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Sex in Cinema: |
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Sex in Cinema: |
 
Sex in Cinema: In the following collection, excerpted from the
Mini-History of Sex in the Cinema
at this site, here are some of the most significant milestones, and
most influential and memorable sexual/erotic scenes and films on the
big screen through cinematic history. Most of these films, with portrayals
of sex and/or nudity, were considered quite erotic, groundbreaking,
unique and/or controversial at the time. HISTORY OF SEX IN CINEMA - INDEX (chronological by film title) Intro | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4 | Part
5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10 | |
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| Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes (chronological by film title) 
Milestone Films With Scenes That Were Especially
Notorious, Infamous, Controversial, or Scandalous |
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| Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
| Age of Consent (1969, Aus.)
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In Michael Powell's erotic comedy advertised with the tagline: "There Is A Time Of Beauty... There Is A Day Of Yearning... There Is An "AGE OF CONSENT"", young Helen Mirren (as teenaged granddaughter Cora Ryan) was featured in several revealing nude scenes as a model for New York painter Bradley Monahan (James Mason), including one where she snorkeled (and spear-fished) naked in the ocean |    |
| Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)
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This satirical Paul Mazursky film reflected the 'free love' era of the late 60s sexual revolution (with the tagline "Consider the Possibilities"), with its story of encounter groups, permissive sex, mate-swapping, countercultural temptation and emotional openness among affluent adults; the two married couples: Bob and Carol Sanders (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) and their best friends Ted and Alice Henderson (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) had their marital vows of fidelity (and monogamy) challenged during a weekend swinging trip to Las Vegas; Dyan Cannon urged: "I feel like doing what we came up here to do...Orgy, have an orgy. Orgy. Orgy " after being asked what she wanted to do; the film was noted for its publicity - a view of couples in bed together discussing either group sex or seeing Tony Bennett; also the film ended with the Burt Bacharach song "What the World Needs Now (Is Love, Sweet Love)" |    |
| Cherry, Harry & Raquel (1969)
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This Russ Meyer classic was his last independent movie before 20th Century Fox lured him to Hollywood; it was an action tale of sex-crazed individuals in an Arizona border town, featuring drug-dealing, shoot-outs, beatings and car-crashes; the female title characters were buxom nurse Cherry (Linda Ashton) (pictured) and big-breasted prostitute Raquel (Larissa Ely) (pictured); it was famous for an underwater lesbian scene; statuesque Uschi Digard (aka Astrid Lillimoor) (pictured) also starred as the German-speaking Native American ghost, Soul who posed nude against various desert locations |
   
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The Damned (1969, It.) (aka La Caduta Degli Dei or Fall of the Gods)
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Director Luchino Visconti's controversial film (originally rated X) profiled the Nazi Party's rise to power in the early 1930s, with its connections to sexual perversions (incest, pedophilia, homosexuality, murder, drug addiction and suicide) through its soap opera chronicling of the moral disintegration of one wealthy, upper-crust industrial family; its main decadent, over-the-top anti-hero character was heir Martin Von Essenbeck (Helmut Berger) - a dope-addicted, degenerate, sexually-aberrant transvestite teenager (performing a routine as Marlene Dietrich in Blue Angel drag in one sequence) who molested young girls (off-screen) and incestuously raped his own Baroness mother Sophia (Ingrid Thulin); the centerpiece of the film was the restaging of the historical bloodbath massacre of Brown Shirt SA soldiers (in June 1934) called "Night of the Long Knives" during a surreal drunken orgy (equated with Nazi evil) of soldiers, naked women, and men in drag at a lakeside resort |    |
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This generation-defining, youth-oriented, counter-cultural road film classic told about two motorcyclist biker outlaws (drug-dealers) who embarked on a coast-to-coast odyssey across America; the film featured marijuana smoking, the hippie lifestyle in a Southwest commune including skinny-dipping, sex in a New Orleans bordello, and a psychedelic trip in a nearby graveyard |   |
| Fellini - Satyricon (1969, It./Fr.) (aka The Degenerates)
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Best Director-nominated Fellini's R-rated epic was a colorful, visually-rich, and bizarre depiction of pre-Christian Rome and its pagan debauchery and sexual decadence (based on a satirical and bawdy work by Petronius); it centered on the homoerotic tension and sexual rivalry, in a fractured series of episodes, between two students: blonde Encolpio (Martin Potter) and Ascilto (Hiram Keller) - rivals for various males; the film was filled with repulsive characters and images, including an albino hermaphrodite worshipped as a healing demi-god and fortune-teller, a sick nymphomaniac, a battle with a Minotaur, the cannibalistic eating of Eumolpo (Salvo Randone), the public amputation of a hand, and a sexual threesome romp between the two homosexual lads side by side with a receptive Ethopian slave girl between them; the film's last voice-over ended mid-sentence |      |
