To this day, this movie is still banned in Belarus.
The film was banned in Russia until 1993.
Cast the Expert: The scene of Caesonia giving birth was filmed using three different real pregnant women, and real-life doctors in costume.
Cast the Runner-Up: John Gielgud was originally offered the role of Tiberius, but declined. He only accepted the smaller part of Nerva after being sent a letter by Gore Vidal.
Creator Backlash: Hoo boy, Caligula. Gore Vidal walked away from production because he hated how director Tinto Brass wanted satire in the film. Brass was then cut loose because producer Bob Guccione wanted hardcore sex involving his Penthouse Pets. Neither Vidal nor Brass is officially credited in their roles, and both disowned the final film (for different reasons). Most of the actors (with the unsurprising exception of shame-challenged Helen Mirren and John Gielgud, who had a blast making it and saw it three times in the cinema) now look upon it with regret due to its reputation as a high-budget porno; Anneka Di Lorenzo eventually won a lawsuit claiming the film damaged her career (though the punitive damages were overturned on appeal). Peter O'Toole trashed the film before it had even been released, although some say he hadn't even seen any of the rushes. Malcolm McDowell even appeared on chat shows telling people not to see it.
Creator's Apathy: Tinto Brass openly admitted to finding Gore Vidal's script "the work of an aging arteriosclerotic" and only agreed to direct on the condition he rewrote it.
Dawson Casting: The real-life Caligula was 28 when he was assassinated. Malcolm McDowell, however, was in his thirties at the time of filming.
Development Hell: Caligula MMXX, was announced back in 2020, but was only released in May 2023. For context, Caligula MMXX is a cut/edit that restores most of Gore Vidal's original script and the planned production between him and Guccione and presenting the movie as how Vidal wanted, all done by archivist Thomas Negovan and edited by E. Elias Merhige. Yes, that Merhige. This edition received McDowell's approval, saying: "Because of the brilliant work of Thomas Negovan - one of my best performances has finally come to light after 47 years!"
Genre-Killer: The "porno chic" movement of The '70s came to a screeching halt with the film's critical failure and overwhelming controversy. Known more for its incredibly heated production, characterized by constant infighting between Gore Vidal, director Tinto Brass, and producer Bob Guccione, the film was chastised as being directionless and exploitative due to the immense Creative Differences between Vidal (who wanted to make a straightforward historical drama that strongly focused on homosexuality in a time when mainstream LGBT acceptance was still painfully low), Brass (who wanted to make a black comedy that satirized modern politics), and Guccione (who ordered rewrites to remove Vidal's homosexual elements and wanted to make a Porn with Plot film that paid homage to the campiness of 1950s historical epics). Roger Ebert infamously walked out when he saw the film— one of the only times in his career that he did so— and slammed it as "sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash." While the film was a commercial success and has started to become Vindicated by History with the help of recuts that reorient the film closer to Brass's vision, the combination of the sheer vitriol directed towards it and the emerging conservative revolution in the Anglosphere put the kibosh on the mainstream fashionability of pornographic films.
While Malcolm McDowell got along well with director Tinto Brass, Peter O'Toole immediately disliked him, while John Gielgud and Helen Mirren were indifferent; they focused on their own performances. O'Toole did not endear himself to producer Bob Guccione when he told the producer that he planned to launch his own magazine to rival Penthouse. It was to be called Basement and would include such features as 'Rodent of the Month' and 'Toe Rag of the Year'.
Bob Guccione disliked Malcolm McDowell, calling him shallow and "stingy", especially after he took some of the crew out to a very expensive dinner...and left it to someone else to pick up the bill because he'd forgotten to bring enough money. He also tried to steal a ring from the production to give as a present to his dresser, which she refused when she recognised it.
Because this movie was intended for release in English, and much of the dialogue was recorded in Italian, the soundtrack had to be looped. Peter O'Toole was reluctant to re-record his dialogue. He kept away from the producers until he re-recorded his dialogue in a Canadian recording studio.
The scene of three men bathing in red mud was actually filmed as happening before Nerva's death but had new dialogue dubbed in where they discuss his death and Tiberius's imminent death.
