Famously one of the messiest productions in history, Caligula was panned upon release, with Variety labelling it a “moral holocaust” and Roger Ebert condemning it as “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash”. Producer and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione had set out to make a big-budget erotic film, one of the many misguided attempts in the 1970s to merge porn with art. To this end, he hired writer and intellectual Gore Vidal to write the screenplay, exploitation/arthouse (it depends whom you ask) director Tinto Brass, and a host of respected British actors including Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell, and Peter O’Toole. Creative differences between Vidal, Brass, and Guccione were present from the beginning, with Vidal disowning the film before shooting even began. Unbeknownst to the rest of the team, however, Guccione had hired Penthouse models to film hardcore pornographic scenes which he later edited into the final cut. With the exception of a few contrarian cult fans, the resulting film was universally agreed to be a disaster.

More than four decades later, art historian Thomas Negovan has attempted to restore the original vision of the film using over 90 hours of footage. Negovan has restructured many scenes of the film, added an animated intro, swapped out the score, and most importantly left out the porn added by Guccione. What we are left with is Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, a story about absolute power and its ability to corrupt.

The narrative is much clearer in this new version. Caligula (Malcolm McDowell) is a fearful young man whose family has all been murdered by his mad uncle Tiberius – only he and his sister Drusilla survive. When opportunity strikes, he murders Tiberius and receives all the power, wealth, and adoration that comes with being Caesar. Eventually though, he grows bored of his power, becoming increasingly cruel and extravagant as the years pass.

Where in the original cut, Caligula comes across simply as a mad emperor, the Ultimate Cut presents him as a man who despises his own power and the blind obedience of those around him, even as he demands it. Indeed, one of the great triumphs of this new cut is McDowell’s performance, potentially his best ever. He has said that he played Caligula as an ‘anarchist’ wanting to bring down the empire from within, and that’s exactly what we see here. Rather than simply using the most dramatic take as the original cut did, Negovan has said that he was guided by McDowell’s performance in this new cut. This version of Caligula is mercurial and unpredictable, impulsive but also calculating. It’s possible to understand where Caligula is coming from now, even as his actions disgust us.

The production design and the costumes remain as stunning as they always have been. There’s no change, but it’s still worth remarking on how fantastically ridiculous things like the moving decapitation machine and Caligula’s boat brothel are. Even with much of the hardcore sexual content cut out, the debauchery of Caligula’s court is evident because the sex that is actually relevant to the story remains. Caligula is all the stronger for actually focusing on the threesome between Drusilla, Caligula, and Caesonia, rather than the unrelated voyeuristic lesbian sex that the Guccione version hones in on. There is plenty to titillate and to shock, but the difference is that it’s part of a coherent whole.

Similarly, with the pornographic element toned down, the genuinely horrifying moments are given the appropriate gravity. The most upsetting scene in Caligula has always been the double rape scene, in which Caligula rapes a pair of newlyweds at their wedding feast. In the Ultimate Cut, this becomes a turning point for the character where we see just how power has corrupted him, where before it was merely one in a litany of shock-value atrocities and perversions.

This 21st century rehash is not quite a masterpiece. It’s bloated, and it dwells far too long Caligula’s cruelty after he becomes disillusioned with his power, but it provides a sort of closure. Here, finally, is the film that lay hidden beneath all those layers of scandal and creative headbutting.

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is back in cinemas on Friday, August 9th. On VoD on August 23rd.