Example

10 (1979)

Writer/director Blake Edwards' sex comedy's title helped to popularize the objectification and rating of women on a perfection scale from 1-10; it told about how mid-life crisis suffering song writer George Webber (Dudley Moore), with a long suffering stage actress girlfriend Samantha Taylor (Julie Andrews), followed a fantasy girl of his dreams to Acapulco, where he voyeuristically saw the nubile newlywed Jenny Miles/Hanley (Bo Derek in her screen debut and in the role that made her a sex symbol) honeymooning - this was the film's indelible and iconic image of her corn-rowed, beaded hair (which set off a national frenzy) and skimpy bathing suit while sunning herself and then running along the beach in slow-motion; after saving her husband David from the water, he was rewarded by seduction in a darkly-lit scene - memorably played to the sounds of Maurice Ravel's "Bolero"

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens! (1979)

Altered States (1980)

American Gigolo (1980)

Bad Timing (1980, UK) (subtitled A Sensual Obsession)

Bare Behind Bars (1980, Brazil) (aka A Prisão)

Writer/director Oswaldo de Oliveira's X-rated (and banned in the UK), sensationalistic women in prison film has been regarded as the ultimate sleazy example of its sub-genre, featuring a rat-infested Brazilian prison with sado-masochistic lesbian blonde warden Silvia (Maria Stella Splendore), a perverted nurse named Barbara and prison guards (with open-buttoned white blouses), pretty naked inmates with tan lines having sex and steamy showers, tortures and whippings, catfights, invasive cavity searches, white slavery, and forced sex; the film was controversial for its hard-core sex scenes, full-frontal nudity, and a brutal male castration scene, as well as a giant pineapple dildo, naked exercises, shaving razors concealed in body parts, and more...

The Blue Lagoon (1980)

In Randal Kleiser's version of Henry DeVere Stacpoole's 1903 novel set on a South Pacific tropical island, the facts of life were awkwardly and dumbly unfolded between the two sex-starved, ship-wrecked, and marooned teens Richard and Emmeline Lestrange (Christopher Atkins and 14 year-old Brooke Shields), in this "sensuous story of natural love" - they grew up together on the remote island and experienced the first awakenings of love and sexuality (including menstruation, puberty, masturbation, intercourse) - and even teenaged pregnancy and the birth of a child - with inane dialogue ("You're always staring at my buppies" and "I've seen you play with 'it', and I know what happens when you play with 'it' for a long time"); the film was self-censored and sanitized with glued-down hair and palms carefully concealing genital areas and breasts, and the use of a body double (stunt double Kathy Troutt) for Shields when nudity was shown; it was followed by a slightly more explicit Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991) with Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause

Can't Stop the Music (1980)

Circle of Two (1980)
(aka Obsession)

Cruising (1980)

William Friedkin's notorious, grisly thriller film told about the seedy and dangerous underworld of gay S&M in NY's heavy leather bars (including The Ramrod), and included actual leather-clad gay patrons as extras; it starred Al Pacino as an undercover cop (as a gay man) named Steve Burns investigating serial killer murders in the Big Apple's homosexual underworld; major protests by gay groups - the first of their kind - accused the film of being anti-gay and homophobic prior to the AIDS crisis for its depiction of the gritty, kinky, dangerous and depraved lifestyle of homosexuals in NYC's leather scene; two months after the film was released, a man killed and injured almost a dozen patrons at The Ramrod with a machine gun; the current truncated film still lacks approximately 40 minutes of footage (including the full version of the climactic and ferocious stabbing scene ("You made me do that"), and various hardcore sexual acts)

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Brian De Palma's Hitchcockian-like thriller (with shades of both Psycho (1960) and Vertigo (1958)) investigated themes of aberrant sexuality, voyeurism, and graphic violence; it told about sexually-unsatisfied patient Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson, also portrayed by a former Penthouse Pet of the Year body double with an air-brushed pubic area to acquire an R-rating in the opening shower fantasy-rape sequence) suffering from vivid erotic fantasies; her pre-operative transsexual psychologist/counselor Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine) was ultimately determined to be responsible for various slayings; its most erotic scene was the brilliant 10-minute sequence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of Kate's cat-and-mouse flirting with a nameless stranger and her taxi-cab seduction en route to his apartment; the film was remarkable for the post-seduction scene in which Kate found a Department of Health letter in the stranger's drawer stating that he had a venereal disease; after her tryst, the film also included a vicious razor-slashing in an elevator - her punishment or fate for 'free love'? - from a presumed blonde female with dark glasses named Bobbi that was witnessed by high-class prostitute Liz Blake (Nancy Allen); various feminist groups protested the misogynistic portrayal of women as sex objects or victims following sexually-promiscuous behavior

Friday the 13th (1980) and other slasher films

The correlation between sex and subsequent death, in the burgeoning AIDS era of the 80s, was reinforced by various low-budget slasher and splatter films (with many sequels, parodies and rip-offs) as they came to be called, most prominently first in the landmark Halloween (1978) and then perfected in Friday the 13th; the moral of these 'dead teenager' films was that if you were promiscuous as an oversexed teen (usually portrayed by anonymous cast members), it foreshadowed stalking (usually for females) and sure death in some gory and painful fashion in a remote location (often woodsy). Similar copycat films included:

New Year's Evil (1980)
Humanoids From the Deep (1980) - see next entry
My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
April Fool's Day (1986)

Heaven's Gate (1980)

In the midst of Michael Cimino's expensive 'boondoggle' film and revisionistic Western about the Johnson County Wars between starving Eastern European immigrant farmers and mercenaries hired by the cattlemen, Harvard-educated Sheriff Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson) found romance on the Western frontier of Wyoming with young bordello madam Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert); when he first arrived, she served him pie for breakfast while stripping down at the table, and tempting him to hungrily follow her to the bedroom; shortly after she received a birthday present of a horse and rig from him, they rode to a beautiful mountain stream where she went skinny-dipping in the refreshing water before they picnicked together and she talked about their future

Humanoids From the Deep (1980)

Little Darlings (1980)

Spetters (1980, Dutch)

One of Paul Verhoeven's earlier sexually-explicit works (long before Basic Instinct and Showgirls) was this controversial film - an action-oriented, sports-centered coming of age film (often compared to the plot of Saturday Night Fever); the title of the film referred to (1) grease spatterings from a grill, (2) oil drippings from motorbikes, and (3) male ejaculate, as well as generally referring to 'hunks' or sexually-appealing females; Verhoeven's film foreshadowed the trend to show realistic sex scenes (with equal nudity of both sexes) in mainstream movies; it told about three troubled, working-class twenty-something hotshots in Rotterdam involved in amateur dirt-bike motorcross - all idolizing Dutch racing champion Gerrit Witkamp (Rutger Hauer), and all interested in a pretty blonde - a manipulative, seductive, opportunistic golddigger named Fientje (Renee Soutendijk) who worked in a race snack bar/mobile trailer serving fast food (french fries and hot dogs); the film was highly criticized for its caricaturing of homosexuals, the police, the press, and organized religion; it also contained a graphic, brutal and violent homosexual gang-rape scene upon one of the three (Eef, played by Toon Agterberg); the R-rated version ran about 8 minutes shorter than the unrated (and uncut) version

Urban Cowboy (1980)

Beau-Pere (1981, Fr.)