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Tinto Brass' 1979 Roman orgy movie "Caligula" is one of the more notorious cult films of its era. It wears the cloak of an award-bait prestige picture, but is also an infamously terrible piece of slapped-together art porn. Made for a budget of over $17 million, "Caligula" boasted impressive performances from classy, world-famous actors such as John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole. Malcolm McDowell, having already appeared in dark, violent pictures such as "If...." and "A Clockwork Orange," was right at home in the title role, playing Rome's mad emperor with his trademark verve. Helen Mirren played Caesonia, a courtesan that Caligula marries to the consternation of his sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy), also his incestuous lover.

Noted author and media bon vivant Gore Vidal was paid $200,000 to write the screenplay for "Caligula," but insisted his name be removed after lengthy scenes of sex and violence were added to the film without his input.

Rivaling Salo as the most controversial historical film of all time, Tinto Brass' original cut of the X-rated 1979 film Caligula has finally been restored and is now available on Max. Co-written with Brass by Gore Vidal, Caligula has gained an infamous reputation for being one of the most graphically disturbing depictions of sexual depravity, unadulterated debauchery, and downright delirium.

Before explaining why Caligula was so controversial and what made famed film critic Roger Ebert storm out of an advance screening in a huff, it's also worth crystallizing the differences between the theatrically released edit and the newly restored Ultimate Cut that Brass originally envisioned. Ironically, the new version has been received more favorably than the 1979 original.

What Is Caligula About?

Directed by Italian film director Tinto Brass from a screenplay by American writer Gore Vidal, Caligula is an erotic historical biopic that charts the rise and fall of the deeply...

Where to begin on this infamous film? Shot in 1976 and released in 1980, Caligula was directed by arthouse provocateur Tinto Brass. Written by Gore Vidal and funded by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, Caligula became one of those unfortunate films that was messed with by someone who should not have had editing or final cut privileges. But throughout film history, huge egos with money have done exactly that. In the case of Caligula, Guccione went beyond most interfering suits, if you could call him that, and secretly shot pornographic footage on the sets at night. He then had this footage cut into the film, resulting in a wild ride, to say the least. The film stars Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) as the young man...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Chicago – One of the most notorious films in cinema history is undoubtably “Caligula” (1980). This very expensive independent film about a Roman emperor had a checkered history – from its principle photography beginning in 1976 to its release date – and featured big stars like Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud. When a “reconstruction” was in order, the writer, art historian and Chicago native Thomas Negovan was hired to create “The Ultimate Cut.” Negovan will appear at two screenings on September 29th and 30th at Chicago’s historic Music Box Theatre. For tickets and more information, click Caligula.

“Caligula” was one of those “utmost” 1970s-era film projects, financed by the infamous owner of the nudie publication Penthouse Magazine, Bob Guccione, and was directed by auteur Tinto Brass, written by prominent author Gore Vidal and starred Malcolm McDowell at his acting peak. When the cost overruns went out of control, Guccione seized...

Peter OToole was a true icon of cinema whose acclaimed roles have endured through generations. Making his film debut in 1960 and working consistently right up until his death in 2013, with eight Academy Award nominations, OToole held the record for the most Oscar nods without ever actually winning. From classics like Lawrence of Arabia to family-friendly favorites such as lending his voice to Pixars Ratatouille, OToole has left an undeniable mark on Hollywood and the history of film.

Although OToole called himself the biggest loser due to his failure to gain an Academy Award, looking back on his career, he delivered several Oscar-worthy performances that proved his reputation as one of the all-time greats. Equally comfortable in comedic and dramatic roles, OToole imbued all his characters with intense humanity as his effortless charm elevated every role he played. With a Shakespearean sensibility that added gravitas to his acclaimed performances, OToole deserves...

Grand movies set in the time of the Roman Empire used to be incredibly prevalent. That probably has to do with the images that immediately come to mind when imagining the setting, including those of power-hungry emperors, battle-worn gladiators, and backstabbing aristocrats. Some of Hollywood's earliest films tapped into those themes to great success, becoming the industry's first blockbusters.

In the more modern era, however, the "sword and sandal" epics that comprised this genre of filmmaking have more or less subsided. As the budgets for these gigantic movies continued to increase, so did the risk involved for investors. Today, the genre is mainly dormant, but with the upcoming release of Gladiator 2, there's always a chance audiences might see a reinvigoration of the marketplace. If you're looking to reacquaint yourself with some ancient history, here are the ten best films set in the Roman Empire.

Caligula Took the Debauchery of...

In 2023, a newly-edited version of the 1980 erotic film, Caligula, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, seeking to revive the original vision of the film’s writer, Gore Vidal, as well as uncover the performances by acting legends Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, and more. Now, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, is receiving a home release, and will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray on September 17th.

