|
Sex in Cinema: |
|
|
Sex in Cinema: |
|
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 | |
||
| 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 |
||
| Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
| Wild at Heart (1990)
|
David Lynch's R-rated Wizard of Oz-referenced road film told about two lovers on the run: violent 23 year-old, Elvis-loving ex-con Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and sex-loving, 20 year-old Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern); in one classic scene in the back of a bar, Sailor recalled and described to Lula (in order to excite her) an especially memorable sexual encounter he once had with Irma (Charlie Spradling) when he was visiting his cousin, Junior Train, in Savannah: "I had a boner with a capital O...She turns over, peels off them orange pants, spreads her legs real wide and says to me...'Take a bite of Peach'" - in response, Lula urged him: "Baby, you'd better run me back to the hotel. You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt"; it was the winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or |   |
|
|
Zalman King's soft-core (9 1/2 Weeks-style) steamy drama was noted for a very believable simulated (?) sex scene between ex-patriate American multi-millionaire James Wheeler (Mickey Rourke) and Kansas-born lawyer Emily Reed (Rourke's then-girlfriend Carre Otis) in Rio during Carnival time; the film was a hit, although it was forced to be drastically edited to receive an R-rating for US audiences; it was also extremely controversial since bad-boy Rourke was later arrested for spousal abuse in 1994 against wife Otis, and their stormy marriage ended in 1996 |
   |
| At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
|
This fairly realistic 3-hour long South American/Brazilian rain forest tale was an adaptation of Peter Matthiessen's well-regarded 1965 novel by Brazilian director Hector Babenco (and producer Saul Zaentz); it offered an excuse to show the nudity of actors Daryl Hannah (during a nude swim) and Tom Berenger as an American pilot returning to his wild tribal roots; the film also included a notorious scene of 43 year-old Kathy Bates (as a repressed missionary's wife) losing her mind and doing an unflattering nude native dance (partially clothed with a thatch of leaves and layers of mud) |  |
| La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Fr.) (aka The Beautiful Troublemaker)
|
Jacques Rivette's lengthy drama with minimal dialogue told about the creative process regarding an uninspired and aging French artist-painter Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) who suddenly returned to work on an abandoned masterpiece, known as "La Belle Noiseuse," when offered to paint model Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart), who posed nude for most of the film |    
|
| Close My Eyes (1991, UK)
|
Writer/director Stephen Poliakoff's British drama about forbidden love told about a recently-reunited brother - an architect named Richard (Clive Owen) and his sister Natalie Gillespie (Saskia Reeves) in adulthood, and their subsequent ill-fated love affair ("strange bond") in London during a sultry summer; although she was married to an older, affluent entrepreneur named Sinclair Bryant (Alan Rickman), the duo were overwhelmingly attracted to each other and engaged in a passionately physical, clandestine sexual encounter in his apartment; afterwards, Natalie became guilt-ridden and insisted that her brother find a more appropriate partner, but he forced her to continue their incestuous pairing - until the truth came out |    |
Delicatessen (1991, Fr.)
