So, I took DU's advice and watched, "Caligula" this weekend

the unrated version.

1. I didn't know that Gore Vidal wrote the screenplay. Cool beans :D

2. WTF was up with the scars on Tiberius' face?

3. That killing machine that took off Macro's head. Was a machine like that really used by the Romans?

4. Did Guccione import the women for the orgy scenes?

2. STDs
3. Who the fuck knows
4. Yep, they were Pets

Don't think the Romans ever had that kind of technology!
Don't know about the women.
It's amusing to see these classical actors like Sir John Gielgud being associated with this piece of over-done crappy porn!

I have that movie on my harddrive. it's cheesy. :P :hi:

I'll look around for it. :hi:

John Hurt plays Caligula, and he is hilarious.

and it's over $70 at Amazon.

Gonna keep looking around -- maybe Best Buy or Media Play has it.

Ancient world had some very sophisticated machinery, analog computers, animation. Archimedes could have done it, he sank ships with some of his devices.

one example:

At last in an incredible manner he burned up the whole Roman fleet. For by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it; and owing to the thickness and smoothness of the mirror he ignited the air from this beam and kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, until he consumed them all.

dating a classics major. The promoters of the movie invited the Yale classics department students and faculty to attend a special screening. (I did not attend, although I forget why--it was (gulp) almost thirty years ago).

According to my then-bf, the classics people were groaning at the mistakes concerning Roman culture and the bad production values in general. At the end, a classics grad student who was sitting next to my friend gave a long and protracted "BOOOOOO!" and the rest joined in.

They were told (by someone, I forget who) that Gore Vidal had written the original screenplay, but that Bob Guccione had tinkered with it so much that Vidal asked to have his name taken off the credits.

In the Q&A session afterward, Guccione was brazen, despite the booing, and started bad-mouthing all the actors. Someone who was knowledgeable about the movie industry asked how Guccione hoped to find a distributor for that piece of dreck, and Guccione said that he was going to "four-wall" it, i.e. rent movie theaters around the country without going through a distributor.

Anyway, that's the secondhand historical background that I can offer.

My girlfriend and I were mega I, Claudius fans and so we rushed to the only theatre in town showing Caligula. Even though it was an x-rated theatre, we didn't think it would be that bad. Then an old guy sitting down the row from us hauled out his tater and started playing with it.

After this and a couple of men walking behind us and casually "brushing" against us, we decided to leave. Whatever was authentic about it was taken out anyway. Apparently the point was to make it as short as possible with as many sex scenes intact as possible. There really was no story. It was the first time I ever saw a man giving head to another man. (On the screen, not in the theatre!) What a waste of Peter O'Toole and John Gielgud.

I did like, and still do, the soundtrack, which includes Prokofiev's March of the Knights from Romeo & Juliet.

and nothing in it really makes sense...

I really like the anachronisms... like the late 70's-tinged "Roman" costumes...

...and those really idiosyncratic moments like when the male workers are hammering away at rocks in the buff :wtf:

golden showers?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwww

and I was amazed at how handsome he was at the time.

There were pics of him in the "extras" on the DVD.