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.

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:

- Milestone Films With Scenes That Were Especially Notorious, Infamous, Controversial, or Scandalous

Example

Jamon, Jamon (1992, Sp.) (aka A Tale of Ham and Passion)

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992)

Writer/director Leslie Harris' authentic emotional coming-of-age melodrama (her directorial debut film shot in only a few weeks on a low-budget) was one of the first honest portraits of urban black female teenagers - it was also about sexual ignorance and unplanned pregnancy; the film won first-time director Leslie Harris a Special Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, and was tauted as the first film ever written, directed, and produced by an African-American woman; it told about enterprising, self-confident (almost abrasive and insubordinate), pretty, and smart 17 year-old black high school student Chantel Mitchell (Ariyan Johnson) living in a Brooklyn housing project - her mis-education and irresponsibility about sex and self-destructiveness led to predictable consequences of unprotected sex; in one scene, three black girls joked about how to avoid getting pregnant: have sex standing up, have sex during one's menstrual period, or shake up a bottle of soda and use it as an after-sex douche; she ultimately wound up pregnant by fast-talking, Jeep-owning Tyrone (Kevin Thigpen), and although he provided her with $500 for an abortion, she spent the funds on a shopping spree; she carried the baby to term (while making efforts to hide and deny her pregnancy) rather than having an abortion, resulting in the film's believable, bloody and wrenchingly graphic labor-childbirth scene after which the premature newborn baby was heartlessly but momentarily placed in a trashbag and abandoned on a street; the film's unrealistic and uplifting ending found Chantel taking night classes to get her HS diploma

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

In Michael Mann's historical romance epic, Nathaniel "Hawkeye" Poe (Daniel Day-Lewis) found unrequited love with redcoat colonel's daughter Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe); in the film's most memorable farewell scene, he gave her romantic instructions in a cave behind a cascading waterfall) as they were pursued by a Huron war party: ("...You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you!..."); and later they did find each other at besieged Ft. William Henry, where the two lovers eventually came together in the golden light, and tenderly embraced and kissed repeatedly

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

There was one imaginative and surreal CGI sequence of virtual reality sex (or cybersex), the first of its kind, in this science-fiction thriller loosely derived from Stephen King's short story; Marnie Burke (Jenny Wright) and mentally-retarded lawnmower man Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey) wore bodysuits, gloves, and head-mounted displays (HMDs), and were strapped into huge gyroscopes - all connected to the computer. After they kissed, the two intertwining lovers became swirling liquid metal, fusing with one another. The couple took the form of two metallic insects looking like a two-headed dragonfly - flying as one being. Jobe took over the dual fantasy, claiming to know what was in Marnie's mind, but she became trapped in his scary world and then traumatized ("Oh my God, let me out") - causing her brain patterns to become irregular, signifying that she had become a brain-dead vegetable

Like Water for Chocolate (1992) (aka Como agua para chocolate)

The title of this tragic and fantastical "Cinderella" love story of transcendental cooking, by director Alfonso Arau, actually meant intense agitation or sexual arousal; it told, through an extensive flashback narrated by the main character's great-niece, about the unfulfilled romance during the time of the Mexican revolution between youngest daughter Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and Pedro Muzquiz (Marco Leonardi); their love was doomed and thwarted by her tyrannical and selfish widowed matriarch Mama Elena (Regina Tome) who forbid her to marry (wanting her to follow the tradition of taking care of her in old age); her mother orchestrated the marriage of Pedro to eldest daughter Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi) instead (although it was thought: "You can't just exchange tacos for enchiladas"), still keeping Pedro close to Tita as he whispered to her after the wedding: "...now (that) I've got what I wanted, to be near you, the woman I truly love"; on the first anniversary of Tita's cooking at the ranch, Pedro presented Tita with roses, whose thorns scratched her skin above her chest and drew blood; she lovingly used the slightly bloody petals in her mystical (and volatile) cooking to present quail in rose-petal sauce - the passionately-cooked, aphrodisiacal meal ("this is the nectar of the gods" Pedro exclaimed) sent Tita's red-haired sister Gertrudis (Claudette Maille) into orgasmic heat (and sexual awakening) at the table, and the infected woman rushed to the outdoor wash-shed to cool down, but set the wooden structure on fire, and then jumped naked onto the horse saddle of the villista chief, one of the passing bandito revolutionaries - leading to an adventurous life; the marriage between Pedro and Rosaura kept Tita's and Pedro's love alive in secret, as the narrator spoke - while Pedro admired Tita's breast as she cooked: "Preparing the 'mole.' Tita knew how contact with fire alters elements. How dough becomes a tortilla. And that a breast untouched by love's fire just isn't a breast but a useless ball of dough. In one instant, Pedro had transformed Tita's breasts from chaste to voluptuous without even touching them"; Tita cared for - and breast-fed Rosaura's infant son with her virginal milk; by film's end, with everyone dead or married off, Tita and Pedro finally were able to make love without interruption (they had once consummated their love earlier) in a candle-filled bedroom as lightning flashed outdoors - and as Pedro screamed out his love for Tita ("I love you!"), his 'inner matches' exploded in passion and produced literal sparks as Dr. John Brown (Mario Ivan Martinez) had described earlier: ("If an intense emotion lights all the matches inside of us all at once, the brilliance would make us see a radiant tunnel showing us a path that we forgot at birth. The soul will want to return to its divine origin") - he promptly died; their bedroom erupted in flames - reuniting their souls in a radiant tunnel in the hereafter where they lived together in their "buried love" without judgment by others

