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

Bad Boys II (2003)

Director Michael Bay's action film, the sequel to the 1995 film, again paired Martin Lawrence and Will Smith as Miami narcotics cops Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey in pursuit of ecstasy drug dealer/smuggler Johnny Tapia (Jordi Molla); in the memorably gruesome, disrespectful but funny morgue sequence, the two cops searched through various cut-open body cavities of bodies in search of concealed drugs; in a minor bit role as a "Female Corpse", voluptuous Jessica Karr was laid out on one of the cold slabs (death by strangulation) -- Marcus confessed to Mike that he couldn't help but innocently ogle the naked female's stiff chest ("What? I ain't doin' nothin'. What am I gonna do with these big-ass fake dead titties?"), and was then forced to hide under the sheet next to the well-endowed cadaver

The Brown Bunny (2003)

This independent, low-budget arthouse film from narcissistic, maverick and vain producer/director/actor/writer Vincent Gallo was essentially a cross-country road-trip movie; the film would undoubtedly have been given an NC-17 rating if submitted for review, so it was distributed without a rating; it told about unshaven, long-haired motorcyclist racer Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo), a tortured, empty-hearted loner who often idealized and thought about his former and estranged girlfriend Daisy Lemon (Chloe Sevigny, Gallo's real-life ex-girlfriend); this film further broke down the division between pornography and erotica; when the self-absorbed film was first screened for the press at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, it was derided and scorned by critics and audiences; in the film's most notorious, explicit and controversial scene of unsimulated (hard-core) fellatio at the finale, Bud and Daisy were in a starkly-white hotel room - both lonely and needy individuals who were attempting to connect and speak to each other; as she sat on the bed, he stood before her, unzipped his pants fly, and then took his male member into her mouth to begin the infamous 'blow-job' scene - as he held himself; while she pleasured him in her mouth; afterwards, they talked about the last encounter of their tragic relationship, when Bud reacted jealously to Daisy's past indiscretion at a party, where she smoked dope and acted provocatively; the shocking, melodramatic plot twist was that Bud was only experiencing a sole masturbation fantasy during the entire hotel room/fellatio scene, while remembering the lost love of his life, Daisy; his downer mood throughout the film was because of the passive part he played in her death -- she was raped at the party when she passed out after getting high and then died as a result of the incident (choking to death on her own vomit); Bud's intense guilt about abandoning her and his continuing crisis of masculine insecurity included the appearance of the deceased Daisy -- in his mind only!

Bruce Almighty (2003)

Carmen (2003, Sp.)

The Cooler (2003)

dot the i (2003, US/UK/Sp.)

The Dreamers (2003, Fr./It./UK)

Director Bernardo Bertolucci's NC-17 explicitly-rated film of sexual discovery and intimacy was set in the summer in Paris in 1968; it involved a continual series of semi-incestuous encounters between uninhibited, naturally buxom Isabelle (Eva Green) and her fellow cineastes - a blonde American cinema exchange student Matthew (Michael Pitt) and her own possessive, brooding twin brother Theo (Louis Garrel), while the twins' parents were away for a month at the seaside; the game-playing twins claimed they were conjoined at the upper shoulder, where scars were visible; the film included frequent total nudity (male and female) during the trio's improvisational sexual games, while interwoven with clips and play-acted homages to classic moments in cinema (Breathless, City Lights, Top Hat, Queen Christina, etc.) as tests of trivia - with the loser forfeiting and having to engage in specified sex acts; following Theo's failure to identify Blonde Venus, he was forced to masturbate in front of them to a picture of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel; following Matthew's failure to identify the film Scarface (1932) for Theo as Isabelle stripped down before him, his forfeit was to serve as a mediating lover between the twins by making love to Isabelle in front of Theo -- she removed the underpants of a partially-resistant Matthew followed by the memorable "blood-on-the-face" scene, in which he copulated with and deflowered the surprisingly-virginal Isabelle on the apartment's kitchen floor as Theo non-chalantly fried eggs on the nearby gas stove; after they finished having sex, Theo touched Isabelle's thigh and brought up his fingers covered in blood - and Matthew also took some of the blood from her broken hymen/vagina and smeared it onto her face as he ardently kissed her; in another subsequent scene of lovemaking between the two, the camera panned slowly up Isabelle's completely naked body as Matthew lovingly kissed her; the threesome also bathed in a tub where her menstrual blood was seen on the water's surface (a symbol of sexual awakening?), and they slept together nakedly-intertwined in an indoor tent; it was the first NC-17 rated film in 6 years, after the release of the NC-17 rated independent film Orgazmo (1997), Bent (1997, UK) and Cronenberg's Crash (1996)