|
This film became well-known for its montage set-piece called the "Squeaky Bedsprings" scene, a clever and non-explicit sex scene that took place in a tenement apartment building above a ground floor butcher's shop/delicatessen; above him as newly-hired handyman and circus clown Louison (Dominique Pinon) painted the ceiling with a roller, the cannibalistic butcher/landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) made love to his mistress Mme. Plusse (Karin Viard) on a squeaky bed - other tenants (the butcher's bespectacled near-sighted daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) playing a cello with a metronome, a woman beating a dusty rug, a man pumping a bike tire, Louison rolling on paint to the ceiling, an old woman knitting, the toy-making Kube brothers testing out a noise-making novelty toy that moos, etc.) kept synchronized in symphonic rhythm ("squeak squeak", "pound pound", "tick tock", "click click") to the squeaking in increasingly sped-up tempo until the fat-faced butcher climaxed (when a cello string broke, the bike tire exploded, the painter fell to the floor, etc.) |   
|
Jungle Fever (1991)
|
The inter-racial, adulterous romance in New York City between married, middle-class black architect Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes) and Italian-American office temp worker Angie Tucci (Annabella Sciorra) in writer/director Spike Lee's urban romance was considered controversial in the early 90s; when Flipper confided in his high-school teacher/neighbor Cyrus (Spike Lee), his reaction was: "H-bomb. H-bomb...Nuclear holocaust!"; soon afterwards, their scandalous liaison was broken apart by their two neighborhoods (relatives and friends): Sugar Hill in Harlem and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn |  |
Poison (1991)
|
Director Todd Haynes' first full-length feature was this NC-17 rated film - part of the Queer Cinema movement; the most controversial of its three, non-linear interwoven stories (adapting French Jean Genet's homoerotic writings and only film Un Chant d'Amour) was titled "Homo" - it was told with schoolyard flashbacks and vignettes; the segment was set in a prison where young thief John Broom (Scott Renderer) experienced obsessed homosexual feelings for fellow inmate Jack Bolton (James Lyons); in a nighttime scene in which the prisoners were sleeping side by side, Broom tentatively and erotically touched Bolton; the film was attacked by right-wing, reactionary Christian fundamentalist groups as part of their family-values campaign against "government-funded pornography" (the film was funded, in part, by the National Endowment of the Arts) - in particular, for this homosexual scene, for an anal rape scene, a notorious spitting scene, and for a short explicit view of an erection (removed in the unrated and R-rated versions) | |
| Prospero's Books (1991, UK/Fr.)
|
Eccentric arthouse director Peter Greenaway deconstructed and retold Shakespeare's The Tempest in this lurid, lavish, and visually stunning R-rated film production and fantasy drama, about magician Prospero (John Gielgud) exiled to a small Mediterranean island with his daughter, Miranda (Isabelle Pasco) and twenty-four beloved books; it told of his revenge against his enemies when they were shipwrecked and his daughter fell in love with the son of his chief enemy; the bacchanalian spectacle was advertised as containing copious nudity at various times (provided by hundreds of unclad extras of both sexes as nude dancing nymphs) | |
| Rambling Rose (1991)
|
Martha Coolidge's coming-of-age dramatic tale (in flashback) told about a scandalous, sexually-precocious, troubled, love-seeking young woman - the sexually-uninhibited, overtly sexual, 19 year-old, free-spirited Rose (Oscar-nominated Laura Dern) - who was employed as a curly-haired maid in a mid-1930s Southern family's household, where she tempted or bewitched the proper head of household Mr. 'Daddy' Hillyer (Robert Duvall) who himself was trying to fend off her many suitors; in one realistic scene, she taught smitten 13 year-old Buddy Hillyer (Lukas Haas) about the facts of life by letting him touch her in bed |
  |
| The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
|
This taut, suspenseful, psychological thriller was directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ted Tally; it was a major commercial and critical success (Best Picture Oscar-winner), although gay groups complained about its stereotypical depiction of the trans-sexual killer ("Buffalo Bill") in the finale - which equated homosexuality and transgenderism with insanity and serial murder, despite Hannibal Lecter's (Anthony Hopkins) insistence that Buffalo Bill was not a real transsexual and only thought he was |  |
| Thelma & Louise (1991)
|
Ridley Scott's feminist road trip tale showcased the title characters Geena Davis (as Arkansas housewife Thelma) and Susan Sarandon (as waitress Louise) in flight as fugitives after an ugly threatened rape incident in a roadhouse parking lot; it featured a star-making role for Brad Pitt as sweet-talking, good-looking hunk and redneck cowboy named J. D., flaunting a hair dryer as a gun, who Thelma took to bed to initiate her first orgasm - the film was significant for shooting Brad Pitt's body from the female point of view; in the film's conclusion before the two fugitives drove their convertible into the Grand Canyon, they kissed each other |