The Lover (1992, Fr./UK) (aka L'Amant)

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud's stylishly-filmed, moody and erotic masterpiece was based upon a semi-biographical novel by French author Marguerite Duras; it told about a pigtailed, under-aged white French school girl, credited as Young Girl (18 year-old model Jane March at the time of filming, in her first starring role) in French Vietnam (in late 1920s colonial Saigon) who offered herself, with sensual abandonment (detailed in voice-over by Jeanne Moreau as a flashback) in many heated scenes, as an amorous partner in forbidden and torrid sexual love (inter-generational, inter-racial, and between classes) to an older 32 year-old aristocratic businessman, credited as Chinese Man (Tony Leung); the love-making scenes (some with body doubles) were filmed to appear sexually realistic in his dark streetside room; in addition the young schoolgirl also experienced masturbation and lesbian contact with a fellow student (Lisa Faulkner as Helene Lagonelle) in one of the film's earlier scenes

Mississippi Masala (1992)

Director Mira Nair's R-rated romantic drama (a Romeo and Juliet, or West Side Story tale), set in the Mississippi bayous of the American South, told of the inter-racial, forbidden romance between an African-American couple: a small carpet-cleaner business owner Demetrius Williams (Denzel Washington) and 24 year-old Uganda-born Indian immigrant Mina (Sarita Choudhury in her debut film), the daughter of Indian expatriates who dominated the area's motel industry; although their dating and relationship was greeted with shock and indignation, they engaged in a secret and erotic affair, despite the racial tension, after Demetrius called Mina and expressed his potent desire for her sensuality while both were in their own beds, and later they became entwined for hot love-making during a weekend in a Biloxi beachside hotel

Poison Ivy (1992)

Director Andy Ruben's low-budget, erotic psychological thriller (released in both an R-rated theatrical version and an unrated DVD version) was the first of a series - that became popular only after release on video; it starred Drew Barrymore in this first installment as the trampish title character, sexy teen femme fatale Ivy; in the film's first sensual scene, Ivy's alter ego - Sylvie 'Coop' Cooper (Sara Gilbert) - sketched a cross (with entwined ivy) while viewing Ivy's leg tattoo as she rope-swung dangerously over a ravine, and remarked on Ivy's pouty lips ("Not that I'm a lesbian... well, maybe I am"); later Ivy was 'adopted' by 'Coop's' family and soon wanted to replace Sylvie's life - she had sex in the rain on the hood of a Mercedes when she seduced Sylvie's wealthy father Darryl (Tom Skerritt) - who had a sickly, hypochondriac invalid wife Georgie (Cheryl Ladd); Ivy also had a sexual encounter with the father (he took her from behind) near a piano during a thunderstorm, as Sylvie walked in on them during the act; in the fateful ending, Ivy ended up dead on a driveway after a balcony struggle with Sylvie; there were two sequels: director Anne Goursaud's Poison Ivy 2: Lily (1996) with Alyssa Milano as the title character, and Kurt Voss' Poison Ivy: The New Seduction (1997) with Jaime Pressly (see below)

Single White Female (1992)

Barbet Schroeder's edgy erotic thriller told about psychotically-compulsive roommate, copy-cat Hedra Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who modeled her roommate Allison Jones' (Bridget Fonda) hairstyle and lifestyle; she was often seen in various states of undress and often pleasured herself - she even coquettishly seduced Allison's unfaithful boyfriend Sam Rawson (Steven Weber) under the covers with oral sex and then vengefully murdered him with the spiked heel of a shoe thrust into his eye, when she attempted to violently take over Allison's life

Wide Sargasso Sea (1992, Aust/UK)