History of Sex in Cinema:
The Greatest and Most Influential
Sexual Films and Scenes
(Illustrated)
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History of Sex in Cinema: |
See also the multi-part Sexual and Erotic Films in Cinema, The Most Controversial Films of All-Time and the Best and Most Memorable Film Kisses of All Time in Cinematic History. Key to Icon Symbol:
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| Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes (chronological order, by film title) - 1983 Intro | Pre-1920s | 1920-1928 | 1929-1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934-1937 | 1938-1943 | 1944-1946 | 1947-1952 | 1953-1954 | 1955-1957 | 1958-1959 | 1960-1961 | 1962-1963 | 1964 | 1965-1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992-1 | 1992-2 | 1993 | 1994-1 | 1994-2 | 1995-1 | 1995-2 | 1996-1 | 1996-2 | 1997-1 | 1997-2 | 1998-1 | 1998-2 | 1999-1 | 1999-2 | 2000-1 | 2000-2 | 2001-1 | 2001-2 | 2002-1 | 2002-2 | 2003-1 | 2003-2 | 2004-1 | 2004-2 | 2005-1 | 2005-2 | 2006-1 | 2006-2 | 2007-1 | 2007-2 | 2008 | 2009 | |
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| Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
All the Right Moves (1983)
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Director Michael Chapman's PG-13 rated sports drama and coming-of-age film was about Western Pennsylvania high school football star Stefen 'Stef' Djordjevic (young Tom Cruise in a very early role) who came from an impoverished, stifling steel mill town and his pretty hometown girlfriend Lisa Litski (Lea Thompson); their relationship included a revealing, realistic bedroom love-making scene in which they both displayed nudity in closeup as the camera panned downward |  
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Beyond the Limit (1983, UK) (aka The Honorary Consul)
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Richard Gere was at the peak of his career in the early 80s, and starred in director John Mackenzie's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, although he was miscast as Dr. Eduardo Plarr, an amoral half-British doctor in the seedy Argentinian town of Corrientes; during most of the film, Gere's character had a totally passionless affair with 19 year-old Indian Clara (Elpidio Carrillo, who spent most of her screen time pouting and half-naked in obligatory sex scenes) - the ex-prostitute wife of the alcoholic honorary British Consul Charlie Fortnum (Michael Caine) | 
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Breathless (1983)
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Director Jim McBride's inferior remake of the classic 1960 original New Wave film Breathless with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, was now set in 1980s Los Angeles with small-time crook and fugitive, hot-rodding car thief/murderer Jesse (Richard Gere) and passionate, frequently-naked, gorgeous French exchange college student Monica Poiccard (Valerie Kaprisky in her American film debut); their insatiable sex cravings were abundantly displayed in the apartment on a drafting table, in a steamy shower that destroyed the shower door, in bed (including full frontal male nudity), and later before a giant movie screen | |
Carmen (1983, Fr.) (aka Prenom Carmen or First Name Carmen)
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Director/actor Jean-Luc Godard's avante-garde film (promoted as "a revolutionary fable of erotic destiny"), loosely based on Bizet's opera, starred Dutch actress Maruschka Detmers (in her debut film role) as the title character - she appeared nude (or semi-nude) throughout much of the l'amour fou film as a modern-day terrorist gang member named Carmen X, with one closeup of her full frontal nakedness; film elements in the confused story line with parallel plots included a bank robbery and kidnapping scheme, film-making by a burnt-out film-maker (Godard himself), a string quartet rehearsing Beethoven, and a love story |   
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Chained Heat (1983)
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Director Paul Nicolas' classic, trashy sex-ploitative 'women-in-prison' (or 'chicks-in-chains') film, popular with drive-ins, starred The Exorcist's Linda Blair as innocent, virginal offender Carol Henderson who was sent to jail for 18 months for vehicular manslaughter; besides showcasing nudity by Blair for the first time (in a shower scene with Sybil Danning), it included all the requisite scenes and elements for this genre of film (lengthy nude showers, assaultive guards, rape, lesbianism, racial/gang warfare behind bars led by white leader Sybil Danning (as Ericka) and black leader Tamara Dobson (as Dutchess), a corrupt and vile Warden Bacman (John Vernon) who raped Carol (Blair) and videotaped other inmates in his office's conveniently-placed hot-tub, and a stern prison matron Captain Taylor (Stella Stevens), etc.); it followed the same stereotypes and predictability of Caged Heat (1974) and was part of a new wave of these types of films in the 80s - a combination of blaxploitation and sexploitation |
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Flashdance (1983)