  |
| Whore (1991) (aka If You Can't Say It, Just See It)
|
Director Ken Russell's third American film was this drama - an uncompromising, realistically bleak look at the dehumanizing, promiscuous occupation of prostitution - advertised as the "flipside to Pretty Woman"; it examined the life of Liz (Theresa Russell) as she talked to the camera through flashbacks - an LA streetwalker who experienced lewd sexual encounters, dirty talk and abuse from her no-good husband (Jason Saucier), her pimp (Benjamin Mouton), cops, other prostitutes and her clients-customers, including latent lesbianism and violent rape; it was available in three versions (82-minute R and NC-17 version, and longer 92-minute European version) |   |
Zandalee (1991)
|
This erotic, steamy bayou thriller (basically an embarrassing sexploitation flick that most actors in it would like to disown) by director Sam Pillsbury was set in New Orleans - it told about a sexually-starved, free-spirited wife Zandalee Martin (Erika Anderson), who resorted to betrayal by uninhibited and passionate sexual encounters with her poet-husband (turned corporate executive) Thierry Martin's (Judge Reinhold) painter friend Johnny Collins (Nicolas Cage), including their memorable body-painting scene with a blue-finger on her bare chest and an instance when a powdery drug substance was applied to Zandalee's nether regions from behind |     |
|
Director Abel Ferrera's gritty, audacious and excessive NC-17 rated crime drama starred Harvey Keitel as the 'bad' title character in a tour de force performance; the reknowned actor played the part of an unnamed corrupt and debased NYC police detective with a reputation for womanizing (with blonde Victoria Bastel, and exhibiting full-frontal nudity himself), drug and alcohol abuse with his red-haired junkie girl friend (co-scriptwriter Zoë Lund), and excessive gambling; the film was set in New York during the seven games of the World Series between the Dodgers and Mets as a religious structure for the seven stages of the Cross; it was noted for its notoriously graphic and brutal rape scene of a nun on a Spanish Harlem church altar by two neighborhood teens from the adjoining Catholic school; he glimpsed the victimized nun (Frankie Thorn) during her naked medical exam in a hospital room and couldn't understand her forgiving nature; in another vile and disturbing scene, he sexually exploited (verbally raped) two teenaged New Jersey women that he stopped for a minor traffic violation (broken tail-light) during a rainy night by forcing them to watch him masturbate alongside their car and having the driver pantomime giving him oral sex; the film ended with his spiritual breakdown at the church crime scene, and his own redemptive drive-by shooting by the mob (for a $120,000 debt) beneath a banner advertising It All Happens Here |    
|
|
|
Director Paul Verhoeven's glossy erotic thriller (with a script by Joe Eszterhas) was typical of the 90s; troubled, burned-out SF police detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) investigated seductive, bi-sexual mystery writer and brutal ice-pick murder suspect Catherine Tramell (a star-making and career-launching role for Sharon Stone) after a series of murders of males during intercourse and S&M sex; the sexually-charged film, featuring a taunting femme fatale predator with an insatiable sexual appetite and possibly homicidal tendencies included an infamous, sex-revealing leg-uncrossing/crossing scene (without panties) during interrogation in a police station room filled with middle-aged men (after she provocatively asked Curran: "Have you ever f--ked on cocaine, Nick?"), and a provocative three-some dance at a crowded nightclub disco (between lesbian lovers Stone and Roxy (Leilani Sarelle)) - and an aroused Michael Douglas voyeuristically looking on as they French-kissed and then from outside a toilet stall; another controversial scene was one of forceful, animalistic sex between Curran and girfriend/police psychiatrist Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn); womens' groups called the film misogynistic, and gay-rights groups in San Francisco called it stereotypically-homophobic and gay-bashing - they charged that the main murderess suspect in the film was a denegrating portrayal since she was a mentally-unstable, psychotic lesbian and bi-sexual; the film was also criticized for permissiveness, steamy content (scene of cunnilingus), exploitative nudity, its depiction of lesbian characters, and its scenes of bondage (especially with reversed roles); threatened with an NC-17 rating, and reduced to R rating (with cuts), this flashy film was then released with a more explicit 'Director's Cut' version for the video market, with the extra-steamy scenes A sequel - Basic Instinct 2 (2006) - was released almost a decade and a half later with 47 year-old Sharon Stone reprising her sexy murderess role (see below) |
     |
