Will new uncut Caligula film make Helen Mirren blush?

An uncut version of the 1979 film Caligula, which was produced by the gold chain-wearing Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, is finally to be released on DVD. For more than 25 years, this raunchier version of the movie, which stars a youthful Helen Mirren (pictured with fellow cast member Malcolm McDowell), has been considered too red hot to get past the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). However, they've finally relented, a change of heart that has surprised the film’s distributors, Arrow Films. Says a spokesman for Arrow: "When it came back uncut, we were stunned." But Sue Clark of the BBFC said: "Given that /Caligula/ is a film of historical interest, we felt we could pass it uncut."

The film was supposed to chronicle the last four years in the life of the power-mad Caligula – the "viper in Rome's bosom" - whose brief reign as emperor ended with his murder in AD 41. And it began promisingly enough with a learned screenplay by Gore Vidal.

But when the original film came out it was a critical flop. At this point, Guccione, who had spent £17.5m on the movie, decided it needed spicing up. So two years after the 115-minute film was released, an "uncut" version of Caligula was produced after an hour of hardcore pornographic action, which had been secretly filmed by him in 1979, was reinstated into the drama. These scenes range from lesbian sex to incest and (implied) bestiality performed by Guccione’s "Penthouse Pets".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It is now seen as one of cinema’s "epic porn films" and its sudden appearance in video stores after all these years is unlikely to go down well with the cast. Four years ago, Malcolm McDowell expressed his outrage over the editing process and script changes: "I'm proud of the work I did in Caligula, there's no question about that. But there's all the raunchy stuff, the blatant, modern-day porn that Bob introduced into the film after we'd finished shooting. That to me was an absolutely outrageous betrayal and quite unprecedented. Frankly, it showed that Bob had no class whatsoever."

Film legend has it that Mirren had to excuse herself to vomit after first seeing the huge set populated with naked people.