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/dev/random / Re: The last movie you saw....
« on: April 09, 2024, 03:12:34 PM »Caligula - The Ultimate Cut (1979, 2023)
Blah blah blah...
Blah, blah blah blah...
So I went back and watched the original 79 version, not the whole thing though, just skimmed the major parts. After freshly seeing both now, I can give a better assessment of the new "Ultimate Cut" version.
It seems as though the editor of the new version made it his entire point to remove any pornographic material. While some people, including some of the reputable mainstream actors in the film, might totally appreciate that seeing as how most of them never approved of that kind of material being added to the movie,... it's become very obvious after watching the original that a handful of the scenes they removed should've been left in. The new version should've followed the timeline and storyboard of the old version exactly. After watching the 2, it's obvious that the original 79 version was actually edited properly so as to tell the story correctly chronologically. As I said in the previous post, the new version takes earlier scenes and splices them in later in the film at parts where it apparently makes little sense.
Editing mistakes in the porn-less Ultimate Cut...
Some examples that stand out to me:
Caligula and Drusilla are in the emperors bed chamber. They are talking and fooling around like the perverts they are. There is a giant white marble face on the far wall, some kind of Roman pagan religious thing I think. The mouth on the face has a peephole that goes to the room on the other side of the wall. Caligula hears something, runs over, put his ear near the mouth and hears people moaning. He motions to Drusilla to remain quiet. He runs to the nearby door and looks around the wall to find some guy blowing another dude or a transsexual, I'm not sure. He gets mad and kicks them in the asses while screaming at them and runs them off. I don't know what the significance of that is... but it was in the 79 original. In the new version, he hears noise, he runs over... but they totally remove the scene where he discovers people behind the wall and angrily kicks them in the ass to shoo them away. It makes the brief scene make no sense when they remove the part of him discovering people behind the peephole in the wall. Later in the movie, after Caligula freaks out in the rain storm, Drusilla calms him down by having a threesome with him and his wife Caesonia (Helen Mirren). For some reason, Messalina and Agrippina (Penthouse pets Anneka Di Lorenzo and Lori Wagner) are on the other side of the giant white marble face on the wall peeping at them. They get turned on by what they see, and... bow-chicka-wow-wow, a xxx rated bush-lickin' lesbian scene ensues running parallel to the not-xxx threesome that Malcolm McDowall, Helen Mirren and Teresa Ann Savoy are having. I mention it only because the scene with the lesbian Penthouse pets was edited out of the new version, - but because it didn't really interfere with any part of the story or leave any strange unexplained gaps by editing it out, it was totally fine to leave that part out in my opinion.
When Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) dies, in the original version, you see Caligula (Malcolm McDowall) going out of his mind with grief, sobbing and dragging her naked lifeless body all over the place. In a couple of shots, you get a brief view of her "hairy clam". The new Ultimate Cut removes most of the shots where you can see any part of her pubic area, greatly shortening the length of the scene, and greatly diminishing the importance of the scene in my opinion. So again, the editor prioritized censoring and removing the nudity above telling the story the best way possible. I think with a little effort, they could've used clever post-effects to add some fake shadows to key body parts to retain her modesty along with the full length of the scene. OH NO, NOT A PUSSY! At this point, we've all seen fuckin' Game of Thrones, so brief shots of genitalia really aren't that crazy are they?
The new version cuts out ALL of the pornographic stuff that happens during the Imperial Orgy, an event where Caligula raised money for the state by forcing the senators wives to prostitute themselves (one of the many reasons he became VERY hated by the Senate). Sure, the pornographic scenes included in the original 79 version were dirty as hell (you see a midget getting blown, Anneka Di Lorenzo appears again and sucks off a dude until he blows a load in her mouth), but without ANY of the nude scenes in that part, you completely lose the gravity of the situation. Honestly, even the original didn't do a good enough job of capturing the "gravity" of the situation. You see the senators wives all getting naked and freaky, and you see a couple of characters like Longinus (the emperors secretary) and Chaerea (leader of the Praetorian guard) grumbling about whats going on. You also see one or two other Senators approach them, and they grumble about what is happening... but none of them really express any anger and outrage at their wives being forced to whore themselves... as you'd think they obviously would.

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So after watching both now, I gotta admit... shit, the original version is actually still the best one. It would be great if someone could re-edit the 1979 original to add the additional 30-45 minutes of material included in the Ultimate Cut without removing any of the "pornographic" stuff. As much as no one really wants to see a mainstream movie with porn scenes in it... it's obvious that taking them out at this point kinda wrecks the movie in places. And it sucks that you now have to watch BOTH VERSIONS to get the most complete picture of the original Gore Vidal screenplay.