No matter how scorned by one generation of film critics and/or filmgoers, once a movie is finished and preserved for all time there’s always a chance of “rediscovery” and reevaluation by film fans of the future.

“Lost” films come back to life, flops are revived as “classics” as more sober-minded assessors weigh in once the furor and stain of notoriety have faded.

“Caligula” starred Malcolm McDowell, an elite talent hot off of “A Clockwork Orange,” and three future Oscar winners — Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren and John Gielgud. It was scripted by acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Gore Vidal, who had a hand in “Ben Hur,” “The Best Man” And “Is Paris Burning?”

Director Tinto Brass (“Yankee” and “I Am What I Am”) had won respect in Italian filmmaking circles.

But when the film — released and yanked, re-edited and re-released — finally arrived in theaters, all anybody wanted to talk about was its Penthouse Magazine touches, the graphic depravitity, the sex and omnipresent nudity and sexually transgressive nature of it all. Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione produced it, and fired Tinto Brass to shoot additional “dirty” stuff and edit it in ways that played-up the titillation.

Reviews were brutal. Vidal demanded that his name be taken from the script, and the editor and composer did the same. If you wanted to get most anyone in front of or behind the camera red in the face in later decades, all you had to do was mention the title.

Was it really that awful? A new “ultimate cut” restoration, putting the film back as Brass and Vidal et al wanted it, removing some of Guccione’s excesses, promises to let us see how to looked when it premiered in Italy before Guccione took it over and invites us to rethink “Caligula.”

What I remember about it, never having sat through the many cable TV servings of it O channel-surfed by over the ensuing decades, is that I had to cross a picket line at the Manor Theatre in Charlotte, N.C. to see it.

Yes, it was picketed.

The beheading tank, a vast rolling scythe invented for the film as a means of delivering”entertaining” executions by God-Emperor Caligula (born in 12 CE, assassinated in 41, CE) struck me as particularly revolting.

All the breasts, bare bottoms and penises deployed here had a numbing effect in the theater.

And Matthew McDowell, in the title role, summed up the film with repeated references to his need for more stimulus in his depraved (not wholly endorsed by historians) life.

“Dull, dull, DULL!”

But how do memories of this abortion — featuring an actual live childbirth (three pregnant extras were employed to achieve this) — compare to experiencing it anew, “restored?”

Vidal was right to try and take his name off this, as the script is trite, disorganized and tin-eared. The day may come when all that we remember Vidal for are his contributions to films (he added the gay subtext to “Ben-Hur,” he claimed) and his feuds with Truman Capote and others.

If there’s a more insipid, oft-repeated line than “I hope I’m not interrupting,” I am at a loss to recall it. And deploying it while “interrupting” Caligula’s sexual dalliance with his sister Drusella (Teresa Ann Savoy, all but forgotten now) isn’t “cute.”

The vast majority of shots are held several seconds after their payoff, a pronounced and obvious flaw in the early acts, an insufferable agony in the later ones. Editor Nino Baragli (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “Mediterraneo” can’t have wanted that.

Perhaps that’s the work of director Brass, an uncredited editor here. Let the record show that Tinto Brass never made a great or good film, before or after “Caligula.” Restoring this picture doesn’t change that dubious track record.

The sets, from the grottos of Capri to “The Glory that was Rome,” look like tacky, over-decorated soundstage versions of TV productions of the era.

And never has the addition of buzzing flies on the soundtrack seemed more superfluous. The film is ugly and the picture just reeks, and pretty much has from the start.

The roughly (VERY roughly) historical story follows Caligula from the days when Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was trying to outgrow his nickname, “Little Boots,” aka “Caligula,” in the court of the aged and pox-ridden Tiberius (O’Toole).

O’Toole trots out his famous bellow in summoning the son of the general he murdered to his court in Capri.

“Do your DANCE boy!”

The nobleman Nerva (Gielgud) sees the end coming for the emperor, and would rather kill himself in the (glass) tub than witness that, and the rise of “Little Boots.”

Tiberius may have adopted Caligula, but he fears what he’ll do to his “real” son, young Gemellus (Bruno Brive) and family, including the disabled and disregarded Claudius (Giancarlo Bidessi).

“In our family, a brother murders a brother who murdered his father who has murdered his son!”

With the help of his mentor, General Macro (Guido Mannari), Caligula sees to it that Tiberius does not pass peacefully.

And as O’Toole and Gielgud exit the picture, 45 minutes in, “Caligula” stops sliding downhill and begins to plunge. It plunges for well over two hours in this latest “ultimate” cut.

Caligula’s determination to marry his sister and co-rule with her are dismissed by Drusella, who is already married on top of everything else wrong with that idea. Siblings marry? It’s illegal in Rome.

“But not in Egypt!”

Caligula, given an evil glint by McDowell, first scene to last, must assert himself by murdering his aides and any potential rival. A tiny bit of lip service is paid to his “honeymoon” period of rule, when he came off as reasonable.

But choosing “the most promiscuous woman in Rome” (Mirren) as his bride merely gives him another mouth whispering conspiracies in his ear.

As Caligula pursues Senatorial endorsement of his “god” status, it all goes to hell, long after the movie does.

The ickiness of it all competes with the monstrous cruelty in the not-exactly-coherent narrative. Bodily functions dominate whole scenes, and even the rare moment that plays — Caligula disguising himself to mingle with the contemptuous masses, getting arrested and then recognized by his jailor — is left dangling.

Mirren is beguiling here, and we can see a rough draft of her cunning, scheming turn as Morgan in “Excalibur” in this performance.

Gielgud and O’Toole try to lend gravitas to scenes and settings that in no way merit it.

McDowell peacocks throughout, as befits an emperor wearing mini-skirt-length tunics and codpiece thongs.

“I can do anything I like!”

That’s the message here, a sadist given absolute power and going progressively more and more mad as even his keeper of the pursestrings (John Steiner) cannot dent his need for stimulus, his delusions or cut his runaway spending.

If you think it takes a three hour movie that degraded, embarassed and bespoiled an entire generation of Italian film extras to get that simple point across, “Caligula” is the movie for you.

For everyone else, this much remains obvious. It’s still an abomination after all these years.

Rating: X, graphic violence, explicit sex, full frontal nudity, incest, bestiality

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, John Gielgud, Guido Mannari, Giancarlo Badessi, John Steiner and Teresa Ann Savoy

Credits: Directed by Tinto Brass, scripted by Gore Vidal. A Penthouse Films/Analysis Film and Giant/Drafthouse re-release.

Running time: 2:58