"Cat People" (1982) d/ Paul Schrader

I remember rolling with the pre-release buzz around this one, a loose remake of the 1942 original, in all the genre mags of the day,  yet coming away from my first screening feeling pretty underwhelmed by it all somehow. By 1982, I guess I must have expected full-blown FX-dripping transformation sequences and gory murders abound, a much harder nut to crack in my early teens on monster-based matters than most. I like it a lot more now, and it's easy to see why: A superb cast built on familiar names like Malcolm McDowell, Nastassja Kinski, Lynn Lowry, and Ruby Dee, an engaging screenplay written by Alan Ormsby, who had a hand in some of my favorite movies of the prior decade (Deathdream, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Deranged), some effectively minimalist makeup and gore work from Tom Burman, and competent direction from the guy who brought you Blue Collar(1978) and American Gigolo(1980).


Lynn Lowry can be a scratching post in my pad anytime.
Irena (Kinski) meets up with her long-lost brother Paul (McDowell) in New Orleans, having been separated since the death of their animal trainer parents in early childhood. He leaves his sibling with Female (Dee), his Creole housekeeper, while he slips off to maul a leggy prostitute (Lowry) after having taken the form of a melanistic leopard, as he sometimes enjoys doing. His feral indiscretions lead to an abrupt capture by the local police, aided by the hearty tranquilizers of some nearby zoo-hands, who transport the feline Paul to his new permanent res: a smelly, undersized zoo cage. His sister, also a were-leopard, though unrealized as yet, sniffs him out at the zoo, with her feline sensuality even attracting Oliver (John Heard), who hires her for the gift shop on the spot. For Paul, sex with humans transforms him into a big cat, but only by murdering one can he change back. Enter one poor bastard named Joe (Begley, Jr.), who gets a little too close to Paul's enclosure while carrying out his zoological duties, and eats arm-torn death because of it.


Watch Ed Begley, Jr. become less arm-ly, and thus, considerably more leg-ly.
As it goes, Paul suggest that he and his sister begin an incestuous relationship, as it is the only physical contact that either sibling can experience without metamorphosis occurring. A blech-worthy proposal until you factor in that the entire were-cat race is based on incest and your sister just so happens to be Nastassja Kinski. Well, Irena's more interested in having sex with Oliver, who's holding Alice (Annette O'Toole) at bay just for a chance to have sex with Irena, who would transform into a leopard if she had sex with...yeah, you get the idea. Paul's jealousy lands him on an autopsy table, where he ultimately disintegrates, leaving the oft-nude Irena to ponder the difficult decision between a sex-less romance with Oliver or life as a huge jungle feline. I'll leave the finale for you to discover when you check this one out for yourselves...


That's an odd-shaped fur ball.
There are some notable cameos from Dan "Night Court" Larroquette and Ray "Twin Peaks" Wise to mention. The always adorable Kinski is perfect here, exuding feline sensuality throughout the nearly two hour running time and bare-assed nearly as long, and I suppose McDowell is equally cattish, leaping about and preening himself when he isn't trying to slip 'Tass the brotherly bone. Speaking of sexies, Lynn Lowry also gets semi-nude for the cinematic cause, as per usual, as does O'Toole, who's in possession of the most impressive breasts of the lot, flat-chested McDowell included. Needless to say, the Giorgio Moroder score and familiar title track by Bowie are equally impressive. It's an odd, little movie that carves it's own erotic were-leopard thriller niche in the genre-drenched decade of the eighties, and holds up pretty well over thirty years later. Altered states will heighten your experience. Just sayin'. You'd do well to add a Shout! Factory copy to your collection immediately, if it isn't already there, that is. On the scale, People purrs it's way around my leg to three wops. Recommended.


Animal whisperer that I am, I'd put out a saucer o' milk for a sweet little stray like this one.