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Adrian Lyne's MTV-style, feel-good hit with rock music by Giorgio Moroder showcased an independent-minded 18 year-old woman who had dreams of being a dancer; it popularized ripped off-the-shoulder baggy sweatshirts, aerobic dancing, break dancing, and other fashion trends; it included an erotic, opening scene of Pittsburgh welder and gorgeous erotic dancer Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals in her first lead role, although quite a few of her scenes were performed by body double/ professional dancer Marine Jahan) in a wet skimpy red outfit in a quasi-strip club named Mawby's Bar, and then a well-publicized scene of her removing her black bra from under her torn gray sweatshirt; later, there was a suggestive scene of her tantalizing boyfriend Nick Hurley (Michael Nouri) during a lobster dinner - dressed in a black tux with just the front piece of a white shirt and cuffs without sleeves, she slowly nibbled and sucked soft pieces of seafood while asking: "What turns you on?...Do you like phone booths?...You probably just like doing it in bed, right?" as she moved her leg up under the table to tantalizingly touch his crotch with her toes |
   
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The Hunger (1983, UK)
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Director Tony Scott's directorial debut film was this stylish, decadent and R-rated erotic film; it included a controversial, soft-focus lesbian vampires scene (with kissing and nipple-sucking) between seductively-elegant, centuries-old vampire queen Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) and new blood candidate/recruit - the butchy longevity scientist Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon); when Sarah spilled a blood-red droplet of sherry on her white T-shirt just above her breast, she was prompted to remove her clothing - leading to other Sapphic touches, love-bites, and the taking of the new lover by mingling with her blood; Miriam gave her a fatal bite with blood dripping from her lips, sending blood down the doctor's neck; this scene reportedly ushered in lesbian vampire chic, along with the earlier 'queer-horror' 70s films The Vampire Lovers (1970, UK), Daughters of Darkness (1971) (aka Les Lèvres Rouges), Vampyros Lesbos (1971), and Vampyres (1974) (aka Vampyres: Daughters of Darkness) |
     
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Raunchy Teen-Sex, Sexploitation Comedies of the 1980s
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The late 70s and early 80s
was a period of low-brow, teasy, R-rated sexy teen comedies with gratuitous
nudity, mindlessly weak plots, and raunchy profanity, designed for horny
adolescents, usually teenaged males with raging hormones and active
fantasy lives who were looking for glimpses of naked girls and their
first sexual conquest (a "Let's Get Laid" sub-genre); the
smarmy trend signaled that theatrical films originally made for 'dirty
old men' were now targeted at teenagers, with comedic laughs often directed
at the semi-naked young stars; there were many representative films
of varying quality (some pictured to the right): Balancing out the teen-sex comedies were some of writer-producer-director John Hughes' films which took a more sensitive look at adolescent issues, in films such as Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Pretty in Pink (1986). Other more realistic teenage-oriented films included Tex (1982) with Matt Dillon, Baby, It's You (1983) with Rosanna Arquette, and director Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl (1983) with Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman. See Entertainment Weekly's 50 Best High School Movies. |
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Young Doctors in Love (1982)
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These early 80s films were raucous, mildly funny comedies -- (1) Young Doctors in Love (1982) by director Gary Marshall was an example of a pre-Farrelly Brothers film (a cross between Airplane and the soap General Hospital); it was set in a hospital filled with horny young interns and nurses - including many reputable stars (Michael McKean, Sean Young, Harry Dean Stanton, Hector Elizando, and Pamela Reed) (2) Easy Money (1983) by director James Signorelli was a seminal Rodney Dangerfield comedy (after his success in Caddyshack), with the comic starring as a 'black sheep' character who had to shed his vices (philandering, drinking, gambling, etc.) to inherit millions (3) Back to School (1986) was Dangerfield's follow-up comedy film in which he headlined as Thornton Melon - a leering millionaire tycoon who improbably attended college (for carousing and romancing) with his son The nudity quotient for the first two films was partially fulfilled by Kimberly McArthur (Playboy Playmate January 1982) - as a barely-costumed Santa Claus and as a topless sunbathing neighbor, and by Leslie Scarborough (Leslie Huntly) in the third film as a startled sorority Co-ed #1 in the shower |
 Young Doctors in Love (1982)  Easy Money (1983)  Back to School (1986) |
Deathstalker: The Last Great Warrior (1983)