11:14 (2003)

Final Examination (2003)

Freddy vs. Jason (2003) (aka Friday the 13th, Part 11)

In the eleventh installment of the long-running film franchise, now a hybrid between the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films, the same equation of sex=death was followed; after the film's prologue, on a dock at nighttime, camp counselor Heather (Odessa Munroe) opened her buttoned shirt to reveal her breasts and did a silly little striptease as she called out for her unseen boyfriend Mike, before stripping entirely, running down the dock, and diving into Crystal Lake. Spooked when Mike didn't appear, she swam back, returned to her clothes to get dressed - and began running in fear. She came upon the hulking figure of serial killer Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) in the foggy mist, and fled in terror in the opposite direction. Suddenly, Jason impaled or pinned her in her gut to a tree with a machete and the tip of the machete's blade pierced through the opposite side of the tree, although it all appeared to be a dream; in a later scene set on a stormy and rainy night at 1428 Elm Street in Springwood, hockey-masked Jason murdered bossy boyfriend Trey (Jesse Hutch) apres love-making to his busty, but tomboyish girlfriend Gibb (Katharine Isabelle, body-double Tammy Morris) who was taking a shower at the time (seen from a top-view); and the film-makers also were able to cleverly insert nude pictures into a magazine article about models seeking perfect bodies with plastic surgery; in one of the dream world sequences, protagonist Lori Campbell (Monica Keena) was sent back to Camp Crystal Lake in the year 1957 on a bright sunny day - she watched as other campers cruelly taunted young Jason Voorhees (Spencer Stump), calling him "Freak show"; they covered his bald head with a cloth sack to conceal his ugly face, and dragged him onto the dock. She saw two pairs of uncaring, flirtatious camp counselors making out on a porch of a cabin nearby, who ignored the taunting. As Lori cried out: "Aren't you going to help the kid?", one now-naked, dead female (Jacqueline Stewart) was being rapidly thrusted into by her boyfriend in a standing position, who retorted: "Can't you see I'm busy here!" - then the guy turned, revealing himself to be Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), cackling: "It's not my fault this bitch is dead on her feet."

Gigli (2003)