"Time After Time"(1979)d/Nicholas Meyer

Tonight's feature answers the second most nagging question on the collective 1979 conscience, "What if H.G. Wells unwittingly provided Jack the Ripper with an escape route throughout time via the time-travelling machine he'd only just constructed in his basement, forcing him to follow the murderer through the years, like some sort of impromptu time detective?".Number one, being: "You mind if I bang this hulking line of  fishscale Peruvian off of your ass quick?I hear "Night Fever" coming on out there, and I love that song.".These words I speak are true.Seriously, look it up.Malcolm McDowell had just premiered his controversial turn in Tinto Brass' Caligola(1979) seventeen days before tonight's release, a sharply dilineated departure from the nudity, urination and slo-mo vomiting he'd shared for Brass' lens in bringing the disturbed young Caesar to the big screen.Opposite McDowell here is genre vet David Warner as the infamous sex-selling slut-slicing surgeon he's in pursuit of, and he's sinister, as always, if not a bit underappreciated here.Mary Steenburgen plays Wells' modern love interest, Amy, and you can even spot former Andy Warhol discovery-turned-supporting-actress, Patti D'Arbanville, in here as one of Saucy Jack's vic's, and a young Corey Feldman as a boy at the museum.Revisiting it for probably the first time since the cable box days(or network telly, methinks), I found it to be an enjoyably fluffy romp, despite the lengthy running time(nearly two hours), and the film's general aversion to worthwhile action occurring within it's frames.It must be some sort of childhood nostalgia going down in me gulliver again.Forwards!

"Oi, that weren't me cunny, guv'nor...."
John Leslie Stevenson(David Warner) arrives late for his mate, H.G. Wells'(Malcolm McDowell) unveiling of his latest invention, a working time machine, due to an as-yet-undiscovered propensity to leave Whitechapel whores slumped dead in back alleys with their innards whistling in the wind.By the time Scotland Yard has policed the blood trail to Wells' flat, Saucy Jack has already deftly skirted past the commotion to the basement, somehow managing to transport himself forward through time into 1979.Wells, realizing his contraption has sprung Jack the Ripper on an unsuspecting future socialist Utopian society(Ha!), packs up the available folding money and shiny trinkets to trade with the natives(!) on a journey through the tapestry of time to catch a cold-blooded killer.Once in 1979, Wells finds himself hopelessly out of place, even in ordering fast food, while Stevenson has adapted to the future quite seamlessly, trading his antiquated garb for groovy denim action vests and polyester disco boogie suits.Wells traces the Ripper to his hotel room by monitoring his guinea exchange at a local  bank, where the surgeon/slasher illustrates the current society's violent-prone mindset with a television remote, leading to a mostly unthrilling chase on foot through the crowded streets of San Francisco.Losing his target, who's wrongly believed to be killed in a traffic accident, Wells is forced to retreat to the friendly face of a teller named Amy(Mary Steenburgen) who removes the sting of his wounds by showing him around the city and giving up the first date mogambo while she's at it.

"I don't see the promotional 'Caligula' soft drink glasses display anywhere, and I should very much like a word with your superior, young lady."
A newspaper headline declaring the discovery of another Ripper victim abruptly snaps Herbert from his recent liason, and forces him to reveal the whole unbelievably mad truth to her when offering tips to the police under the alias of 'Sherlock Holmes' proves rather fruitless, indeed.Wells sneaks Amy into his time machine, taking her forward a couple of days to prove his story, only to have her discover via future headline that she is to die at the hands of the ripper herself.The duo plot Stevenson's next moves using the future newspaper, but Herbert gets himself locked up hours beforehand, only to be released when the authorities mistake the mutilated body of Carol, one of Amy's friends for her, just in time to find Saucy Jack making off with his girl in tow, at knifepoint.Herbert tearfully pleads with Stevenson at the museum for Amy to be delivered over unharmed, but Stevenson is not satisfied by merely proving Wells wrong about man's instincts, and plans to take Amy with him in Wells' machine.In the melee, she manages to escape his clutches before Herbert can remove the 'vaporizing equalizer' from the side of the time craft, effectively sending Jack the Ripper screaming through the ages without the machine.Amy's emotional pleas influence Wells to take her with him back to his own age, vowing to change her name to Susan B. Anthony as part of the bargain.The credits that follow tell us the couple later married.