Starring McDowell as the titular Roman emperor and Mirren as his wife, Caesonia, the original Caligula has been a source of controversy since it first premiered, primarily due to its violence and the post-production inclusion of explicit sexual scenes. Director, Tinto Brass, and screenwriter, Vidal, both objected to Guccione’s changes, and many of the cast’s best performances were left on the cutting room floor in favor of the smuttier portions.

With Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, though, producer Thomas Negovan and editor Aaron Shaps...

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut seems to be Negovan’s attempt at giving the controversial film another shot. First released in 1979, it was just so hot, so messy, and so full of stuff that it was hard to make sense of most of it. It did feel like they were just throwing everything on the wall with crazy ideas and just went with whatever stuck.

But Negovan saw something in there somewhere. Like I imagine a music teacher must feel when they get their hands on a really talented student’s composition but it’s all over the place. They can hear the good parts underneath all the noise.

So Negovan went through and cleaned it up, took some of the more “colorful” stuff out so the actual story could shine through. This “Ultimate Cut” gives more character focus among many and just what the film really says about power and humanity.

The Projection Booth podcast celebrates its milestone 700th episode with a return to Tinto Brass's troubled production of Caligula (1980).

A decade ago, film experts Maitland McDonagh and Rob St. Mary joined host Mike White for their first in-depth discussion on Caligula, featuring insightful commentary from scholar Ranjit Sandhu, who revealed the sordid history behind the film's production, and filmmaker Alexander Tuschinski, who explored director Tinto Brass's original vision.

Fast forward to 2018 and the re-discovery of over 90 hours of raw footage from Caligula, sparking a conversation with former Penthouse CEO Kelly Holland and Alexander Tuschinski about restoring the film to Brass's intended vision. This journey was captured in Tuschinski's documentary, Mission: Caligula.

In 2023, Caligula returned to the spotlight. The Cannes Film Festival showcased Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (initially known as Caligula Mmxx), produced by Thomas Negovan. In a four-hour extravaganza, The Projection Booth's latest episode brings together Heather Drain,...

Without the extra sex that made writer Gore Vidal want his credit removed, Tinto Brass’s epic of imperial eroticism showcases a powerhouse Malcolm McDowell

Here it is, in all its seedy absurdity and shame-filled grandeur, the controversial 1979 Romesploitation shocker Caligula, originally released towards the end of the movies’ porn-chic period. It is about the rise and fall of obscene tyrant Caligula, the Roman emperor who married his sister and ennobled his horse. It is now rereleased in an extensively reconstructed and restored form, with a wittily designed new opening title sequence showing an animated Malcolm McDowell doing the “Caligula” dance.

This is the version originally envisaged before producer Bob Guccione took over at the editing stage and tried to raunch the whole thing up for commercial purposes by adding extraneous porn footage, which infuriated the director Giovanni “Tinto” Brass – hardly, as they say, a choirboy in these matters – and screenwriter Gore Vidal.

The Ultimate Cut, out this week, is the latest attempt to deliver the true version of the infamous 1979 sword and scandal epic, Caligula.

Does a great version of Caligula really exist? Ever since its star Malcolm McDowell went on television, imploring viewers not to go to the cinema and see it it in 1979, there have been those who’ve championed the period epic as a would-be masterpiece – a film with literary and artistic underpinnings that was brought low by a greedy pornographer and an editing room full of people who simply failed to understand what it was they were cutting together. McDowell himself has long said that there’s a brilliant film in Caligula, which was widely castigated by critics on its release, if only someone could go back and find it hidden among all the reels of footage.

Forty-five years later, that’s what filmmaker Thomas Negovan has done:...

Just like many of those involved in 1979's Caligula, the film's star, Malcolm McDowell, has a pretty dismal view of the controversial historical movie. Never one to hold back his candid views, the actor has a blunt and candid attitude about the film that doesn't stop short of straight-up disowning it: "I didn't do that pile of crap."

McDowell, the actor mostly famous for his role in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, starred in the divisive historical drama that blended a retelling of the rise and fall of the Roman emperor known as Caligula with a fair amount of very explicit sex and nudity that could have made a Targaryen blush. Although it is well documented that our ancestors were certainly not prudish, Caligula seemed more interested in bringing something as close to pornography to mainstream audiences than worrying about too much else.

Written by American writer Gore Vidal,...

Thomas Negovan's cut of Caligula offers a new coherent narrative while retaining the original explicit elements. Caligula: The Ultimate Cut operates at a much longer runtime, offering a more grounded portrayal of each actor's performance. Malcolm McDowell expresses relief that audiences can now view his intended version of Caligula, distinct from Guccione's changes.

1979's Caligula is generally considered a complete disaster of a movie, but Caligula: The Ultimate Cut could very well change its reputation. The first cut of the movie was originally directed by Tinto Brass, but he was removed before the editing stage could begin after producer and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione ordered it to be edited to change the movie's tone and style to better match pornography. The newly-edited The Ultimate Cut is Thomas Negovan's attempt to showcase the original intentions for the movie, removing many of Guccione's changes.