Last Summer (1969)
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Director Frank Perry's insightful, probing, and realistic beach film (unlike the Beach Party films earlier in the decade) was about angst-ridden, self-doubting adolescent youth; it told about three affluent teens during a Fire Island, New York summer vacation -- pretty Sandy (Barbara Hershey), Peter (Richard Thomas), and Dan (Bruce Davison); the teen triangle was forever altered with the arrival of a troubled late-comer, 15 year-old outsider Rhoda (Oscar-nominated Catherine Burns), a slightly plump, homely teen who tragically came of age during a scene of sexual challenge when Sandy dared Rhoda to remove her top - and the group held her down during a forced rape; the film daringly explored teenage interest and curiosity about sex, pot experimentation, and revealing games of 'truth or dare'; in one scene, frustrated Sandy chided Peter - annoyed with his sexual obsession over her breasts: "God, if you're gonna be thinking about my breasts all the goddamn time!" with his defensive answer: "I don't think about them all the goddamn time. I was just thinking about 'em now"; the film was originally rated X by the MPAA when it was first released, but after some cuts were made to the rape scene, the film's rating was changed to an R | 
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This sleazy "women in prison" sexploitation film with full frontal female nudity (advertised as "the film that goes beyond X") emerged in the era of greater permissiveness after the abolition of the Production Code in the late 60s; it told of a Nazi concentration camp during WWII with a sadistic commandant who forced his female prisoners to be tortured and engage in perverse experiments and sexual depravity; its sensational content included orgies, S & M, and lesbianism, due to the fact that the inmates were forced to be prostitutes for off-duty German officers; this film inspired other WIP films of the next decade, including the infamous Ilsa - She-Wolf of the SS (1974) |    |
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Haskell Wexler's fictional, experimental, and groundbreaking cinema verite docudrama film told about John Cassellis (Robert Forster) - a jaded news cameraman who worked against the backdrop of the actual 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago; it was originally rated X (later re-rated to R) because of violence, language and nudity; in one frequently-noted scene with brief full-frontal nudity, John romped nude with sultry nurse and girlfriend Ruth (Marianna Hill) around an apartment, and later became involved with widowed Eileen (Verna Bloom), a single mother from Appalachia; it was the first mainstream American feature film to show full male and female nudity - although the director battled Paramount and the censorship board and allegedly believed the film was Rated X for its controversial political tone and frequent obscenities rather than for its nudity |  
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John Schlesinger's film was a major milestone - this was the first (and only) X-rated (for adult-oriented, not porno) mainstream film (later reduced to R) to be voted Best Picture, with its A-list stars; its adult-themed story told of a naive, swaggering, transplanted male Texan named Joe Buck (Jon Voight) who struggled in the sordid 42nd Street area of NY to become a successful hustler or gigolo; upon his arrival in the big city, he vainly posed shirtless in front of his hotel room's mirror, and pasted up a beefcake poster of Paul Newman from Hud and a picture of a topless woman; his first 'trick' was fast-talking society girl Cass (Best Supporting Actress nominee Sylvia Miles) in a comedic sex scene in which they humorously activated channels with the TV remote control beneath their bodies - the climax came with the closeup view of the winning results of a slot machine jackpot - spewed-out coins; Joe's first homosexual client was a religiously fanatical and homosexual Jesus-freak Christian named Mr. O'Daniel (John McGiver) - during the encounter, Joe flashbacked to his boyhood when he was baptized in a river, and an incident when rednecks viciously assaulted him and his former girlfriend Annie (Jennifer Salt); another homosexual client was a bespectacled student in a movie theatre - while experiencing oral sex, Joe had memories of making love with Annie ("You're the only one, Joe"); the Texas stud was befriended by a limping and coughing homeless thief named Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) and they experienced an unspoken homosexual relationship together which included frequent bickering; Joe also took socialite Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro) to bed for his first successful score, although he at first suffered sexual inadequacy until angered when she suggested that he was gay |       |
| 100 Rifles (1969)
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This late 60s western featured a strikingly-beautiful star - Raquel Welch as rebellious Yaqui Indian guerrilla leader Sarita; in one scene, she showered from a railroad water tank through her skin-tight, bra-less clothing to create a diversion during an ambush of a trainload of Mexican soldiers; also the curvaceous sex-star was featured in a steamy inter-racial love scene (reportedly the first of its kind) - a 60's era issue brought to the screen, with former National Football League player/Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown as Arizona lawman Lyedecker |    |
| Ride a Wild Stud (1969)