Jack the Ripper(David Warner) would rather spill your entrails on the concrete than shake his groove thang.
The real Amy Robbins was one of Wells' young real-life students that he fell in love with while already married to his own cousin,and married a year later in 1895.Free love, indeed, Herbert, free love, indeed.Steenburgen and McDowell tied the knot themselves the following year, and divorced in 1990.He's one of my favorite actors of all-time, whereas she's mostly appeared in the kind of movies I'd never watch unless there be pussy to be gained afterwards, and even then, prolly not, folks.Meyer, who also helmed the cult classic, Invasion of the Bee Girls(1975), is probably best known today for directing several of the Star Trek films, most notably 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.Insert your best over-dramatic William Shatner scream here.Warner, another long-time favorite of mine, can be seen in such diverse fare as 1970's Straw Dogs, From Beyond the Grave(1974), The Omen(1976), The Island(1980), The Man With Two Brains(1982), and even Titanic(1997).On the scale, Time stands the test of time for the most part, earning a respectable two Big ones.Worth a look...

Whore-ripping, time-space continuum-spitting, tron-gasm finales: One.

"A Clockwork Orange"(1971)d/Stanley Kubrick

There is me,your humble narrator,that is Big Wop,making up me rassoodocks about what film to govoreet upon this fine nochy,little brothers 'n sisters,when it tolchocked me reasonness as I puffed away real horrorshow on another cancer,that we hadn't
wrapped our mozggies around a bolshy lomtick of cult sinny by that sammy moodge eemyaed Stanley Kubrick,droogies.Feeling razdraz,I rabbited away on my oddy knocky,brosaying slovoes and messels like the baddiwaddest bratchny,and like,the interessovatting oomny malchick all the devotchkas wanna show their neezhnies and groodies to,little bratties.So,put away your nozhes and britvas,tell that horning molodoy ptitsa to stop skvattying your pan-handle,pour yourselves a chasha of moloko vellocet(or drencrum)and viddy well,oh my shaikas.
Putting the nadsat slang aside momentarily,Kubrick's 1971 cult classic was a life-affirming experience and rip-roaring good time for a lot of people.Maybe a life of drugged milk,fighting,and the old in-out didn't appeal to everyone who read the Burgess novel or caught the big screen adaption years later,but it certainly spoke to me,and the vast majority of my particular group of associates.Sure it bogs down to a crawl in the middle,and what was designed for the "near-futuristic" look of the film hasn't aged very gracefully at all against the years,but overall,it's a hard movie not to love,a paen to the masterfully executed use of celluloid to influence and play on the emotions of an audience,that came as second nature to Kubrick.If you have reservations about that statement,remember you're cheering on a gaggle of young criminals as they commit horrible crimes before your very eyes,and most probably,to your delight,as well.You might even say that old Stanley reverse-Ludovigoed moviegoers here,and you wouldn't be wrong.

These space age footrests probably weren't designed by August Bebel.
Sometime in the near future,we meet Alex(Malcolm McDowell) and his three-man gang at the Corova Milk Bar,as they prepare for an evening of great energy expenditure by drinking drug-laced milk.They lay the boot in on a horrible old drunkie in a motorway underpass,then interrupt Billy Boy and his gang in their attempted rape of a young girl in an abandoned casino,consequently kicking six shades of shit out of their rivals,before making off in a stolen car prior to the police's arrival.They run people off the dark country road,hooting and hollering,before arriving at the homestead of a writer named Alexander(Patrick Magee),who they beat mercilessly and force to helplessly watch the gang rape of his wife.Back at the milk bar,Alex thrashes Dim(Warren Clarke)across the thighs with his cane for interrupting a woman singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy from his 9th Symphony,Alex's favourite.While skipping school the next day,Alex is visited by his probation officer,Mr. Deltoid,who warns the young hooligan to change his ways,then punches him in the eggbag.Alex shops at a record shop,where he picks up two young girls sucking on cock-shaped lollies,taking them back to his flat and cocking them down himself.He meets with his "droogs" in the lobby of his tower block afterwards,surprised to hear Georgie(James Marcus)and Dim wanting to relieve Alex of his leadership and commit bigger crimes.As they walk along a canal,Alex beats the christ out of his whole gang singlehandedly,but then allows them to choose their next crime target,an old broad in a big house full of cats.In the ensuing melee,Alex kills the old bitch with her own sculpture of an oversized dick,but is shanghaied afterwards by his own gang,who smash a milk bottle in his face,leaving him bleeding on the doorstep for the authorities to discover.