In an interview with The Guardian, original...

In the 1970s, Bob Guccione — publisher of the porn magazine Penthouse — commissioned a script for a sexually explicit Roman saga from novelist Gore Vidal. He hired Tinto Brass — who’d just made the Nazi chic sexploitation film Salon Kitty — to direct, and an enormously distinguished cast signed up for what seemed likely to become the most epic dirty movie ever made. In 1979, Caligula was released, without credits for its director or writer (who had both stormed off the production), and became a hot potato, especially in the version Guccione supervised, with extra hardcore smut shot without the involvement of most of the A-list actors.

Though billed as ‘The Ultimate Cut’, this three-hour version — which apparently shares no footage at all with any previous releases — seems likely to be the last word on the property. Restorer Thomas Negovan has tried to put together a film closer to Vidal’s script, with...

Plot: Tormented by the murder of his family, the young, wary Caligula eliminates his devious adoptive grandfather Tiberius and seizes control of the declining Roman Empire as it descends into a spiral of depravity, destruction and madness.

Review: One of the most infamous movies of all time, Caligula has long been one of the most intriguing projects in cinema history. Developed and produced by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, Caligula was the most expensive independently produced film upon its release. From filming to release, Caligula took four years and included the departure of screenwriter Gore Vidal and director Tinto Brass and the addition of explicit pornographic material by Guccione, which resulted in a critical drubbing and countless legal proceedings taken against the film. While restorations have been attempted before, producer Thomas Negovan’s ultimate cut of the film pored over almost one hundred hours of footage to compile a vision of Caligula,...

A restored R-rated version of the 1979 feature “Caligula”, directed by Tinto Brass, stars Malcolm McDowell (“Clockwork Orange”) releasing August 16, 2024 in theaters:

‘…this is the story of the perversion behind imperial Rome and the epic story of it’s mad Emperor.

“All the details of his cruel, bizarre reign are revealed right here.

“His sexual passions and marriage to Rome's most infamous prostitute…

“…his fiendishly inventive means of disposing those who would oppose him, and a whole lot more…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

A restored R-rated version of the 1979 feature “Caligula”, directed by Tinto Brass, stars Malcolm McDowell (“Clockwork Orange”) releasing August 16, 2024 in theaters:

‘…this is the story of the perversion behind imperial Rome and the epic story of it’s mad Emperor.

“All the details of his cruel, bizarre reign are revealed right here: His sexual passions and marriage to Rome's most infamous prostitute…

“…his fiendishly inventive means of disposing those who would oppose him, and a whole lot more…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

Update: A trailer for Caligula: The Ultimate Cut has been unveiled and can be seen at the top of this article. Graphic artist Bill Sienkiewicz has also created poster art that can be seen at the bottom of this article.

Directed by Tinto Brass from a screenplay by Gore Vidal (which many people tinkered with while bringing it to the screen), the 1979 film Caligula was the most expensive independent film in cinema history – but the story told in the film was overshadowed by the behind-the-scenes story. As a press release notes, “Penthouse founder (and the film’s financer) Bob Guccione seized control of the negative, randomly inserting graphic scenes of unsimulated sex and gratuitous violence. The cast and film team disavowed what had become a blatant desecration of Vidal’s themes, and Vidal sued to have his name removed from the project. The extensive coverage of behind-the-scenes notoriety also had...

Hollywood just can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire. Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator 2” is in the works, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Roman epic-inspired “Megalopolis” premieres in theaters in September. Now, the infamously iconic “Caligula” is landing a recut and 4K restoration.

IndieWire exclusively unveils the official trailer and poster for “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut.” The all-new cut features never-before-seen footage, including alternate takes and camera angles, and with — for the first time ever — the complete film narrative. Drafthouse Films acquired “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut” after its 2024 Cannes Film Festival premiere and will take the movie back to theaters this summer.

Released in 1980 after director Tinto Brass disavowed his credit amid extensive changes, the controversial classic made history as the most expensive independent film of all time. Gore Vidal’s script centered on the corrupting influence of power and sexuality of the Roman court, with Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren,...

In “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” absolute power corrupts absolutely, but even using absolutely all of the footage shot for the notorious production back in 1976 does not necessarily result in a better film. The most expensive independent film ever produced until that time, “Caligula” was conceived by late Penthouse founder Bob Guccione as a sexually explicit film that also featured real actors and high production values; hiring bestselling author Gore Vidal to write a script for Italian avant-garde director Tinto Brass (“Salon Kitty”), Guccione subsequently attracted such respected thespians as Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud and Helen Mirren to star. But after disputes between Brass and Vidal prompted the author to sue to remove his name from the film, Guccione commandeered final cut and inserted shots of graphic sex and violence, prompting cast and crew alike to disavow the film.

Devoting a substantial portion of his adult life to “Caligula...