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This sexploitation western was advertised with the tagline: "When Men Were Men and Women Didn't Forget It"; it told about how Confederate bandit William Quantrill and his raiders during the Civil War kidnapped, raped and imprisoned women in a brothel (the infamous "Pleasure House of Quantrill") where the heroine Marsha Wilson (Josie Kirk) was subjected to rape, wild orgies, and sexual attacks | |
| Women in Love (1969, UK)
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Ken Russell's landmark film, adapted from D.H. Lawrence's 1920 novel by Larry Kramer, included a famous extended scene of nude male strength match of wrestling between local mine owner Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed) and school master Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates) in a locked room before a roaring fireplace; it was the first explicit scene with a homoerotic context that revealed male genitals in a commercial mainstream film - extremely daring for its time; after their match in which Gerald's strength overcame Rupert, the two sweaty men reclined on the floor side-by-side and talked: (Rupert: "But we ought to swear to love each other, you and I. Intimately. Perfectly. Finally, without any possibility of ever going back on it. Shall we swear to each other one day?" Gerald: "We'll wait till I understand it better"); their relationship was contrasted by their involvement with two sisters: Rupert eventually married teacher Ursula Brangwen (Jennie Linden) and Gerald had a stormy and temperamental love affair with 1920s emancipated, free-thinking, and ill-fated sculptress/artist Gudrun Brangwen (Best Actress Oscar-winning Glenda Jackson); in other scenes, Ursula and Rupert ran naked through a wheatfield and made love together; the film was notable because Glenda Jackson became the first performer to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for a role in which she appeared nude (with full and firm breasts since she was pregnant during filming) |    |
| Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
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This was the first studio film of independent 'nudie-cutie' king Russ Meyer who was the sexist, exploitative director of Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!! (1965) and Vixen (1968); it was co-written by film critic Roger Ebert as an unofficial sequel to Fox's Valley of the Dolls (1967) based upon Jacqueline Susann's trashy novel; X-rated (originally), this T & A exploitation spoof film was made for a $1 million budget - it was filled with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll in its plot about an uninhibited group of hick girls in a rock trio dubbed The Carrie Nations (including two former Playboy Playmates Dolly Read and Cynthia Myers) who journeyed to Hollywood to make it big, where they found orgiastic sex, bondage, gays, lesbianism, drugs, a bizarre record promoter and murder; many scenes contained ridiculous yet sexy dialogue, such as: (porn star Ashley St. Ives (Edy Williams): "You're a groovy boy. I'd like to strap you on sometime"); it was one of the most successful 20th Century Fox films ever - costing about $900,000 to make but grossing $40 million |   
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| The Boys in the Band (1970)
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This milestone film from director William Friedkin (an adaptation of Mart Crowley's off-Broadway 1968 stage play) was notable as being the first Hollywood feature film to examine the homosexual culture and community in close-up fashion, and to portray gays as human beings who could have a sense of camaraderie; it was rated R by the usually ultra-conservative MPAA (when the previous year's Midnight Cowboy (1969) and The Killing of Sister George (1969) received X-ratings) for its subject matter and for its bold language (for example, Emory (Cliff Gorman) "Who do you have to f--k to get a drink around here?"); it told about a gay birthday party among some miserable and bitchy individuals that turned confessional and vindictive as the night wore on; in one scene, Michael (Kenneth Nelson) sang: "'Forget your troubles, c'mon get happy! You better chase all your cares away!' What's more boring than a queen doing a Judy Garland imitation?" Donald: "A queen doing a Bette Davis imitation"; in another searing scene with self-deprecating humor, Harold (Leonard Frey) told Michael: ("You're a sad and pathetic man. You're a homosexual and you don't want to be, but there's nothing you can do to change it - not all your prayers to your God, not all the analysis you can buy in all the years you've got left to live. You may very well one day be able to know a heterosexual life if you want it desperately enough, if you pursue it with the fervor with which you annihilate, but you'll always be homosexual as well, always Michael, always, until the day you die") |
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| The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970)
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Veteran Hollywood director
Irving Rapper's campy biopic released by United Artists, was adapted for
the screen from a best-selling, late 60s autobiographical account; it
was Hollywood’s first attempt at exploring transgender issues --
it told about an ex-GI who became a blonde beauty and was transformed
in the early 1950s in a Denmark clinic from George Jorgensen Jr. into
Christine Jorgensen (John Hansen), one of the earliest surgically-altered
transsexuals; although respectful, it had howlingly bad acting, dialogue,
and writing; the poster proclaimed - "I couldn't live in a man's
body!" and "Did the surgeon's knife make me a woman or a freak?" |
 
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El Topo (1970)
