The film starred Helen Mirren and A Clockwork Orange’s Malcolm McDowell

If you love Helen Mirren like the rest of us, you’ll never be able to look at her the same after you see this 1979 flick starring her and A Clockwork Orange’s Malcolm McDowell.

Caligula was fondly described by Mirren as ‘an irresistible mix of art and genitals’, but there were a few portions of the film that led it to be banned in several countries.

The movie is a historical drama about the life of a Roman emperor, who legend had it demanded to be worshipped as a living god and even went so far as to try and appoint his horse to political office.

Then, after four years ruling the Roman Empire, he was assassinated.

The film was banned in several countries. (Analysis Film Releasing Corporation)

But people may not realise just how many cuts this movie received before it could be released to the public.

One of the movie’s producers was Bob Guccione, the founder of the adult magazine Penthouse, while used some of the ‘Penthouse Pets’ in the film as extras during sex scenes.

Unsimulated sex, I might add. Gross.

And that isn’t the worst bit.

British model Jane Hargrave claimed Guccione showed women bestiality videos and got women who appeared in Caligula to perform real sex acts on camera.

Guccione also filmed a number of hardcore sex scenes to be edited into the film, which led to director Tinto Brass to disown the whole production.

Gore Vidal, who wrote the original screenplay, even asked for his name to be taken off the production after rewrites put in more sex and violence.

Critics slammed it. (Analysis Film Releasing Corporation)

So, what happened when it was eventually released?

It bombed at the box office for starters.

But other countries didn’t get the luxury of watching the porno film unless some edits were made.

In Italy, the film was confiscated by police as the government called it ‘flagrantly obscene’, so Italians could never watch it.

Customs officials in the US seized the footage when it arrived but didn’t go so far as to call it obscene.

Even the homeland of most of the actors didn’t like it.

When film reels of the movie were brought to the UK in 1980, it had to be edited to remove the footage considered too obscene to show on screen.

This included eight minutes of footage which showed scenes of castration, disembowelling and rape.

The film was slammed by critics during its release and different cuts were made with various levels of explicit content.

Then, in 1985 it became the first film with unsimulated sex scenes broadcast on French TV.

Now, you didn’t expect that to be where you saw McDowell, Mirren and Peter O’Toole, did you?