The lineup for Beyond Fest 2023 has been announced, and, as per usual, attendees will be in for a pretty incredible lineup of sci-fi classics, horror favorites, and more than 30 premieres. The event takes place from September 26th – October 10th.

With 55 features, Beyond Fest 2023 looks like a winner yet again. Some of the major attractions this year are special screenings of The Abyss (hopefully with news of a 4K Blu-ray?), Manhunter, Piranha, The Raven, and Pacific Rim, all with their directors – James Cameron, Michael Mann, Joe Dante, Roger Corman, and Guillermo del Toro – in attendance…and those are just some of the retro screenings! Fans might also want to try nabbing tickets for movies like folk-horror All You Need is Death, Cannes debuted Vincent Must Die, the remake of The Toxic Avenger, and so many more.

You can see the full lineup for the 2023 Beyond Fest below, complete with details on the premiere,...

Beyond Fest announced today its absolutely insane slate of 2023 programming consisting of 55 features, including 5 world premieres, 3 North American Premieres, 7 US premieres, and 18 West Coast Premieres for its eleventh edition.

The fest returns to Los Angeles from September 26 through October 10. Built in partnership with the American Cinematheque and presented exclusively by Neon, Beyond Fest will screen at the Aero Theatre, Los Feliz 3 and Regency Village Theatre with all ticket sales going to the 501c3 non-profit film institution.

The press release that went out this morning highlights a slew of rare treats and world premieres. Tyler Macintyre decks the halls with bloody holly for the World Premiere of the Michael Kennedy-scripted It’S A Wonderful Knife, from Legendary Entertainment, Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger delivers an outrageous new take on the Troma classic with the highly anticipated return of the mop-wielding cinema icon, V/H/S/85 reunites Beyond Fest alum David Bruckner and Scott Derrickson,...

The 2023 Beyond Fest lineup is set. America’s biggest genre-focused festival is returning this month with a 55-film slate that includes a Roger Corman career celebration, special screening of The Abyss with James Cameron, the world premiere of Rlje Films/Shudder’s It’s a Wonderful Knife and much more.

The 11th edition of the fest runs from September 26-October 10 in at the Los Feliz 3 in Los Angeles, the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and Regency Village Theatre in Westwood. See the full lineup below.

Beyond Fest 2023 will open with Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi epic The Creator from 20th Century Studios and close with Kristoffer Borgli’s A24 pic Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage. It also will feature the world premieres of It’s a Wonderful Knife, Welcome Space Brothers, History of Evil and the 4K restorations of Cemetery Man (1994) and The Church (1989).

Other highlights include Legendary’s new remake of Troma classic The Toxic Avenger,...

Beyond Fest is one of the greatest, most unsung movie events of the year in Los Angeles. Happening over 15 days this year (from Sept. 26 to Oct. 9), it is a go-for-broke celebration of genre cinema – smartly programmed, lovingly assembled and genuinely thrilling.

And this year is no different, with highlights being a screening of the special edition of “The Abyss” (the wave lives!) with an appearance by director James Cameron; a screening of “Manhunter,” with director Michael Mann in attendance; a robust Roger Corman retrospective (including a screening of “Piranha” with director Joe Dante) and the West Coast premiere of new movies like Macon Blair’s “The Toxic Avenger” and Nicolas Cage in A24’s “Dream Scenario.”

There are also retrospective screenings of “The Iron Giant” (with Brad Bird), “Pacific Rim” (with Guillermo del Toro) and a presentation of the new 4K restoration of “The Raid,” among many, many other things.

Malcolm McDowell as Caligula. Thomas Negovan: 'What Malcolm did would be the equivalent of watching someone who had to prepare for any eventuality' The convoluted story surrounding the notorious cinema production of the sword and sandals epic Caligula some 40 or so years ago is as intriguing as the tale of the infamous Roman emperor himself. At only 24 years old he ruled for just four years until he was brutally slain alongside his wife and daughter by a group of guardsmen and dumped into a shallow grave.

Producer Thomas Negovan has unearthed more than 90 hours of original camera negatives and audio to make a new edit for Caligula: The Ultimate Cut which was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival in its Classics strand. He believes that new footage of the likes of Malcolm McDowell as the emperor, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud now has some resemblance to the...

More than 40 years after his bitter battle with Bob Guccione over cult classic “Caligula,” Italian director Tinto Brass is still fighting.

Just as Penthouse Films International has unveiled a new cut of the raunchy 1980 epic about the fall of the Roman ruler titled “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut” – that screened on Wed. in the Cannes Classics section with Helen Mirren on hand – Brass has issued a statement distancing himself from this new version of the film and announced that he is taking unspecified legal action.

“After numerous and fruitless negotiations that have followed over the years, first with the Penthouse and then with other unclear individuals, to edit the material that I shot and which had been found in the Penthouse archives, a version has been created on which I did not take part and which I am convinced will not reflect my artistic vision,” Brass, who is 90, said in the statement.

