LOS ANGELES — A new photobook with never-before-seen stills and BTS material from the epic erotic 1970s super-production “Caligula” will be released by the Century Guild as part of a collaboration with Penthouse to completely re-imagine the cult period film.
As XBIZ reported in 2020 on the occasion of the project’s kickoff at the LA Art Show, there will also be an upcoming full restoration of the film. The ambitious project, dubbed "Caligula MMXX," is currently being assembled by the Century Guild’s Thomas Negovan and director E. Elias Merhige, the enigmatic auteur behind the "Nosferatu"-inspired 2000 cult drama, "Shadow of the Vampire.”
The upcoming restoration and the photobook, which is being pre-sold via Kickstarter, were the subject of a lengthy interview with Negovan published yesterday by leading horror and cult film publication Fangoria.
The new photos taken on the Rome set are the work of renowned photographer Mario Tursi, who created some of the iconic stills for a who's-who of 1970s Italian arthouse directors, including Visconti, Pasolini and Cavani.
Negovan described the surprise of Penthouse’s new owners a few years ago, when they realized they had also purchased a warehouse that housed all of the surviving material from the beleaguered “Caligula” production.
“It was like the ending of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,'" he told Fangoria. “Huge stacked boxes of original camera negatives, 11,000 black-and-white photos, 16mm footage of everything that happened behind the scenes. The photos are a source of excitement to see the interaction of what was going on behind the scenes. I knew that with this material we could find out if Malcolm [McDowell, who plays Caligula and claimed that there was a better film to be found in the outtakes] was telling the truth. There was incredible acting in those reels. More interesting than the film itself is the story of the making of the film. Honestly, looking at how it’s shaping up, I don’t think there’s a single frame from the original that is in our new version.”
Negovan also spoke about how the restoration team is navigating the contradictory multiple visions — from screenwriter Gore Vidal, director Tinto Brass and producer (and Penthouse mogul) Bob Guccione — that ultimately doomed the film when it was eventually released in 1980.
"I think that to try and emulate Tinto Brass’s art, which was in the [theatrically released] edit, would be trying to emulate something so stylistic and singular,” Negovan said. “It’s such a clear personal style and I felt it would be disrespectful to try to recreate it inauthentically. To me, the most respectful approach to this story was not to go the avant-garde cult film approach, which is what Tinto would do, but to acknowledge its incredibly powerful narrative that Gore Vidal etched out – to try not to impose any opinions beyond service to the intended story, because it’s not our art.”
To read the full interview with Negovan about the return of “Caligula,” visit Fangoria.com.
To pre-order the photobook via Kickstarter — available only until tomorrow, June 30, at 1:30 p.m. (PDT) — click here.
