Actual title:
Caligula on 'Caligula: Prince of Perversion'

This 1970 animated film
sprang off the back of succexploitation classics like
Punkmilton the Fox, Sweet God! Godiva
and the screen adaptation of Ted Hughes’ Crow.

Simply titled Haietsu (an audience with the Emperor)
in Japan, it was retitled and branded with an X
for European audiences. The critics were not kind:

“A children’s film peppered with bare female nipples,”

“A broken marriage of avante-garde art and sweaty skinflick,”

“A torpid, spunk-spattered affair,”

they huffed. It’s hard to disagree.
What’s more, I find Caligula: Prince of Perversion
short on historical accuracy.

From the aquanauts played by live actors
(albeit capped with claymation heads) in the first act
to the 2001-inspired bodysliding sequence
to Sir John Gielgud punking it up
as the voices of Thrasyllus and Macro,

to the fruitbowl of bottoms of various firmnesses,
sorenessses, rougenesses, glowing like bulbs,
it’s clear the straitjacket’s been tossed on a gale.

But no bevy of beknighted thesps could drag this flick
from its gutter of indulgence. I watched it
with teeth ever-clenched, hand clawed, turned upward, a beggar’s,
and groin itching rather than burning.

For the record, I never owned a cheetah
and if I did, it never tried to hump my sister,
and my sister never bit my ear to calm me down.
I never burned down Rome! That was Nero!
And I never, never done in Gemellus – that was my sister.
I never done in my father neither, and never
done in my sister or knocked her up or straddled
her dead body, bawling.

I never done in half these people. It’s outrageous.
I’d sue but the director’s snuffed it
and the score is a gorgeous thing.