Example

Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986) (aka 9 1/2 Weeks)

Director Adrian Lyne's much-talked-about soft-porn but mainstream film (co-produced and co-scripted by Zalman King), was the most explicitly sexual big-budget film since Last Tango in Paris (1972/73); shot in sequence, it told of a bizarre romance that included endlessly creative, obsessive, sado-masochistic and experimental ways that two erotic but kinky adventurers-lovers in New York aroused themselves during foreplay; enigmatic Wall Street executive John (Mickey Rourke) hypnotized and blindfolded art gallery assistant Elizabeth (Kim Basinger who had just recently posed for Playboy) to play sensual sex games with food in front of a refrigerator, after he asked: "Does this excite you?" - he caressed her naked body and nipples with melting ice cubes - also one olive, a bowl of maraschino cherries, one cherry tomato, a pint of strawberries, one glass of champagne, two spoonfuls of Vick's cough syrup, a forkful of cold spiral pasta, a spoonful of cherry Jello, four jalapeno peppers, one glass of milk, a bottle of sparkling water, and gobs of honey for her with her eyes closed - to the tune of Bryan Ferry's "Slave to Love" - [Note: the scene was parodied in Hot Shots! (1991) between Charlie Sheen and Valeria Golina but with vegetables and olives]; there were also scenes of kinky and raunchy sex on a dinner table, behind a giant roof-top clock-face and in a rainy brick stairway, and a scene of Elizabeth masturbating while watching art slides; another controversial scenes included one in which John hired a hooker to fondle the blindfolded Elizabeth - and then kissed the half-naked prostitute to make her jealous during the threesome, and another scene in which he brandished a whip as she crawled across the floor and picked up money; the film was released in two versions: the US R-version and a longer, racier European version, and became a blockbuster hit after being released to video

Two inferior successors to the original film appeared in 1997 and 1998:

Another 9 1/2 Weeks (aka Love in Paris) (1997), a direct-to-video release by director Anne Goursand with Rourke and Angie Everhart (as Elizabeth's best friend Lea in Paris) - the film opened with Rourke using a straight razor to play with the nipple of a blindfolded blonde (Philippa Matthews); later Rourke poured wine over the naked, rose petal-covered body of red-haired Everhart; there were also scenes of orgasmic sex, lesbian sex (with Agathe de la Fontaine), and the pouring of hot wax on a half-naked woman (Sasha Van Duyn) on a spinning wheel in a night-club

The First 9 1/2 Weeks (1998) - a prequel taglined: "A Journey Beyond Pleasure", directed by Alex Wright, with Paul Mercurio and Clara Bellar

Room With a View (1986)

Something Wild (1986)

After her eye-opening role as porn actress Holly Body in Body Double (1984), Melanie Griffith starred in this offbeat, black comedy as free-spirited, kooky, black-wigged Audrey Hankel, nicknamed Lulu after actress Louise Brooks' femme fatale (from Pandora's Box (1929)); she took off with staid and married, yuppie, NYC tax consultant Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) to New Jersey, where she engaged in kinky sex with him - handcuffing him to a motel bed and making love to him, before attending her high school reunion; her next notable appearance was for her Oscar-nominated role as 'working girl' Tess McGill in Working Girl (1988) - with her provocative one-liner delivered to businessman Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) at the bar of a business function: "I've got a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?"

Angel Heart (1987)

Alan Parker's supernatural film noir, set in New Orleans, was about a seedy Brooklyn private detective named Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) who was hired by mysterious Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to investigate a missing persons case; during the course of his work, he encountered an illegitimate, half-Creole, teenaged voodoo practitioner Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet in her film debut, who child-starred as Denise Huxtable in the family TV show The Cosby Show) - witnessed participating in a voodoo ritual in which she was scantily-clad as she slit a chicken's throat and let the spurting blood drip down her face, neck and breasts; the film included a notorious, steamy sex scene (originally NC-17-rated, but trimmed for an R-rating) of abandoned sexuality (with the theme of blood sacrifice) between them - they made love on a bed with raindrops (and chicken blood) dripping from the ceiling through the leaky hotel roof during a rainstorm, while listening to the radio playing the sultry tune "Soul on Fire" by Laverne Baker - and then Harry 'woke up' and found himself strangling her; in another bloody scene, Margaret Krusemark (Charlotte Rampling) had her heart cut out

