Caligula (1979)
Directed by Tinto Brass
After the death of the paranoid emperor Tiberius, Caligula, his heir, seizes power and plunges the empire into a bloody spiral of madness and depravity.
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The depiction of the third � and mad � Roman emperor�s life is as ponderous as any �60s swords-and-sandals B-movie and as campy as Elizabeth Taylor�s Cleopatra, despite its high-minded script by man of letters Gore Vidal.
In that sense, he has a point; one thinks of Laurence Olivier's famous line in Spartacus about snails and oysters, or that moment in Gladiator when Oliver Reed casually asks Russell Crowe whether he wants a girl or a boy.
The immense success of Deep Throat a few years earlier suggested that pornography could make a leap into mainstream sensibilities, and rival publisher Hugh Hefner had scored an artistic coup by financing Roman Polanski's impressive adaptation of Macbeth.