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One-time model/singer Barbi Benton (and part time regular on TV's Hee Haw) - the girlfriend of Playboy's Hugh Hefner in the 70s, starred in a few cult-style B-films, including The Naughty Cheerleader (1970), Hospital Massacre (1982) and this tacky, sexist sword-sorcery fantasy from producer Roger Corman that was a ripped-off nude version of Conan the Barbarian (1982) with Arnold Schwarzenegger; Benton starred as beautiful chained prisoner Princess Codille wearing a flimsy white see-through robe - the prize for winning a warriors' tournament; Lana Clarkson was also featured in this film (that spawned three sequels in 1987, 1988, and 1990, although she was absent) with an unbelievable breast-baring, criss-crossing costume for her role as blonde warrior Kaira. Lana Clarkson also appeared as statuesque barbarian warrior woman Amethea and Princess Athalia in two other sword & sorcery sexploitation tales: Barbarian Queen (1985) and its sequel Barbarian Queen II: The Empress Strikes Back (1989); in both films, she was tortured while stripped topless on a stand-up rack - but most notably in the 1985 film, she was able to force her comically-accented captor Zohar (Tony Middleton) to release her by squeezing his manhood during forced rape/intercourse (Zohar (in agony): "Stop squeezing! Too Tight!" Amethea: "Free my hands!" Zohar: "I-I- will. I will! You can let me go now"); -- tragically, legendary record producer Phil Spector was later charged with her murder in 2003 and ultimately convicted in 2009 |
  Deathstalker (1983)  Barbarian Queen (1985)  Barbarian Queen II (1989) |
The Key (1983, It.) (aka La Chiave)
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Italian erotic director Tinto Brass' film, based on Junichiro Tanizaki's novel Kagi, was banned by the Catholic church for its torrid soft-core tale set in pre-WWII Venice; it told about a kinky, aging, cross-dressing husband Nino Rolfe (Frank Finlay) and his younger, sexually-repressed wife Teresa (Stefania Sandrelli) who wrote their fantasies in separate diaries to revive their sex lives after 20 years of marriage; Nino discovered that Teresa was secretly attracted to their daughter Lisa's (Barbara Cupisti) fiancee, Laszlo (Franco Branciaroli), and so schemed to push his wife slowly into an affair with their future son-in-law to sexually liberate her and reignite her (and his) libido - resulting ultimately in his stroke from over-indulgence |
   
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One Deadly Summer (aka Été Meurtrier, L') (1983, Fr.)
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Isabelle Adjani starred in this erotic thriller and dark family drama as gorgeous 20 year-old sexpot Elaine/Elle who moved to a small S. French village in the mid-1970s with her crippled father Gabriel (Michel Galabru) and her German mother (Maria Machado).- she soon became the center of attention with her see-through dresses and skimpy attire; seen in flashback in part, her motive was to avenge the 20 year-old brutal rape of her mother by infatuated local mechanic Pin-Pon's (Alain Souchon) now-deceased father and two other men; Elle feigned pregnancy in order to trap him into marriage and settle the score; the traumatized and unstable seductress was often naked in the film, both voluptuous and with evil intent by using sex as a weapon |   
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Risky Business (1983)
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Director Paul Brickman's effective and well-received teen sex comedy equated the rewards of sexuality and successful capitalistic enterprise; it opened with a fantasy-dream sequence in which affluent college-bound, high-school senior Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise) saw a strange young girl (Francine Locke credited as "Shower Girl") soaping up in a steamy shower in his neighbor's house (and non-chalantly requesting: "I want you to wash my back") while he was three hours late to his college board SAT exam; other sexy scenes included his first steamy encounter with heart-of-gold Hollywood hooker Lana (Rebecca DeMornay) when she entered his living room and enticingly asked: "Are you ready for me...?" - he helped remove her dress from the bottom up and revealed she was naked underneath - and as they kissed, the wind blew the patio doors open (a fantasy masturbatory dream sequence gone awry) and they made love on the stairs; also sexy was the scene of their daringly-exhibitionist (and risky) late-night, elevated CTA subway ride in an empty car while seated and making love to the tune of electronic music provided by Tangerine Dream; in the film's most famous exhibitionist-karaoke scene, Joel made a floor-sliding entrance into his living room where he danced in his tight white cotton underwear and long-sleeved pink-striped shirt and lip-synched to the tune of Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll" with an air-guitar; the film was also noted for Miles' (Curtis Armstrong) repeated advice to Joel when his parents were away: "Every now and then say, 'What the f--k.' 'What the f--k' gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future"; Joel proved his business prowess by film's end by both coming-of-age and by setting up a successful brothel in his parent's home, aided by Lana |
   
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Star 80 (1983)
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Writer/director Bob Fosse's final film was a realistic and unsettling biography (told with flashbacks and a portrayal of Hugh Hefner by Cliff Robertson) of Miss August 1979 centerfold and Playboy's Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten (by look-alike Mariel Hemingway enhanced with breast implants); it was a tragic account of the aspiring, beautiful, naive and sexy actress who brutally lost her life (on August 14, 1980) at age 20 in a double murder-suicide to her lunatic, exploitatively controlling, and jealous hustler-promoter-manager husband Paul Snider (Eric Roberts), after she was estranged from him and dating Peter Bogdanovich (portrayed in the film as fictionalized director Aram Nicholas (Roger Rees)), who directed her in They All Laughed (1981) |    Mariel Hemingway  Dorothy Stratten |