The scene of Chaerea, Longinus, and the rest of the Senate apparently plotting Caligula's murder was created using unused takes from an earlier scene where they discuss the possibility of Caligula dying from a fever. Dubbing achieved this, and you'll notice that whoever is speaking has their mouth obscured.
Patrick Allen dubbed Gudio Mannari as Macro, and Joss Ackland dubbed Paolo Bonacelli as Chaerea.
On-Set Injury: Peter O'Toole who, although he'd given up drinking beforehand, was reportedly high during filming, accidentally knocked another actor out. In the scene where Tiberius stabs a drunken soldier, he snapped the sword up with such force the actor was knocked unconscious.
The Other Marty: Maria Schneider was originally cast as Drusilla, but became uncomfortable with appearing nude and in sexual scenes, and left the production, to be replaced by Teresa Ann Savoy, with whom Tinto Brass had previously worked with on Salon Kitty. Schneider had also apparently angered Brass by sewing up the open tunics she was supposed to wear on camera. She'd already had a traumatic experience shooting the similarly explicit Last Tango in Paris and wasn't keen to go through that again.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Contrary to popular belief, the infamous three-hour and thirty-minute pre-release version of the movie never existed. The mix-up came from an erroneous movie program printed for the first public screening of this movie at the Cannes Trade Festival (not to be confused with the Cannes Film Festival that occurs around the same time of the year) that stated that the entirety of the "Caligula Screening" runs three hours and thirty minutes. What it forgot to say, however, was that the movie (in its two-hour and thirty-six-minute edition) and the one-hour making-of featurette were shown back-to-back that night, thus creating the three-and-a-half-hour running time.
The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The film was completed in 1976, but wasn't released for three years due to post-production and censorship issues.
Spared by the Cut: In the reworked script by Tinto Brass and Malcolm McDowell, Proculus survives his death and becomes a major character. Bob Guccione and Franco Rossellini insisted his death be re-inserted.
Troubled Production: To make a very long story short (unabridged version here), rewrites and scenery improvisions were aplenty as the aggressive shooting schedule imposed by producers Bob Guccione (of Penthouse magazine fame) and Franco Rossellini didn't fit a film of such scope, and Guccione was also part of an endless three-headed feud between himself, writer Gore Vidal and director Tinto Brass - Vidal was expelled by Brass from the set, while Brass was fired by Guccione for running up huge costs (Guccione claims Brass shot enough film to "make the original version of Ben-Hur about 50 times over"; says something Rossellini wanted to make something out of the $20 million spent on sets and costumes and used them in the parody Messalina, Messalina - which is often listed as Caligula II for this reason) and filming plenty of unappealing sex stuff, leading Guccione to hire his friend Giancarlo Lui to reedit the film, while incorporating approximately six minutes of hardcore sex shot by Guccione and Lui. In the end, the final cut of the film had strayed far afield from what Brass had intended. Ironically, perhaps, it bore little resemblance to what Vidal had scripted as well.
After raping Proculus's wife, Caligula was meant to sodomize Proculus. Malcolm McDowell refused to do it, and Tinto Brass instead suggested the off-screen fisting, which is seen in the movie.
The actors would only agree to ADR their dialogue if Bob Guccione's infamous inserts were removed from the film. They obliged, and the actors worked with a cut that didn't have six minutes of re-shoots. Once the dubbing was done, he had them added back in.
Orson Welles claimed he had declined a role in this film for "moral reasons" despite being offered a very generous paycheck ($1 million to be specific, which would have been his highest-ever salary).
Bob Guccionne asked John Huston to direct, but he declined.
Malcolm McDowell claims to have talked Katharine Ross out of taking the part of Drusilla.
Gore Vidal's script originally presented Caligula as a good man who is corrupted by power. His first draft also had a strong focus on homosexuality and numerous same-sex love scenes, with in fact only one heterosexual sex scene. Unsurprisingly, this was the first thing Bob Guccione complained about.
Early on, Gore Vidal had written the role of Drusilla with his friend Claire Bloom in mind.
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