Good news for families at Cannes who couldn’t score tickets to “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” or “Elemental”: Producer Thomas Negovan is bringing “Caligula” to Paris!

“Caligula: The Ultimate Cut” will make its debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The entirely new edit, created from scratch using over 90 hours of original camera negatives and audio recorded on-location, will feature copious never-before-seen footage featuring Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell and Peter O’Toole. This cut — running 157 minutes — will presumably hew closer to what the audience was supposed to see, and what the actors believed they were making, forty years ago.

Negovan will work in partnership with Kirkendoll Management, LLC and will offer this new cut of what was back in 1980 the most expensive independent film in history. The $17.5 million flick, self-financed by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, was intended to be a “new kind of film,” according to Guccione,...

Tinto Brass, director of cult classic Caligula screening 40 years on as part of Cannes Classics Photo: Film Italia One of the last sections to be revealed for the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival - the Cannes Classics - will include appearances from Liv Ullmann, Jim Jarmusch, Carole Bouquet, and Helen Mirren as well as special focus on the late Jean-Luc Godard including a world premiere of his last work Phony Wars.

Ullmann talks about her career as an actor and director as well as her activism in a new documentary Liv Ullmann - A Road Less Travelled, director Dheeraj Akolkar who will also be present for the screening.

Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan (both founder members of the group Sqürl) have composed the soundtrack to a restored version of Return to Reason, Man Ray’s experimental first film made in 1923.

A youthful Jean-Luc Godard Photo: © Philippe R. Doumic...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Women in Love.“British erotica” has long been considered an oxymoron, and this distinction is not entirely unfounded. While European auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Tinto Brass, Walerian Borowczyk, and Luis Buñuel were treating copulation as a springboard to philosophical ruminations, the British were paying to see Barbara Windsor’s bra popping off during an outdoor aerobics session in Carry On Camping (1969). Is this assessment fair? Well…yes and no. While many films point to a nation of buttoned-up prudes and furtive voyeurs, a deeper inspection reveals a colorful mosaic of sexual mores and shifting social values as film became an established part of life.Part of the challenge of defining British erotica lies with the difficulty of defining erotica itself. There’s enormous variability in the human response, and where some prefer explicit material,...

Since 2007, Venice’s Queer Lion Award has reflected and elevated the best in LGBTQ cinema. Fifteen years later, founder Daniel N. Casagrande said this year’s Venice Film Festival will be “the most queer edition ever.”

Among the fest’s 30 LGBTQ-themed titles, 19 are competing for the Queer Lion, including a record six films from the main competition. They include Todd Field’s orchestra conductor drama “Tár,” starring Cate Blanchett; Darren Aronofsky’s estranged gay father study “The Whale,” featuring Brendan Fraser; Laura Poitras’ doc “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” chronicling bisexual artist Nan Goldin’s life and anti-opioid crusade; Andrea Pallaoro’s trans woman family drama “Monica”; Emanuele Crialese’s “L’immensità,” starring Penélope Cruz as the mother of a transgender child; and Gianni Amelio’s “Il signore delle formiche,” the true story of an Italian artist jailed under an infamous anti-gay law.

With an average of eight to 10 nominees each year,...

Tinto Brass's Deadly Attractions and Sinful Desires is showing September - October, 2020 on Mubi.Above: Salon KittyKnown today as a maestro of erotic cinema, Italian director Tinto Brass’s legendary status is hard-won and attributable to his dogged dedication to filming sex. There’s a whiff of aimless opportunism in his genre-hopping early career, which included flirtations with neorealism, psychedelic experimentalism, and even a spaghetti western. But in Salon Kitty (1976), his first English-language film, Brass began to consolidate and wield influences. Salon Kitty brandishes its references in plain acknowledgement of the director’s derivative tendencies, meanwhile offering glimpses of Brass-original motifs that he would later (rather ingeniously) repurpose in erotic contexts. In Salon Kitty, we can perceive the director’s artistic resolve stiffening, amounting to a film that’s greater than the sum of its cherry-picked parts. Based on the stranger-than-fiction, true story of a Berlin brothel of co-opted...

Litany of Happy People. Courtesy of Karpo Godina.Director of photography, screenwriter, film director and also editor, Karpo Godina is the humanist cogwheel that for over fifty years has kept the anomalous machine of (post-)Yugoslav independent cinema going, in directions none has ever been able to predict. Creative exuberance and insolence have constituted the essence of a regional production still criminally underrated, not least because underground directors in Yugoslavia were among the very few to be censored on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Though less prominent than filmmakers like Dušan Makavejev or Želimir Žilnik, Karpo Godina has intersected and nourished the cinema of his colleagues in an ongoing testament to his artistic generosity, uncompromising vision and anti-authorial vocation. Films like Žilnik’s Early Works (1969) would not be the same without his photography, which forever captured the visionary lights of the Yugoslavian ‘Black Wave.’ A small retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art,...