One person's giant ceramic pan-handle is another's "important work of art".
After being incarcerated for murder,Alex undergoes the Ludovigo Treatment,which effectively removes all of his will to commit acts of violence or even sexuality,replacing these with an overwhelming physiological ill sensation anytime he makes the wrong choice,speeding up his release back into society.Back on the outside,it gets worse for Alex.His m and p have rented his room to a lodger,forcing him out into the street,where he is recognized by the same bum he and his droogs kicked up,who gathers a small homeless army to return the favour to the boy,who can no longer fight back,due to his reconditioning.He is then picked up by Georgie and Dim,now cops(!)who beat him with billy clubs and nearly drown him in a cattle trough.Finally,he stumbles to the door of Alexander,now an invalid widower protected by a hulking muscular manservant(David Prowse).The subversive writer recognizes him as the experimental prisoner(planning to use him against the government),and later as the main thug who raped his wife,when he hears the boy singing the same song he had sang on that fateful night.He drugs Alex and locks him in an attic,forcing him to listen to Beethoven's ninth,which now has the same harrowing effect on him that his previous extracurriculars do,and he jumps out the top window to avoid the sickness.He awakens in traction in a hospital,where a doctor and nurse are having sex next to his bed,having dreamed of doctors messing around in his head.He's given a series of psychological tests,then visited by the Minister of the Interior,who apologizes to him for all he's been through,handfeeding him,giving him a government job,and wheeling an enormous stereo into his room for a photo opportunity with the media,as Beethoven's ninth blares away,only Alex's feelings of sickness have gone,and been replaced by thoughts of sex and violence once again.Now there's a happy ending for you.

"Forcing me to watch my own performance in Rob Zombie's Halloween,you bastards??Uncle!Uncle!UNCLE!!"
Nearly forty years later,Clockwork remains a lightning rod for cultural references in movies(unoriginal bastard,Quentin Tarantino borrowed from it in two signature scenes in "Reservoir Dogs",and more recently,the late Heath Ledger based his "Dark Knight" performance as the Joker on Alex),television(The Simpsons and South Park regularly throw Clorkwork refs into their comedy mix),and all genres of music(naturally,punk and oi having the greatest number of clorkwork bands,albums,and/or songs).It was nominated for four Academy Awards in 1971,including Best Picture and Best Director,and has won several more over the years,despite negative critiques from high profile douchebags like Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael,who obviously don't know their own asses from applebutter.Reading the novel is quite a different experience than watching the film,as Kubrick's screenplay conveniently leaves out whole sections(including the whole final,"feel good" chapter)and changes details outright(e.g. all the female objets d'rape are ten years old in the book where Alexander the writer is young and likeable as opposed to Magee's film portrayal.).I prefer the movie,of course.You can insert your own personal ramblings about dystopian societies,totalitarian governments,and freedom of choice somewhere in here,since I'm not gonna bore you to tears with mine.One of my all-time favorites,with a perfect four wop rating bestowed upon it,and my full recommendation.

Skvat those groodies,little droogie.

