototype was all the more hard-hitting for its stark originality, this 2010 remake arrives in a morally-jaded society where it must battle for rental store shelf space alongside a raft of copycat offenders: Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, Taken, The Last House on the Left are but four examples, and two of those have likewise had 21st century reboots!

Is I Spit On Your Grave guilty of “making light” of its subject matter? Not at all – this is in no way a glamorous production. Is it guilty of crossing a moral boundary in its desperate attempt to be ever-more extreme? Well, that's a different story, and one up for debate, particularly when you add into the controversy-touting mix a sinisterly corrupt Sherriff (Howard) and a mentally challenged gang member (Lindberg) who is bullied into taking part in the crime…

Putting aside all that “two wrongs don't make a right” malarkey – which doesn't quite stand true when you want to see these scumbags suffer – it's still hard to believe that victim Jennifer Hills (Butler) is *quite* up to executing the poetic justice she serves. Her karmic torture devices bring to mind Jigsaw's impossible contraptions in Saw and the vigilante vengeance witnessed in Law Abiding Citizen; they're too clever for a psychologically scarred person lying low in the forest to carry out and that jars because it breaks the believability of the stomach-churning extended rape ordeal.


In a CR@B Shell: With a relentless tone which never dips below tense, I Spit On Your Grave is a sadist, disgusting and vicious exercise in taking the law into your own hands. You'll wince, you'll look away, you'll curl your hands into fists in futile anguish, and you'll never rent a cabin in the woods on your own ever again.
aaaaa