At the age of 81, Vanessa Redgrave has no qualms about arriving on the Lido to collect a Golden Lion celebrating 60 years on stage and screen. Not because she feels it’s time to rest on her laurels and bathe in the glow of past achievements, but because her career is still very much in full flow. Last year she made her directorial debut with her Cannes entry “Sea Sorrow,” a documentary about the immigration crisis in Europe, and now she’s playing truant from London’s Theatreland, where she’s appearing in Matthew Lopez’s AIDS drama “The Inheritance” at the Young Vic. A recent film she made, “The Aspern Papers,” is showing at Venice by way of tribute, but whether or not — or even how — this all stacks up as a body of work seems to be of no concern to her. “An actor, or an actress, is always...

British actress Vanessa Redgrave will be honored by the Venice Film Festival with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

The decision was made by the festival’s parent organization, the Venice Biennale, chaired by Paolo Baratta, and upon the recommendation of festival artistic director Alberto Barbera.

Redgrave thanked the festival and noted that she was in Venice last year filming the upcoming adaptation of Henry James’ “The Aspern Papers.” She also recalled that many years ago she shot drama “La Vacanza,” directed by Tinto Brass, in the marshes of Veneto.

“My character spoke every word in the Venetian dialect,” Redgrave, 81, said in a statement. “I bet I am the only non-Italian actress to act an entire role in Venetian dialect!”

Barbera praised Redgrave for her “sensitive, infinitely faceted performances,” and noted that with her “natural elegance, innate seductive power, and extraordinary talent, she can nonchalantly pass from European art-house cinema to lavish Hollywood productions,...

Ithaca Fantastik Festival 2017 returns this November in Ithaca, New York, and we have details on what will be screening at the festival, including the new horror comedy Tragedy Girls. Also in today's Highlights: Bram Stoker busts, details on the short film Terror at Station 13, a look at a new teaser trailer for Shortwave, information on 2-Headed Shark Attack screenings, and a new Prodigy teaser trailer.

Ithaca Fantastik Festival 2017 Lineup Announced: Press Release: "Ithaca, NY, September 19, 2017 - The Ithaca Fantastik (If) festival returns to Ithaca, New York, November 3-12, 2017 with a carefully curated selection of new and classic genre films. With less than a month and a half to go, If is announcing exciting changes, its first wave of titles, and a truly inspired retrospective!

Returning audiences will notice an expanded schedule as the festival grows from half a week to a full nine days. The festival’s two weekends will...

The Ithaca Fantastik (If) Festival returns to Ithaca, New York, November 3-12, 2017 with a carefully curated selection of new and classic genre films – and with less than a month and a half to go, If have officially announced the first wave of titles, including a truly inspired retrospective!

For those unaware, The Ithaca Fantastik Festival is a ten-day film, art, and music festival that takes place over the first weekend of November in Ithaca, NY. This years festival features an expanded schedule as the festival grows from half a week to a full nine days. Both weekends will be dedicated to the best in current genre and festival cinema, with the week between featuring classic retrospective selections. Visit the If website (www.ithacafilmfestival.com) and stay tuned for more Fantastik announcements and title waves soon!

From the press release:

Our first weekend begins with the return of the Cinema Pur miniseries,...

That naughty boy Federico Fellini goes all out with this essay-hallucination about women, a surreal odyssey that hurls Marcello Mastroianni into a world in which women are no longer putting up with male nonsense. It's an honest (if still somewhat sexist) effort by an artist acknowledging illusions and pleasures that he knows are infantile. City of Women Blu-ray Cohen Media Group 1980 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 139 min. / La cittá delle donne / Street Date May 31, 2016 / 39.98 Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Prucnal, Bernice Stegers, Iole Silvani, Donatella Damiani, Ettore Manni, Fiammetta Baralla, Catherine Carrel, Rose Alba. Cinematography Giuseppe Rotunno Film Editor Ruggero Mastroianni Original Music Luis Bacalov Written by Brunello Rondi, Bernardino Zapponi, Federico Fellini Produced by Franco Rossellini, Renzo Rossellini, Daniel Toscan du Plantier Directed by Federico Fellini

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Federico Fellini's 1980 City of Women was called 'wonderfully uninhibited' by The New York Times. Fellini's output slowed to a crawl in the 1970s,...

Arrow Video have developed a reputation for being the foremost distributor of cult movies on Blu-ray and DVD over the last few years, and it’s a very justly deserved one. The love and attention that they put into releases of not only the more widely known classics like Hellraiser, Dawn of the Dead and Deep Red but also more obscure films that deserve a wider audience as they did with their recent American Horror Project box set, is second to none and ensures that any Arrow release is one that’s worth taking a look at.

