Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I must say I did find a movie calling itself ‘Caligula II’ a bit odd considering the title character was brutally slaughtered at the end of the first movie, and brutally slaughtered historically for that matter. But I believe the actual title of this Joe D’Amato film is ‘Caligula: The Untold Story’ which does make more logical sense than ‘Caligula II’ but I suppose for the powers that be the original title wouldn’t be able to coattail off the wild ‘success’ of the Bob Guccione production of ‘Caligula’. Why in the hell would anyone want to ride the coattails of ‘Caligula’ which is quite possibly the worst movie ever made? Well if you knew the late Joe D’Amato like I knew Joe D’Amato I’m sure he must’ve thought to himself that if folks thought THAT movie was shocking wait until they see what he could do. So armed with his muse Laura Gemser, Mr. D’Amato went to work to create his ‘reimagining’ of the tale of Caligula back in 1982 and if my man’s goal was to make a movie more disturbing than the Guccione / Brass production of 1979, then he succeeded. If his goal was to make a better movie… well… this is Joe D’Amato we’re talking about over here.

David Brandon is Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, or Caligula as he is known by his friends and family, who is just minding his own business trying to catch some Z’s when some scribe foolishly attempts to assassinate him. As punishment Caligula cuts the tendons to the writer’s hands and feet and then rips out his tongue so he can witness Caligula’s history while unable to write or say anything about it. However to prove he’s not a total dick Caligula recognizes that this cat won’t be able to masturbate anymore so he sends a cutie to where he has this cat propped up to handle that business for him. What a guy. However being a dick is just ingrained into Caligula’s DNA because now he’s raping some virgin in front her boyfriend with the virgin so distraught she kills herself, leaving Caligula no choice but to kill her boyfriend.

Unfortunately for Caligula this young lady was under the guide of the fair lady Miriam (Gemser) who has now vowed revenge upon the sick self proclaimed god. How is she going to do this? Well the first step in accomplishing this, apparently, is kneeling before a statue of your Pagan god armed with a big black dildo and deflowering yourself. That would be step one. Step two would be signing up to be a whore plaything for the emperor’s orgy festivals with step three being born a beautiful ‘Nubian slave’ which will catch the eye of the Emperor and allow you to get close to him to end his madness. At least that was the plan. What wasn’t in the plan was… falling in love. I guess. Because it would seem that Miriam now ‘understands’ the man who shoves spears into dudes assholes and watches the tip come out through their titties. She just needs to know if he was truly responsible for the death of her girlfriend so their love can flourish. Or something. Outstanding.

I suppose I had the privilege, as it were, of seeing D’Amato’s uncut version of his film, thus allowing me to see Joe D’Amato’s true ‘vision’ of his film. Is this a good thing? Oh HELL no it isn’t, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. This movie had a running time of around a hundred or so minutes but recognize that there was an orgy scene in this movie, including the preparation for the participants of this orgy scene that takes about forty of these hundred or so minutes. This would leave about an hour for the actual ‘narrative’ of the movie and even then there was very little of that. Caligula was already emperor when the movie starts so there’s no time wasted setting all that rigmarole up, there’s no Tiberius or Drusilla or Agrippina getting in the way though we do have a Livia sighting, but you would need to know beforehand that she was Caligula’s sister. And Claudius only pops his head in on the movies wildly historically inaccurate final scene.

But what kind of psycho would watch a D’Amato / Gemser joint in search of a history lesson? This movie, plain and simple, is shock value smut. Watch as the future whores play in the pool while some dudes swims underwater the pool, armed with a dildo and systematically deflowers these future whores amidst a bloody flow. Fantastic. While one would normally think that being a slave would be a fairly shitty gig, it would become infinitely less shitty if you happen to be the slave Eido whose job it is to be the sexual test dummy for these future whores while they learn how to give proper blow jobs and the correct way to ride cowgirl. Watch as what the lady deemed too unattractive to be a normal whore is instead dispatched to please the horse. For real. Observe as the whores attempt to please the midget with some ED issues and watch the man who stops his whoring briefly to vomit, only to continue onto his whoring escapades. Spectacular.

And so it goes. Oddly enough the acting in this particular D’Amato episode wasn’t so bad as David Brandon made a fairly compelling Caligula, Gabriel Tinti’s performance as a man getting skewed anally by a spear was completely convincing and of course Laura Gemser was her high cheek boned, dark skinned, striking beautiful disconnected usual self. And we love her for it.

‘Caligula II’ is what it is. It’s not a good movie by any conceivable stretch of the imagination, but it is high concept, high production value and completely inane porn. I’m told that there is an edited version out there without the porn. Avoid that at all costs because as bad as this particular version I saw might be, without the shock value then there’s truly no purpose to this movie.