"Halloween"(2007)d/Rob Zombie

"...it's pointless and why are they doing it?"-Rob Zombie,on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake
Anyone who's talked to me for more than five minutes about movies knows how furious I was when Rob Zombie signed on to remake John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic,Halloween.Once I reattached my mandible to my face,I set out to be as vocally opposed to such a project as anyone possibly could be.I added Rob Zombie as a friend on MySpace so I could shit on him directly and have him see my hatred firsthand(he deleted me after a few choice wall comments helped him realize I wasn't one of his sphincter-licking moronic fans).I went to Blockbuster the week his movie was released on dvd and ridiculed anyone I saw walking up to the checkout with the box in their hands.Above all,I vowed NEVER to see it,and more importantly,NEVER to pay money to see it and feed into the rehashed cycle of Hollywood unoriginality.Well,that was three years ago now,and though I still hate remakes,I figured enough water was under the bridge that I could actually objectively watch this thing,and if it was better than I thought it would be,I'd apologize openly to Zombie for being a dick about it,and if it sucked like I thought it would,well,it'd make for one helluva funny read here at the Wop.So I queued it up online,in keeping with my vow to never pay money to see it,threw on my headphones,and viddied well,little droogs.The verdict???
It seems I owe Mr. Zombie one hell of an apology,folks.He's not only a gifted writer with a great directorial eye,but he's actually improved....Of course I'm kidding,people,it fucking sucks sore-ridden AIDS ballbag at a Haitian hospital all day long.Giving a blowjob hack like Zombie a project like remaking Halloween to tackle is like throwing a blind double hand-amputee a hammer and chisel and putting him in front of a seven foot high pile of shit and demanding that he create a Michelangelo-level sculpture of Megan Fox out of it.After enduring the entire clusterfuck I wouldn't trust that douchebag to direct traffic.Of course I realize there's a small minority of diehard Zombie fans who'll idiotically defend anything the guy does,including this huge mistake,and to those people,I say:Walk blindfolded into rush hour traffic on the West Side Highway in Manhattan.You,along with Insane Clown Posse faggalos,and anyone who thinks Bono of U2 is some sort of humanitarian,are everything that's totally wrong with the world today.You won't be missed,and in fact,you'll be saving me several trips when I finally completely lose my mind and go on a sweeping kill crazy rampage.Everyone responsible for this mess should be wholly ashamed of themselves,and switch careers to cripple-robbers,as it's undoubtedly more dignified work.I feel most sorry for any actors and cult genre stars who appear here,and the list is long and pathetic:Bill Forsythe,Danny Trejo,Bill Moseley,Sybill Danning,Udo Kier,Brad Dourif,Richard Lynch,Clint Howard,Dee Wallace,Ken Foree,Mickey Dolenz,Danielle Harris,and Malcolm Mc-fucking-Dowell,ferchrissakes.Did you cast the entire movie at a horror convention,shitlocks?I can only hope you people were collectively drugged and forced to deliver the drivel that passes for dialogue here against your wills,otherwise...

Sherri Moon Zombie shows her acting flexibility here as a foul-mouthed,weatherbeaten white trash stripper very much unlike the other strippers she's portrayed in the past.
I've heard retards defend this,saying Rob Zombie adds backstory to the classic,putting his own personal spin on it.What they meant to say was,in Rob's little celluloid world,everyone's either a foul mouthed long haired piece of shit or a foul mouthed piece of white trash,with no in-betweens.Hell,the whole cast is playing essentially the same charac-turd here.After his prequel of sorts,where he graciously writes his own wife into the story as Michael's stripper mother(there's a stretch),turns his sister Judith into an obscenity spewing teenaged cockacidal whore,and worst of all,Michael himself into a long haired,chunky,animal killing ten year old pussy with a fetish for masks,Zombie piles on several unnecessary and uninspired deaths that would leave most gorehounds counting sheep instead of bodies.Dr. Loomis(McDowell)is Michael's school-appointed psychologist,and even he's a fucking scumbag,writing Michael off during his sanitarium stay in favour of a book tour hawking his years with Myers under the title "The Devil's Eyes".Give me a fucking break,would you?If they're not trying to get rich off of Michael,they're long haired dirtbag orderlies taking female inmates into Michael's cell to rape in front of his mask-covered eyes,only by now,he's mutated into a seven foot tall pro wrasslin-looking,long haired shitbag,that Zombie wants the audience to somehow pity for all the wrong done to him.He might have pulled it off too,if every single character,Laurie(Scout Taylor-Compton)included,didn't talk like two ten year old boys in a schoolyard trying to constantly offend each other.

Malcolm McDowell watches as his cinematic integrity,raped and freezing,runs screaming away,never to return.
"Just make it your own. Hell. That's the most important thing. Make it yours."-John Carpenter to Rob Zombie,on his Halloween remake
...which roughly translates to:"I know you won't do my movie any justice,but do it anyway,because the stink of yours will only make people appreciate mine that much more."It's almost like Zombie doesn't get what made the original such a great piece of cinema,and even when his awful prologue is finally over,and he sets out to film the Carpenter section of the film,his glaring incompetence smells up the screen.The beautifully framed shots that drip with suspense and tension have been replaced with flat spastic,jerky camerawork,completely bereaft of anxiety or fear.He hamfistedly adds kills to the body count(Annie's boyfriend Paul,and both of Laurie's parents),with precious little flair or style,and then negates the entire gripping Laurie v Shape climax of Carpenter's masterwork in favor of yet more bromidic examples of Michael's humanity(In case you haven't figured it out yet,turning a blank,expressionless,inexplicably indestructible vessel of evil into an abused white trash mutant with a sliver of humanity remaining inside is NOT scary.It sucks.),erasing the entire balcony scene and replacing it with an empty inground pool and hostage negotiation with Loomis and a slew of trigger-happy cops.The sum of these pitiful parts is equivalent to the soulless McDonalds assembly line unhappy meal of slasher flicks.Lots of people may have paid money to eat it,but it's bland,bad for you,and a complete waste of time and money.