Many of the releases include new essays discussing the particular films, and it’s from these that this limited edition book, Cult Cinema: An Arrow Video Companion, has evolved. Rather than aiming at being a definitive guide to cult cinema, an endeavour that would take more than the almost two hundred and fifty pages on offer here,...

Coming soon from our friends at cult film specialists Mondo Macabro is the wonderfully bizarre erotic odyssey Private Vices, Public Virtues from Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó. The film comes from a time when exploring eroticism onscreen in all of its strangeness and diversity was seen as an act of welcome rebellion. Filmmakers like Walerian Borowczyk, Tinto Brass, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and especially Serbian provocateur Dušan Makavejev were all about creating space for the increasingly visible sexual libertines of the post '60s world. This film appears to take all of those influences and gather them into a giant stew of perversion, extolling the virtues of liberation. Also, lots and lots of nudity from all and sundry, so if you're a fan of male genitals on screen...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Jackie Chan, John Cusack and Adrien Brody take up swords and sandals for this epic Silk Road crowd-pleaser

A crowd-pleasing theatrical hit in China, Daniel Lee’s visually lavish romp gets only a limited cinema airing in the UK, alongside a simultaneous VOD release. There’s certainly enough spectacle for any cinema, as the Han dynasty narrative throws up warring tribal nations and marauding Roman legions, brought together on the Silk Road in a historically fanciful mashup of martial arts, military manoeuvres, and “all together now” construction work. Jackie Chan is typically likable as Huo An, who forms an unexpected bond with John Cusack’s mildly laughable Lucius before Adrien Brody appears as the utterly preposterous Tiberius – a swaggering performance that would not have looked out of place in Tinto Brass’s Caligula. Handsome production design and sweeping battle vistas lend a touch of class, with Chan directing the action scenes with trademark brio.

Meet some of the best directors working today, who haven't gone down the blockbuster movie route...

Ever find it a bit lame when the same big name directors get kicked around for every high profile project? Christopher Nolan, Jj Abrams, maybe the Russo Brothers? With so much focus on blockbuster films these days, getting a major franchise job seems like the main acknowledgement of success for a filmmaker. And yes, both the financial and creative rewards can be great. But there are plenty of other directors out there, doing their own thing, from art house auteurs to Dtv action specialists.

Here are 25 examples.

Lee Hardcastle

Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably seen Lee Hardcastle’s ultraviolent claymations shared on social media. He first started getting noticed for his two-minute remake of The Thing, starring the famous stop motion penguin Pingu. Far from just a cheap one-joke mash-up,...

Irksome, dazzling, baffling, eerie, luminous, silly, turgid and unique, The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel delights and frustrates in equal measure. It's easily the best Estonian sci-fi detective story I've ever seen. And yes, it's the only one.I believe Isaac Asimov had some kind of rule about detective stories being difficult in science fiction because if the reader doesn't know the rules, he or she can't fairly be expected to have a chance of guessing the answer to the mystery. This film certainly falls prey to that problem, as despite its occult atmosphere it doesn't tip its hand that anything truly out-of-this-world is going on until the third act. Once we're allowed to know the secret, the film ceases to be a mystery at all and actually works a lot better.First things: a detective arrives at the titular mountain resort, following up an anonymous tip. The hotel itself is dazzlingly...

Purveyors of Eurotrash should delight in the resuscitation of the obscure 1979 eroto-giallo Play Motel, directed by Mario Gariazzo under the pseudonym Roy Garrett (a director of twenty or so features best remembered for casting into a sea of Friedkin capitalizations with 1974’s The Sexorcist, aka L’Ossessa aka Enter the Devil). By this period, the provocative Italian subgenre was already well into its dog days, with imitators churning out murder mysteries imbibed with a healthy dose of pornographic soft-core elements. It would be unfair to rightly classify Gariazzo’s film as classic giallo, a muddled narrative cramped significantly by enough naked women to rival Jesus Franco.

The sleazy Play Motel is a den of infamous iniquity, and wealthy businessman Rinaldo Cortesi (Enzio Fisichella) hires the voluptuous Loredana (Marina Frajese) for a kinky round of S&M. The next day, explicit pictures are sent to his office via registered mail in...

My First R-rated Movie Or…

How I Became The 007 Of Covert Forbidden Film Viewing

By Alex Simon

For those of us who grew up in the suburbs in the pre-home video, pre-cable TV and pre-Netflix coupons 1970s and early ‘80s, there were few dangerous pleasures as heady as sneaking into an R-rated movie at the local multiplex. The multiplex cinema was a ‘70s phenomenon that made regulating children’s viewing habits infinitely more difficult than the old days of stand-alone, single screen theaters. Ironically, the new freedom that filmmakers enjoyed with the advent of the MPAA rating system in late 1968 was almost in perfect synch with the rise of multi-screen cinemas. Some things do happen for a reason.

You never forget your first...

My first R-rated film was during Thanksgiving of 1976. We were visiting my dad’s family in Birmingham, Alabama and the men adjourned after dinner to go see Two Minute Warning,...

