Malcolm McDowell Shares His Experience Watching ‘Caligula – The Ultimate Cut’ On The Big Screen [Fantastic Fest 2023]
Mary Beth McAndrews
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The original 1980 film Caligula has quite a reputation for being the worst movie ever made, thanks to a massively troubled production and Penthouse magazine owner Bob Guccione’s desire to essentially make historical porn. Starring some of the best names in acting at the time including a young Malcolm McDowell as Caligula himself, the film, on paper, shows promise. But thanks to Guccione’s influence, and director Tinto Brass and writer Gore Vidal removing their names from the project, Caligula ultimately became a horny joke full of graphic insert shots.
Now, archivist Thomas Negovan has done the impossible. Using 96 hours of footage shot by Brass, Negovan reconstructed Caligula into a historical epic about the titular power-crazed and debaucherous emperor who helped usher in the downfall of Rome. Importantly, this version of the film is still incredibly horny. Nudity abounds and there are plenty of orgy scenes, they just aren’t the sole focus of this version. Plus, this new cut of Caligula lets audiences rediscover the award-worthy performances by McDowell as Caligula and Mirren as his wife Caesonia.
Dread Central had the pleasure of speaking with McDowell at Fantastic Fest after he watched Caligula – The Ultimate Cut on the big screen for the first time. We discussed watching his incredible performance finally come to life, the follies of Bob Guccione, Helen Mirren, and more.
Dread Central: Yesterday was the first time you’d seen the new version of Caligula on a big screen. How did it feel? What was that like for you?
Malcolm McDowell: It’s a relief, I think, more than anything else, really. Yeah. I think it was much closer to the movie that I thought we made in the seventies, and to have this performance revealed after all this time is a bit weird, to say the least, but better late than never. So in a way, I have a tremendous respect for Tom, who diligently went through all the stuff and did the re-edit. It’s a huge job that he did.
DC: I can’t even imagine.
MM: And so to have the performance come out as it was intended, it’s remarkable seeing it really. It’s shocking.
DC: Were there any moments that you were excited to see on the big screen that weren’t in the original?
MM: The whole 40 minutes of the end was just dumped. Bob Guccione needed the space to put in pornography. So Guccione did not care about whether the movie made any sense or not. It was just arbitrary. I mean, Helen Mirren’s performance was non-existence in the original, and she gave such a wonderful performance, and it’s so nice to see her. But the one I was really most surprised about was Teresa Ann Savoy because in the original movie, she was voiced over. But here, Tom managed to save her natural speaking voice.
DC: Oh, wow.
MM: And in a weird way, it’s so much better than a kind of revoice. It’s as I remember her. She was an exquisitely beautiful girl. And it’s rather a tragic story actually, what happened to her. She died of cancer in her 50s. I think she had a really hard life, which was very sad actually. That film didn’t do her any favors at all, I’m sad to say.
DC: That’s awful. I’m so glad that at least now it’s preserved her performance and literally her voice is back out in the world.
MM: It’s a pity she’s not here to appreciate it. But I think she has children, so maybe they’ll see it and go, “Wow, that was mom.”
DC: Your performance is absolutely incredible, the way you’re just running around full of all this manic joy, but then rage.
MM: It’s a very physical part.
DC: It’s very physical, even your eyes and the expressiveness that you tap into. So I was curious, when you got the part, when you were becoming Caligula, what was that like to get into that mindset of that character and who that man was?
MM: I’m not a method actor. I don’t take the past home. It was extremely hard work because I was also shaping and writing scenes that were to come. So trying to get it all together. [Gore] Vidal had left by this point and took his name off it. And so we were left to fend for ourselves. His original script was rather poor, to be honest. And I agreed to do [Caligula] on his reputation, which was a big mistake, actually. But I figured, well, he’d done Aaron Burr that book, and I read that and I thought it was wonderful.
So when I read his script, my heart sank. I thought, “You’ve got to be joking. Well, he’s got to do a rewrite.” But he would never do the rewrites. I’d talk to him, talk to him, and he’d say, I’m not changing a word. And I knew we were in trouble then, but I was too deep in then by being in Rome a month already. We were shooting and it was too late. So I had to literally fend for myself. I got a writer in from London to help.
