An exploration of Roman decadence paired with the phrase “Penthouse Films Presents” should conjure up salaciously suggestive imagery. Whatever you are envisioning in your dirty little head, though, nothing captures the perverse, fetishistic joylessness of the couplings that appear on screen. Though Gore Vidal wrote the script and Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud and Helen Mirren starred in the film, the movie is practically unwatchable. The depravities on screen, which range from violence to incest to rape to excruciatingly explicit sex acts, are sordid to the point of sadness. Although what can you expect from a film that Roger Ebert walked out of and called, “Sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.” HBO’s Rome illustrated the life and times of the great capital without making the audience want to rush home and shower.
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