Aria (1987)

The Big Easy (1987)

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Fatal Attraction (1987)

Law of Desire (1987, Sp.) (aka La Ley Del Deseo)

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Mannequin (1987)

Maurice (1987, UK)

This semi-autobiographical film was the second of E. M. Forster's novels (after A Room with a View) to be adapted for the screen by Merchant Ivory, about the problem of coming of age of a homosexual in a restrictive Edwardian society between two Cambridge undergraduates: Maurice Hall (James Wilby) and Clive Durham (Hugh Grant); later in the film, Clive gave up his 'forbidden' love (never consummated), leaving Maurice to "share" himself with lower-class gamekeeper Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves) -- the scene included both rear and frontal male nudity

Nekromantik (1987, Germ.)

No Way Out (1987)

The Accused (1988)

Action Jackson (1988)

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

Japanese Animated Films (anime)

Akira (1988, Jp.)
and
Ghost in the Shell (1996, Jp.)

Japanese animated films have often featured explicit and graphic content and unflinching explicit violence, called anime. This form of animation and story-telling was heralded in the US with the release of writer/director Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1988, Jp.), with one scene depicting the brutal attempted rape of Tetsuo's girlfriend Kaori by a biker gang. Later, the adult-oriented, PG-rated Ghost in the Shell (1995, Jp.) contained soft-core nudity and stylized erotica regarding the film's major character: the often nude and beautifully voluptuous but tough cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi - a special security agent resembling a Playboy Playmate-like Terminatrix

Bull Durham (1988)

Writer/director Ron Shelton's definitive baseball sports film included sexy scenes between aging ballplayer Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and sport groupie Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) - including their memorable date together - they made love, ate ice cream, danced, took a bath in a room filled with candles (a very hot sequence), and he painted her toenails; he skillfully undressed her by unclipping her black stocking with one hand; also he delivered a much-quoted, long impromptu speech about his belief in "the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back (and)... long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days"

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Dead Calm (1988, Aus.)

Drowning by Numbers (1988, UK)

Director Peter Greenaway's black comedy of covered-up murders and conspiracy (sprinkled with numerology) was taglined: "The great death game" - and told of water-borne deaths among generations of related women -- mother Cissie Colpitts 1 (Joan Plowright), daughter Cissie Colpitts 2 (Juliet Stevenson), and niece Cissie Colpitts 3 (Joely Richardson) -- who each killed their husbands: (1: adulterous husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) was drowned in a bathtub; 2: businessman husband Hardy (Trevor Cooper) was drowned during an after-dinner swim, and 3: newly-wed husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) was left to drown naked in a swimming pool during a swim lesson with his wife in which she stripped down from her red one-piece suit but also removed his floats); in all cases, middle-aged widower and local coroner Henry Madgett (Bernard Hill) was complicit in the murders (by issuing 'natural causes' death certificates) after being bribed for sexual favors

Gotham (1988) (aka The Dead Can't Lie)

In this often incoherent, now R-rated film-noirish horror thriller-ghost story (made for Showtime cable-TV originally) by writer/director Lloyd Fonvielle, pre-Oscar-winning actress Virginia Madsen performed in a number of nude scenes as pretty femme fatale blonde Rachel Carlyle - a deceased wife whose rich and nervous husband Charlie Rand (Colin Bruce) claimed to down-on-his-luck private detective Eddie Mallard (Tommy Lee Jones) that she was stalking and haunting him (she had been dead for a decade and was buried naked with her jewels) and that he wanted to be left alone; in the course of the case, the obsessed Mallard fell in love with the sultry specter himself