| Belle Epoque (1992, Sp.) (aka The Age of Beauty)
|
Fernando Trueba's R-rated, Oscar-winning (Best Foreign Language Film), earthy, sensual 1930s story told about a young soldier named Fernando (Jorge Sanz) who deserted the army and found himself in the country household of wealthy Don Manolo (Fernando Fernan Gomez) and his four beautiful daughters - the young and virginal Luz (Penelope Cruz), playfully flirtatious Rocio (Maribel Verdu, pictured), tomboyish, lesbian cross-dressing Violeta (Ariadna Gil, pictured), and lonely widowed Clara (Miriam Diaz-Aroca) - he experienced steamy, amorous and sexy encounters with each one of them - and eventually married Luz |   |
|
In this ultra-kinky, voyeuristic drama/thriller from Roman Polanski, set on a Mediterranean ocean liner bound for Istanbul, crippled, sexually-deviant, wheelchair-bound, self-loathing writer Oscar (Peter Coyote) told up-tight and married British passenger Nigel (Hugh Grant) about the development of his own sado-masochistic, increasingly-torturous relationship with his sultry, mysterious French femme fatale wife Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner, the director's own 27 year-old wife), as Oscar explained: "I'm trying to expand your sexual horizons...Have you ever felt real overpowering passion? Have you ever truly idolized a woman? Nothing can be obscene in such a love. Everything that occurs between you becomes a sacrament"; as part of the bargain, if Nigel listened to his tale, Oscar promised him his wife - to fulfill his voyeuristic pleasure; Nigel was first attracted to the sight of Mimi in a red dress dancing solo in the ship's lounge to Peggy Lee's classic love song "Fever"; in a salacious yet mesmerizing story told through depraved flashbacks and voice-over narration, he recounted his relationship with her, including S&M bondage experiences (being tied up with tape over his mouth as she dominated him while wearing black latex), urophilia (urine-drinking, off-screen and in narration only) and the wearing of a pig mask during a whipping; in the film's most memorable scenes, Mimi licked blood from Oscar's face during a close shaving, and he licked creamy milk off her nude chest to the tune of George Michael's "Faith" while the toaster pops out a slice; in another remembered scene, Mimi performed a sexy dance in a thin nightgown in a candle-lit room; the film also featured a sexy dance and lesbian kiss during a shipboard party between exhibitionist Mimi and the previously-repressed and strait-laced Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas), Nigel's wife of seven years, as Oscar commented to Nigel: "Oh, stop sulking, man. You ought to be glad they're getting it on so well"; by film's conclusion, it was revealed that Mimi had sought revenge against an embittered, self-loathing Oscar (after a Parisian amour fou affair that disintegrated into kinky sex, torture, heartlessness, infidelity and abuse) by presenting Oscar with a birthday present of a gun, which he used to kill himself |
        |
| The Crying Game (1992, UK)
|
Writer/director Neil Jordan's R-rated sleeper hit political thriller included the infamous, much-talked-about, erotic unveiling and shocking revelation of provocative and exotic girlfriend Dil's (Jaye Davidson) true identity as a transvestite male (rather than as a female) to fugitive IRA kidnapper and guard Fergus (Stephen Rea); Fergus was on a mission to London to locate Dil (a hairdresser and club singer) and give her a message for deceased captive British soldier Jody (Forest Whitaker); the surprise occurred with a slow camera pan down Dil's nude body to his genitals after he dropped his red kimono robe to the floor, causing Fergus to vomit at the sight of his cross-dressing partner; in the same year, Sharon Stone shockingly and visibly revealed her female sex in Basic Instinct (1992); the film was advertised by the film's distributor Miramax urging moviegoers not to reveal the secret twist, although some of the intrigue was softened with Jaye Davidson's nomination in the supporting actor (!) category |  
|
| Damage (1992)
|
Director Louis Malle's film, based on Josephine Hart's best-seller, was a provocative drama with an intimate exploration of obsessive, kinky and damaging passion and its disturbing results; it told about an illicit and lustful sexual relationship between middle-aged English Parliamentarian Dr. Stephen Fleming (Jeremy Irons) and melancholy art-world follower Anna Barton (Juliette Binoche) (pictured) - his newspaper editor son Martyn's (Rupert Graves) enigmatic and pretty girlfriend/fiancee - that led to disaster with his betrayed and angry wife Ingrid (Miranda Richardson) (pictured) and all involved (especially Martyn who was stunned when he caught the two making love, stepped backward, tumbled and fell to his death many levels below); during one seemingly non-erotic intertwining, Fleming banged his lover's head into the floor; the mostly unerotic film with urgent and desperate love-making caused a ratings controversy when released and cuts were enforced by the studio |     |
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.
Sex in Cinema: In the following collection, excerpted from
the 