By Fred Blosser

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In 1983, a serial killer claims more than a dozen lives in and around Rome, apparently targeting his victims at random, and then disappears. The killer leaves his signature in blood at each crime scene: “Canepazzo,” or “Crazy Dog.” Thirty years later, Marco Costa (Gian Marco Tavani), the son of one of the victims, interviews Raul Chinna (Marco Bonetti), a retired criminologist. Obsessively pursuing Canepazzo’s decades-cold trail, Costa hopes that he can unearth clues from Chinna’s old investigative files. Who was Crazy Dog, why did he murder Costa’s father, and why did he abruptly end his bloody spree? If he’s still alive, can Marco locate him and avenge his father’s death? Revealing that the man who knew the most about the crimes was a young investigative reporter, David Moiraghi (Giuseppe Schisano), Chinna begins to recount...

So, I’ll be the first to admit that I have never seen this film, nor have I ever heard it mentioned, even on the corners of the internet where friends are obsessed with Italian cinema. However, this is a Raro Video Blu-ray, which means it will be part of my collection. I don’t know if you that are reading have ever purchased a Raro Blu-ray before, but they are fantastic releases, and serve a great purpose of exposing us to some of the best of the criminally ignored entries into the Italian genre film scene. On August 5th, Raro Video, in partnership with Kino Lorber will release the new Raro Video Blu-ray release of Bankers of God: The Calvi Affair, and if you’re a fan of what Raro and Kino do, then you should probably hit this link and pre-order a copy for yourself. Check out the press release below.

The 18th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) announced its line-up today with Maximilian Erlenwein’s German thriller Stereo [pictured] as the opening film.

Stereo received its world premiere in the Berlinale Panorama section in February but will recieve its Asian premiere at PiFan.

The festival’s closing film will be the world premiere of Korean director Kwon Lee’s sophomore feature My Ordinary Love Story, featuring popular stars Song Sae-byeok and Kang Ye-won.

“My Ordinary Love Story starts off as a humorous romantic comedy and later transforms into a horror mystery,” said chief programmer Jangwan Pyeon, describing it and the opening film as representative of the PiFan’s focus on more “complex genre films” this year.

The festival will screen 210 films from 47 countries with 43 world premieres and 20 international premieres. It will run July 17-27 with the closing ceremony on July 25 and encore screenings on the last two days.

Competition titles

The Puchon Choice: Feature competition section of 12 titles...

The fine folks over at Olive Films have been carving out quite a nice niche for themselves by distributing obscure little titles that never seem to get enough love. Well, get set, kids, because things are gonna get even better. Read on for details.

From the Press Release

Olive Films has entered into an exclusive multi-year distribution agreement with Cult Epics, the independent label known for its catalog of cult classic horror, art-house and erotica titles from the 1920s to the present.

The deal includes all North American distribution rights across all platforms including theatrical, packaged media, digital, VOD, television and more. The deal was announced by Olive Films/Martini Entertainment Senior Vice President Eric D. Wilkinson.

“I’m excited to bring the Cult Epics studio under the Olive Films family of labels that also includes our recent partnership with 108 Media,” stated Wilkinson. “Cult Epics’ catalog of titles is a...

'Why audiences might prefer to watch his oeuvre – a 40-year mass of frequently explicit sex films – at home rather than at the multiplex, is an enigma that may never be unravelled'

Though few of his films have secured UK cinema releases since his notorious sex-and-sandals epic Caligula sent British authorities into the mother of all censorship tizzes in 1979, self-proclaimed Italian "master of the erotic" Tinto Brass remains a popular fixture on the home entertainment scene. Why audiences might prefer to watch his oeuvre – a 40-year mass of gluteally fixated, frequently explicit sex films – at home rather than at the multiplex, is an enigma that may never be unravelled.

Two Brass films that have long been available only on ancient VHS tapes make the leap to Blu-ray this week: 1998's Frivolous Lola and 2000's Cheeky, both courtesy of Arrow Films. In the latter, Venetian model Carla (Yuliya Mayarchuk, pictured) arrives in...

Italian soft porn director Tinto Brass, the subject of a documentary screening at Venice film festival Saturday, told reporters he wants to make a film about ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's escorts.

"I want to make a film about Berlusconi. I had in mind the title 'Thank you, Daddy'", Brass said, referring to the nickname given to Berlusconi by the girls who attended the famously bawdy parties in his villa.

Brass -- best known for his erotic films "All Ladies Do It", a raunchy take on Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutte, and the brutal cult movie "Caligula" -- is in Venice to mark the screening of "Intintobrass", a documentary about his life.

Kicking back on the terrace of the luxury Excelsior hotel with his busty companion Caterina Varzi, who he describes as his "muse", the 80-year-old lamented "the preference today for senseless Internet porn over crafted erotic films."

His would-be subject matter,...