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Director/star Alejandro Jodorowsky's self-conscious, surrealistic, often incoherent, unique and avant-garde El Topo (translated "the Mole"), a gory (and spiritual) "spaghetti" western and first 'midnight movie' cult film, included a notable sex/rape scene between the director (as the black-clad gunfighting title character) and a vicious Colonel's rescued concubine named Mara (Mara Lorenzio), who led him on a quest to defeat the four invincible master gunmen of the desert; he tore off her clothes and forced himself upon her in the desert - the self-important director later dubiously claimed - for publicity's sake - that the scene was deliberately real; in other sex-related scenes, a woman hugged a phallic-shaped rock that burst forth water in the desert, and a piece of sliced-open fruit was suggestively licked |   
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| Electro Sex '75 (1970)
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Mike Henderson's hard-core adult feature was the first pornographic film to be advertised in a newspaper (in New York) | |
| M*A*S*H (1970)
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This macabre, black-humored, anti-war comedy (originally rated X, but reduced to an R rating) was one of the first films to use the F-word (in the football game scene, in which "Painless" (John Schuck) said: "All right, Bub, your f--kin' head is coming right off"), and among the first to feature brief full nudity, in the prank scene played by the members of a free-wheeling camp on uptight chief nurse Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Sally Kellerman) - after broadcasting her love-making tryst on loudspeakers with hypocritical tee-totaler Major 'Frank' Burns (Robert Duvall): ("Oh, Frank, my lips are hot. Kiss my hot lips" - and Frank: "God meant us to find each other" - Hotlips" as she enthusiastically opened her blouse: "His will be done") - the pranksters pulled away a tent flap of her shower stall with a jeep and exposed her to an audience of jeering spectators - to discover whether she was a natural blonde or not |  |
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Bill Osco's film was remarkable as the first, theatrically-released, feature-length hardcore film with an actual narrative storyline -- actually a threadbare plot (accompanied by explicit sex scenes) that created the pattern for future porn films of the 70s; it was screened without credits (to avoid legal problems); it told about the title character - an engaged girl (Fifi Watson) who promised her mother that she'd be a virgin on her wedding day, meaning no explict penile-vaginal penetration (except that everything else, including oral sex, was permissible); this film's storyline was borrowed, to some degree, by Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat (1972) | |
| Myra Breckinridge (1970)
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Fox's film, originally rated X, was one of the biggest bombs ever made; it was the cinematic adaptation of Gore Vidal's 1968 notorious story about a man-hating trans-sexual Myron (Rex Reed) - then re-named Myra Breckinridge (Raquel Welch) in Hollywood; it included the infamous scene of a sham physical exam (and dildo rape!) conducted by star-spangled pattern-wearing Myra on hapless de-pantsed patient and young Hollywood acting student Rusty Godowsky (Roger Herren) - she told her subject as she put on a large strap-on dildo: "I shall ball you, Rusty...I won't kill you Rusty, I'll just educate you, you and the rest of America. Must be demonstrated to you practically, that there is no such thing as manhood. It died with Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz. Your manhood was taken by Errol Flynn and Clark Gable! I am only going to supply you with the finishing touches" - complete with intercut shots of various stars (Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe - in her famous pin-up pose, Clark Gable, etc.), bucking broncho-riding, the assault of a fortress with a large wooden battering ram, clips from a Laurel and Hardy film, a shot of the Hoover Dam collapsing, an image of Myra on a flowery swing spouting: "Hooray for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Uncle Sam, here I come", the cresting over the top of a roller-coaster, the tune "Love is a Many Splendored Thing", and an H-bomb explosion,; it also featured an aging 77 year-old Mae West (caricaturing herself) as sex-craving talent agent Letitia Van Allen with many one-liners: (i.e., "Well, the end of another busy day. I can't wait till I get back to bed. If that don't work, I'll try to sleep"); other scenes included Myra's bedroom seduction of Rusty's dumb blonde girlfriend Mary Ann Pringle (Farrah Fawcett in her debut film role) who told her: "If only there was some man like you. I'd really fall, I would. But not like this. If only you were a man...", the publicized scene of Myra's skirts-up revelation of her sex-change operation on top of a table, and a scene of Myra delivering oral sex to Myron, while he fantasized a vision of Mary Ann ("a typical, fun-loving, California sweetheart") providing him with a selection of delectable food treats including a banana |      |
HISTORY OF SEX IN CINEMA - INDEX (chronological by film title)
Intro | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4 | Part
5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10 |
Part 11 | Part
12 | Part 13 | Part
14 | Part 15 | Part
16 | Part 17 | Part
18 | Part 19 | Part
20 |
Part 21 | Part
22 | Part 23 | Part
24 | Part 25 | Part
26 | Part 27 | Part
28 | Part 29 | Part
30 |
Part 31 | Part
32 | Part 33 | Part
34 | Part 35 | Part
36 | Part 37 | Part
38 | Part 39 | Part
40 |
Part 41 | Part
42 | Part 43 | Part
44 | Part 45 | Part
46 | Part 47 | Part
48 | Part 49 | Part
50 |
Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