Remember the scene in the original where Michael butchers the Strodes?You don't?That's because IT NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED!
I spent an hour or so trying to salvage something positive out of the whole experience,apart from the fact that I remained true to my word,and added none of my own money to the box office of this pile o'shit,and all I could come up with was this:Danielle Harris,who laboured away in the fourth and fifth craptacular Halloween sequels as little Jamie Lloyd,and signed on here to anonymize Nancy Loomis' Annie Brackett character,really grew up into a hot little number,and is the only eye candy I happened to notice throughout this mess.Hearing her spout filth like "Do you wanna fuck me?I wanna hear you say you wanna fuck me." while writhing topless on a couch was probably the only time I perked out of my Michael-esque catatonia during the entire hundred and twenty-one minute ordeal.I'll most likely endure the sequel to the remake sometime soon,after seeing how many hardcore Zombie-ites thumbs downed it,it's sure to make for another piece of review-based comedy.As for this toilet log,it merits ZERO wops,just as I predicted it would.Keep up the bad work,Rob!

Outside Wrasslemania XXXV,Kane searches a squad car for Hulkamaniacs.

"Caligola"(1979)d/Tinto Brass

What do you get when you blend a screenplay by Gore Vidal with top tier actors Malcolm McDowell,Peter O'Toole,Helen Mirren,Sir John Gielgud,Teresa Ann Savoy,sign on Tinto "Salon Kitty" Brass to direct,and get Penthouse magazine's Bob Guccione to produce?If you said "The most epic,gaudy,glorious,luxuriously monumental and overbudgeted clusterfuck ever committed to the silver screen",you'd be about halfway there,kiddies.Something like nine cuts of this film are floating around out there,some packed with hardcore sex footage shot after the fact by Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui after the Guch sent Brass packing,allegedly over his casting of actual criminals as the Roman senate,and fat old broads in the sex scenes,instead of showcasing Bob's Penthouse Pets,that you may or may not have seen through all the vaseline on the camera lens in his famous stroke mag back in the seventies.Other cuts showcase no sex whatsoever,and are padded with replacement footage shot by Brass,or even different shots and angles repeated over and over again.To say this production was problematic is like saying former Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett may have ingested a few psilocybin mushrooms in his day.Vidal made some barbed comments about directors being parasites,and after rewriting the script several times,got the sack,with Brass and McDowell ending up doing rewrites.Maria "Last Tango in Paris" Schneider was scheduled to play Gaius' sister Drusilla,but the explicit sex and nudity forced her to resign from the production,being replaced with Savoy,a Brass veteran,who'd worked with him on Salon Kitty.When an actress who was in Last Tango thinks you've got TOO much sex in your film,well,that says something doesn't it?
A rigorous shooting schedule forced many scenes to play out in half-finished sets,in front of silk curtains,matte paintings,and entirely different locations,which gives the film an overwhelming air of "WTF?".Brass,Vidal,and Pet Anneka Di Lorenzo all entered litigation over the hot mess,afterwards,and the final product was overwhelmingly dumped on by most of the major critics as a flop,depraved,trash,a pile of shit,or all of the above.Though,all of the venom may be well-placed,I'm here to tell you tonight that this vastly misunderstood film is in reality,a flawed diamond in the rough.Fantastic performances by the cast are to be found within from McDowell,Mirren,O'Toole,and Gielgud,and some pretty some dazzling sexual performances in the inserts by Guccione's stable of on-camera fuckers,enough inventive gore set pieces to satisfy any horror fanatic;the film succeeds on dual levels then,as a piece of well-acted period drama,or as a three tissue bit of lotion based self-abuse,on any given Wednesday night.Disjointed,perhaps,but utterly fascinating,I say.

