- Caligula's four-year reign and descent into madness are revisited through slanderous vignettes and blunt historical facts.
- The deranged Roman emperor Gainus 'Caligula' (Little Boots) Caesar (12-41 A.D.) rules Rome with an iron fist and has anyone tortured and executed for even the slightest insubordination. Mostly set during the last year of his reign, as Caligula loses support due to his brutal and crazed excess, a young Moor woman, named Miriam, becomes his lover while plotting to kill him to avenge the murder of a friend which Caligula was responsible for. But Miriam is torn between her personal vendetta against Caligula and her own personal feelings towards him despite his madness and debauched lifestyle of orgies and bloody torture murders.—matt-282
- Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Caligula (David Brandon), alone in his bed, is plagued by nightmares in which a man, his head covered in a helmet, tries to shoot him with an arrow. The poet Domitius (Michele Sovai) approaches and tries to assassinate him with a dagger, but the attempt is thwarted by Ulmar (Sasah D'Arc), Caligula's bodyguard. Domitius ends up losing his tongue and having his tendons cut at Caligula's behest.
Riding along the beach with his friend and chief advisor Messala (Oliver Finch), Caligula encounters a group of Christians, among whom he spots Livia (Fabiola Toledo). He rapes the woman in the woods in front of her young lover Aetius, a consul's son. While being raped, Livia commits suicide with Caligula's dagger. The emperor orders Messala to kill Aetius on the spot. He spreads word that they were killed by fanatical Christians, and persecutes them. The senators, however, do not believe that the peaceful Christians were responsible and continue to plot against Caligula, discussing their options.
In his nightmares, Caligula is visited by the shades of Aetius and Livia. At Livia's funeral, held on a beach, Miriam Celsia (Laura Gemser), close friend and an Egyptian priestess of the god Anubis, speaks against a Christian burial - the idea being that Livia's God failed to defend her - and in favor of cremation according to Anubis, who speaks of vengeance. The Christians comply.
Lucretius presents sumptuous construction plans of various pagan temples to Caligula and a group of senators. To finance the project, Caligula announces he will auction off all his belongings at a banquet with beautiful women and costly admission. He then feigns wine poisoning. One of the senators offers to give his life for his well-being, and Caligula stabs him with his sword. Again in his private rooms, the emperor makes fun of crippled Domitius using his sex slaves.
In a temple, Miriam sacrifices her virginity to Anubis in exchange for vengeance on Livia's murder. She is then approached by senator Cornelius who wants to aid her.
Meanwhile, Caligula's cavalry capture novice Vestal Virgins as the chief attraction of the banquet. In a swimming pool, they are deflowered by slaves approaching underwater with phalli. Other women, among them Miriam, apply for the orgy and are selected by a eunuch, who then trains them in the art of love.
During the banquet (which involves jugglers, a bloody gladiatorial combat and the masturbation of a horse), Caligula falls in love with Miriam and his bodyguard Ulmar leads her to the imperial chambers where Miriam and Caligula have sex with each other. When Cornelius attempts to kill Caligula, Miriam unexpectedly saves the emperor's life, killing Cornelius.
Caligula takes deadly revenge on the senators involved in the plot in a number of gruesome ways (through decapitation, castration, and shoving a spike up one mans anus and having it exiting out of his chest). In the meantime, Miriam has become passionately tied to Caligula, who announces he will marry her despite her slave status. She discovers Livia's amulet and becomes torn between vengeance and love. When Ulmar offers to help her escape, she refuses. She can no longer kill Caligula but has to know the truth about Livia's death and therefore administers him a hallucinogenic potion. In his ensuing vision, Caligula is approached and plagued in the beyond by the shades of the people he murdered. One is Miriam. As she approaches, he stabs her with a sword he found on the floor, shouting "You're just a dream. But I'm still alive!" When he realizes he is no longer dreaming and has actually stabbed her, Caligula cries as Miriam dies in his arms.
Riding again on the beach with Messala, Caligula is approached by senators, praetorian guards and his uncle Claudius. Caligula announces the cancellation of his construction project for a new Rome and asks that they tell the gods he has woken from his dream. Ulmar, wearing the helmet from Caligula's initial dream, shoots arrows through Messala's neck and Caligula's heart and they both fall off their horses. Dying, Caligula says with his last words, "I'm still alive! Miriam, I'm still... alive."
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By what name was Caligula: The Untold Story (1982) officially released in India in English?
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