jadavix "Caligula and Messalina", obviously made to cash in on the dispiriting success of the notorious "Caligula", is not quite as bad as that movie, which is faint praise indeed. It is, however, almost painfully boring: proof, if any were required, that wall-to-wall sex and nudity can't prevent a movie from becoming soporific.The plot is, allegedly, about the Roman emperor Caligula, Messalina (the most notorious woman in Roman history), Agrippina (her rival), and the emperor Claudius. The movie has very little dialogue, and practically no exposition, so if you don't go in knowing a fair bit about these classical figures, you'll be left in the dark for much of the movie's run-time.Though, of course, "Caligula and Messalina" isn't a historical picture. It's an exploitation movie. So, there are a lot of ridiculous added details, such as Messalina first getting Caligula's attention by fighting in the colosseum. Women didn't fight in the colosseum anyway, but even if they had, I'm pretty sure a blood-relative of the current emperor would never have found her way there. The movie ignores the fact that Messalina was related to Caligula and just gives you this lame introduction for her character, which could have worked a bit better if it had been directed with some kind of skill.This is a motif throughout the whole film, in fact, and is part of the reason why it's so boring. Capable filmmakers shoot establishing shots of scenes that are framed so that we can see everything we need to see. The camera then provides close-ups of actors or action or significant details to make us feel involved in the action. "Caligula and Messalina" does the first part of this, and just seems to leave it at that. The camera is always too far away. If the director can't get us involved in the story, he could at least give us a good look at the sex and nudity the movie is chock full of, but alas, we don't get that either. The distance between the camera and the actors, and the generally poor camera angles, leaves most of the nudity hard to make out.I'm pretty sure that if you are unfortunate enough to watch this movie, there's only one thing about it you will remember, and that is the two scenes of horses mating. One was more than enough, but "Caligula and Messalina" inexplicably includes two such scenes. Was Bruno Mattei, the filmmaker, actually trying to cause harm to his audience by making us watch this?

BA_Harrison Made to cash in on the notoriety of Tinto Brass's 1979 movie 'Caligula', Italian trashmeister Bruno Mattei's 'Caligula and Messalina' is packed to the gills with depravity. Despite lacking the hardcore action and graphic gore to be found in Brass's movie, Mattei's production (available on German DVD in an uncut 108 minute version) is still fairly entertaining stuff.John Turner stars as nutty Roman Emperor Caligula, who commits incest with his sisters, makes his horse a member of the Senate, and executes the innocent on a whim.Messalina (played by gorgeous Betty Roland) is a power-hungry nymphomaniac who will stop at nothing to become Empress of Rome. She brings herself to the attention of Caligula by battling in the gladiator arena and it is not long before she achieves her goal, upsetting the Emperor's youngest sister Agrippina, who hopes that her son Nero will eventually become ruler of Rome.Agrippina successfully plots Caligula's downfall, but Messalina rains on her parade by immediately jumping into the sack with his successor, Claudius. But naughty old Messalina can't commit herself to one man, and shags everyone in sight, including a grotesque, but well-endowed, frequenter of brothels, a randy midget, her eunuch(!?!?) and an ex-lover. When she ends up pregnant, and it is obvious that the father is not Claudius (since he has been away fighting in foreign lands), Agrippina finally sees her opportunity to be rid of her nemesis once and for all.Chock full of graphic sleaze (nudity, simulated sex, Bacchanalian orgies, rape and buggery), this movie is definitely not one for the easily offended. And if none of that bothers you, then the graphic scenes of horses and donkeys getting jiggy will probably do the trick. Surprisingly, in contrast, the violence is pretty low-key, with most of it happening off screen.Mattei, obviously working with a low budget, resorts to padding his movie with footage from other films, particularly for crowd scenes requiring many extras, but to be fair it all works pretty well. 'Caligula and Messalina' is fun slice of schlock entertainment and is worth a viewing for fans of historical exploitation, but those hoping for the polished look and excesses of its more famous predecessor may be disappointed.

Brian_Cote-1 If there was a possible scientific way i could travel to the past it would be in the roman times.This is because the life expectancy was trivial and usually 25-30.The women still had big bushes of hair on their vagina and men could walk around being rich doing what they wished watching gladiators fight and being a political snide bastard using words and power to corrupt and felicitate your enemy's while being able to get away with anything because of the lack of government control in the peoples way.I Love USA, But i want to live in 420 B.C ^_^Also i see this move about Caligula factually correct which means more to me then any of my dreams.

jaibo One of the small slew of Roman histories which followed in the wake of Tinto Brass' critically reviled but commercially successful Caligula, Bruno Mattei's Caligula and Messalina doesn't have a great deal to add but what it does have is pretty eye-popping. Unlike Brass' monumental work, Mattei's atrocity has Caligula die about halfway through, continuing the story into the reign of Claudius until he tires of his disgraceful wife Messalina and has her put to the sword. The film is, then, more the story of Messalina than of Caligula, although you wouldn't know it from the set-up, which simply retreads the familiar Caligula story, beginning with some appallingly clunking exposition speeches, the best that can be said about which is that what they expose is then shown on screen, making them not only poor scriptwriting but staggeringly redundant.The story is enlivened by Mattei's trademark use of stock footage, which means that intermixed with the cheap and cheerless original film are crowd scenes, senate scenes and gladiatorial scenes from early 1960s peplum, including Pontius Pilate and Leone's The Colossus of Rhodes. As usual with Mattei, the stock footage stands out like a sore thumb, or in this case is like a perfect hand on which his own sore thumb has been stuck. Not content with chivvying things up in this fashion, Mattei provides us with not one but two scenes of equine congress in quick succession – the ass's milk for Messalina's bath is helped along by bringing in a long-donged mule to tup the ass, and Caligula's famous senator horse is shown in congress with a mare at the stables,; both scenes include explicit footages of the animal's sexual organs, the latter sequence intercutting footage from Borowczyk's The Beast. Both sequences are about as unnecessary as can be imagined, but they do perk the jaded interest after what has been a fairly dull first 45 minutes.After this, things get better as Caligula is killed and the story is a little bit less familiar. Messalina, now Claudius' Empress, craves nothing more than huge dick, and is serviced by her well-hung eunuch before skipping down the brothel to try the legendarily huge member of an out-of-towner client (played by the ugliest man to ever hit the screen, Salvatore Baccaro from The Beast in Heat). There's an amusing episode where the Empress feeds a lover to the lions, but the film is for the most part pretty flat, poorly acted and unimaginatively directed, so apart from the outré elements, there's little to engage, and most viewers I should think will be pretty relieved when Messalina meets her end, allowing the film to.