Tiberius(Peter O'Toole)wants his ring back,Little Boots.You might wanna keep that mirror away from him though...
Gaius Caligula(McDowell)is called away to the isle of Capri by his reclusive grandfather,the aging emperor,Tiberius(O'Toole),who has become more concerned with sexual depravity and torture than governing Rome.His advisor,Nerva(Gielgud),soon commits suicide,faced with the prospect of Rome falling prey to a viper like Caligula.After showing his grandson the extent of his perversions;sexual freaks and slaves copulating on display and children of both sexes at the whim of the herpetes-faced ruler,he tries to jokingly poison Gaius in front of his own step-brother Gemellus.Tiberius has a stroke,and with the help of Macro,the head of the Praetorian guard,"Little Boots" speeds up the process by assassinating him.When Caligula is publicly proclaimed emperor,he demands that his sister,Drusilla(Savoy)be treated as his equal,drawing skeptical looks from the senate.Drusilla then convinces her brother/lover to dispose of Macro,staging a mock trial where Gemellus identifies the general as the man who killed Tiberius.Macro is publicly beheaded by a huge moving wall with stone reliefs and people posing upon it,that has sharpened,spinning blades underneath it,as the imperial family and a huge crowd of Romans laughs and throws fruit and vegetables at the condemned heads,buried up to the necks in the ground.He then places the effeminate senator Chaerea in charge of the Praetorians.Drusilla then suggests that Gaius marry one of the priestesses of Isis,but Caesar,angered that his own sister will not marry him,instead weds Caesonia(Mirren),one of the most infamous sluts in all of Rome,on the grounds that she bears him a male heir.During the first years of his reign,Caligula is wildly popular with the people of Rome,but his eccentric nature begins to grow seeds of dissent.He can barely hide his disgust for the senate,constantly hurling insults at them,then deflowering a young Praetorian's wife on their wedding night,before fisting her husband,Proculus,in the name of making their marriage "holy"(!).He then orders the execution of his step-brother,accusing him of treason for taking a poison antidote before coming to dinner.As if there could be an antidote for Caesar!

...apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order AND a state-of-the-art beheading machine,what have the Romans done for us??!!
Caesonia informs Caligula that she is pregnant,but the ruler is overcome by a potentially deadly fever that his darling,Drusilla helps him to recover from.When Caesonia goes into labour,Caligula hastily marries her,and when the child is born female,he refuses to acknowledge that it is a girl(!!)and names her after Drusilla,who collapses with fever at the very same moment.When she dies,Gaius hysterically mourns his lost love before disappearing into the streets of Rome,disguised as a beggar.He is thrown into a filthy jail,but when he is finally recognized by a mute jailor as Caesar,he emerges with a bloody vendetta against the senate,humiliating the very fabric of the empire he rules over.He kills Proculus and has his genitals fed to the Praetorians' mastiffs(!!!),he creates an imperial bordello which employs the wives of high ranking officials and senators as common prostitutes(!!!),he confiscates the properties of rich families,names his horse,Incitatus,as a member of the senate(!!!!),and wages a war against papyrus cane on the shores of Britain,before declaring himself a national hero and a god.Chaerea and eggheaded advisor,Longinus plot the emperor's death,and while rehearsing a play with Caesonia,they overtake Caligula,also killing his wife and smashing his daughter's head against a wall.He utters,dying from multiple stabbings,"I live!".They tumble the bodies down the front steps,washing the blood from the stone,before raising Caligula's half-wit,club-footed uncle,Claudius,as the new emperor of Rome.

The always delicious Helen Mirren as the lascivious Caesonia.
As an avid Roman historian(whose favorite Emperor was Gaius,of course),I can tell you that a lot of the material is based on conjecture,as only two real sources exist that tell of Caligula's reign,those of Suetonius and Tacitus.Any conclusions on the young,troubled ruler drawn on those incomplete,fragmented sources can only be judged as such.Most artifacts and books from the era were quickly destroyed after his assassination,and anything that came afterwards,was probably highly negatively biased against him.And even if we hypothetically assume that all of the exagerrated exploits were true,don't they really just cast a fascinating and memorable light upon him?Imagine from your earliest memories watching your family kill each other all around you,then suddenly being thrust into a position where you ruled the entire known world.The power that you wield would almost certainly eventually break you.Hell,there've been all sorts of exagerrated,inflamatory accusations made about your Wopifex over the years,and we all know they haven't driven me to the brink of madness just yet.Preposterous!Hahahaha!Laugh.LAUGH!!!Caesar says....finish your dinner.

"...Although I have taken the form of Gaius Caligula, I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am a god."