Trading Places (1983)
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John Landis' popular nature vs. nurture lampooning comedy told about a homeless con artist Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) who 'traded places' with Wall Street commodity broker Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) as part of a bet; the film was best remembered for the topless nudity displayed by young Jamie Lee Curtis as a sympathetic hooker with a heart of gold named Ophelia - she befriended the un-street-smart downcast loser and unsuspecting victim, and allowed him to stay at her place |
 
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Videodrome (1983)
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David Cronenberg's dark "body horror" (or bio-horror) film involved kinky sexuality, extreme S&M and orgiastic mutilation, and reality-manipulating TV; it had a memorable phrase: "Long live the new flesh" and contained many symbolic images of sexuality; the story told about sleazy cable TV programmer Max Renn (James Woods) of X-rated Channel 83 in Toronto, which aired soft-core pornography and violent content; the film's title was the title of a pirated film on a VCR cassette from the Pittsburgh underground - a depraved torture/snuff film that he acquired and wanted to broadcast; he also engaged in a torrid, S&M romance with self-help radio personality Nicki Brand (rock star Deborah Harry or Blondie) - their first encounter in Max's apartment revealed her interest in sadism and voyeurism when she encouraged him to play the cassette "Videodrome"; during this early encounter after she proposed: "Wanna try a few things?", they laid naked in bed (as the video played in the background), and he picked up a long needle and traced it along Nicki's legs and torso, and then pierced her earlobe with it; in another infamous scene in an act of protest against Max, she stubbed out Max's lighted cigarette on her bare breast, leaving a burn mark that looked like a third nipple; in the film's most notable scene, Max watched a videocassette of Videodrome's origins on his TV set (including the strangulation of Videodrome pioneer Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley)), showing an image of executioner Nicki who beckoned Max with: "Come to me now. I'm Nicki. Don't keep me waiting" as her seductive red lips enlarged on his TV screen (the set itself undulated, pulsated, formed engorged veins, and moaned as if sexually-aroused) - he submissively fell to his knees and pushed his own lips into the enlarged and bulging image to kiss them -- a symbolic metaphor for oral sex (cunnilingus), as he was sucked into the image; exposure to the Videodrome film caused carcinogenic tumors that triggered hallucinations in Max - sexual imagery included a vaginal-like slit or womb-wound orifice that opened in his abdomen (into which he could insert his entire hand holding a gun) as he became an organic video-recorder; he could be both "raped" and "programmed" by the villains forcefully inserting videotapes inside his body to "play" him |
     
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Women's Prison Massacre (1983), aka Blade Violent, Emanuelle in Prison (UK), and Emanuelle Fuga Dall'Inferno (It.) (Emmanuelle Escapes From Hell)
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This trashy Italian women-in-prison (WIP) or "women behind bars" sub-genre, grindhouse sexploitation film from Italian director Bruno Mattei was actually unrelated to the series of "Black Emanuelle" films, although it starred Laura Gemser (who was clothed throughout the film) as Emanuelle; it contained the requisite soft-core lesbian sex and women's shower scene (with a naked and slutty Irene (Antonella Giacomini) and her lesbian lover Laura (Maria Romano)), and a rough and infamous razor-in-the-crotch scene in which Laura took revenge in a seduction/rape scene with a razor-slashing, escaped male convict named Helmut 'Blade' von Bauer (Pierangelo Pozzato) by inserting the razor into a cork and then into her vagina before enticing him with intercourse - although she was still choked to death |   
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Introduction: In the following illustrated compilation are some of the most significant films in the history of sex on the screen. The influential film milestones and their memorable sexual/erotic scenes are thoroughly described. Including portrayals
of sex and/or nudity, these films were often considered quite erotic, groundbreaking,
unique and/or controversial at the time. The following listing of these influential, memorable and classic
sex scenes and films takes into account all of
the available surveys of this type of material, and attempts to provide
an informed, detailed, unranked, chronological (by film title) grouping of the
most influential and groundbreaking films and scenes. Some of the most notorious (or infamous) films are quite
mediocre, usually made as an excuse to display nudity or eroticism of a star performer.
- Milestone Films With Scenes That Were Especially Notorious, Infamous, Controversial, or Scandalous