DC: Again, watching it now, it is so cool to see the full vision of it, come together with the sets and the costumes.
MM: What’s amazing is the sets, oh my God. What about the wonderful red [decapitating machine] thing? Moving in and those things spinning and slicing the eggs, and Caligula grinning like a child and then squashes an egg and goes, “If only Rome had just one neck.”
DC: Such a good line as you’re crushing the egg. Just being on that set must have felt like you were in a fantasy. It was just so gorgeous.
MM: I know. But you walk three paces and you’re behind a flat. It’s just a set.
DC: True. But man, they’re really pretty-looking sets.
MM: It was a big cast. A lot of Italian actors and a few of them struggled with English. But we got by and the look is very extraordinary. And the costuming, I used to say one stitch here, one stitch here, that was it. And a diaper underneath. In the end, it was like being in a nudist colony or something. You didn’t even look twice. It was like, “Oh, pass the salt”. It was bizarre. But just shows you how quickly you get used to it.
DC: Yeah, exactly. And the scenes where you’re on the constructed ship with you and Helen Mirin talking about the brothel of all of the senator’s wives. Just all of the choreography the two of you had together. It’s so amazing.
MM: That ship was amazing. One person could operate those ores. They were all cantilevered with weights all the way down the ship, which was hundreds of feet, and it was all gold leaf. But the sense of humor of [production designer] Danilo Donati was he built the ship so big that it went from one wall to the other that there was literally nowhere to put the camera to see the whole set. And you don’t even know it’s a ship. The reason is there is nowhere to put the camera because he knew it. It was a fuck you to Bob Guccione.
DC: I kind of love that though. I also would love to know when you were first approached that Thomas was going to work on this, what was your reaction when you first heard that he was going to try to make a new cut of the film?
MM: I didn’t know.
DC: Oh, you didn’t know.
MM: I had no idea. In fact, I was rather planning to do kind of a one-man show about the production.
DC: Oh, really?
MM: I thought that would put it to bed for me forever. And it’s rather amusing. There are some great funny stories when you consider what’s going on and Guccione sending over a planeload of pets because he didn’t think the Roman women looked good enough. And I went, “No, they’re Fellini-esque women, they’re real people”. He wanted great fake tits and asses and the sort of 70s Penthouse look. There’s still some left, not many now, but it’s really interesting. They’re in the scene where Caligula is disguised as a woman to see his future wife and the vague sort of lesbian thing of the girls in the pool. Well, they were pets. And in the original, there was a lesbian sequence that went on for 20 minutes of what lesbians do in porno movies that they probably don’t do when they’re at home.
DC: So when did you find out about the cut?
MM: Well the first thing is I was asked if I’d go to Cannes. I went, “Oh, I don’t want to know. I do not want to go to Cannes. Thank you very much. I don’t ever want to talk about it.” Then I got a call from somebody who I do trust and who is actually my agent for celebrity voiceover things. He’s a wonderful guy. I’ve known him for years and years. And he goes, “Malcolm, see the movie. It’s extraordinary. And your performance has been found.” He put it this way: It’s like if they found a missing Bob Dylan record that was 50 years old, and I went, “What? Are you kidding?” He goes, “No, it’s amazing.”
So he sent it to me and I was watching it in bed on an iPad. And I’m like, “What? Oh my God. Oh, this is different.” I was amazed at [Thomas’] patience. He’d spent three years on it. It’s quite extraordinary. And I love what he did at the animation of the beginning, it kind of sets [the whole film] up, and that’s really fabulous. He changed the score and it’s so much better. They really did a great job, I mean, it’s fantastic.
DC: I do want to ask about, there’s one scene, the scene where you’re carrying Drusilla’s dead body and you fall. Did you fall on accident and they kept that? Or did you need to fall?
MM: I think I fell. She was dead weight. A muscle in my arm went dead on me, and I couldn’t carry anymore. And I went to the ground. She was brilliant, by the way, as a dead body. Every time I put her arm, it would fall. And it was so beautiful. The thing really is the scream. I didn’t really plan it. I had my back to the camera, which was so great. And then I just did a half-turn and howled like an animal.
Categorized:Interviews