In this famously laughable romantic comedy, real-life tabloid lovers (at the time) Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (dubbed "Bennifer") starred as star-crossed lovers without any sexual chemistry at all, with Affleck as dim-witted chauvinistic mobster Larry Gigli and Lopez as Ricki - a lesbian-leaning ("clam-licker") hitwoman; during a 3-minute debate-argument while she performed yoga in blue spandex shorts, the two compared the relative merits and attractiveness of the male and female sex organs; she offered a monologue of her description of the real power in the world (her vagina) and told him the penis was overvalued: "And now, as far as your famous penis goes, the penis is like some sort of bizarre sea slug or like a really long toe, I mean it's handy, important even. But the pinnacle of sexual design, the top of the list of erotic destinations? I don't think so. One's first impulse is to kiss what? To kiss the lips. Firm, delicious lips, sweet lips surrounding a warm, moist, dizzingly-scented mouth. That's what everyone wants to kiss. Not a toe. Not a sea slug. A mouth. And why do you think that is, stupid? Because the mouth is the twin sister, the almost exact look-alike of what? Not the toe. The mouth is the twin sister of the vagina. And all creatures big and small seek the orifice, the opening, to be taken in, engulfed, to be squeezed, lovingly crushed by what is truly the all-powerful, all-encompassing -- no, if it's design you're concerned with, hidden meaning, symbolism, power. Forget the top of Mount Everest, forget the bottom of the sea, the moon, the stars, there is no place nowhere that has been the object of more ambitions, more battles than the sweet sacred mystery between a woman's legs that I am proud to call my pussy. So I guess this is just my roundabout way of saying that it is women who are in fact the most desirable form" -- Affleck could only respond later: "I'm the bull, you're the cow...Got that?"; in another romantic scene, when she kissed him and squeezed his nipple, he flinched and she told him: "I thought you wanted to be my bitch" - he responded: "This is so f--ked up", but he kept on kissing her; she leaned back, rocking her leg back and forth and notoriously and animalistically requested oral foreplay during the seduction scene, as she gestured toward her crotch with her legs spread: "It's turkey time...Gobble, gobble" - to his amazement; she further clarified: "Now, you talk the talk. You know I'm expecting you to walk the walk. Come on. Show me what I've been missing my whole life. Lay some of that sweet 'heterolingus' on me"; when he tried to explain how a man was at a disadvantage with a woman ("...actually a woman might know more... about what feels better to another woman. She's a woman herself"), she stopped him: "Shut up and get over here"; they kissed further and made love in an extended love scene, after which he told her: "God bless you, penis" and she concurred with him about how all relationships had a bull and a cow - after which he 'moooed"

House of the Dead (2003)

This inept, reviled zombie film, with a few gratuitous nude scenes, was from notorious German-born director Uwe Boll; it was set on a mysterious island named Isla de la Muerte near Seattle where a weekend rave party was to be held; in an early scene, topless, airhead blonde Cynthia (Sonya Salomaa) on a chartered fishing boat going out to the island turned around, sarcastically told the first mate Salish (Clint Howard): "Did you get a real good peek there, huh?", and was given a small crucifix for protection ("It'll ward off evil spirits and protect you and your friends from harm") - she responded dumbly: "It's OK, I'm on the pill"; there was time for one party-goer, brunette Johanna (Erica Durance, or Erica Parker) to walk to a body of water with her male companion Matt (Steve Byers), and suggest skinny-dipping: "Come on, let's go swimming"; after they kissed, she removed her orange top, baring her breasts, and then her bottoms (down to a white thong), and walked into the cold water with her arms outstretched; she told him: "Come on, you big wimp!" as he told her: "You have a good swim, babe"; he watched from the shore, as she appeared to be spied upon from afar and from under the water; she became spooked (with accompanying Jaws-like music) when bubbles floated up from below, and she hurriedly swam back to shore, although Matt had disappeared - she called out: "Come on, Matt, don't play games. Matt, where are you?"

The Human Stain (2003)

In the Cut (2003)

Director Jane Campion's dark feminist sex film featured the alluring tagline: "Everything you know about desire is dead wrong"; it became noticed for its huge ad campaign touting clean-imaged Meg Ryan performing her first major explicit sex scenes (that were entirely realistic, dirty, and erotic) - but the film was a box-office disaster nonetheless; it was considered a pretentious rip-off of Richard Brooks' Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977); this was a psychological thriller based on Susanna Moore's 1995 erotic thriller about a mid-30s English writing teacher - an unattractive, despairing divorcee named Francis Avery (Meg Ryan) who became involved with a tough, foul-mouthed NY detective named Giovanni "James" Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a murder in her neighborhood; she noticed that he had a questionable wrist tattoo of the three of spades, matching the tattoo of an unidentified man (smoking a cigarette) that she had earlier witnessed receiving an explicit 'blow job' in The Red Turtle pool club's darkened basement performed by a blue-fingernailed woman named Angela (Heather Litteer) - the decapitated homicide victim; squeaky-clean Meg Ryan's first sex act was masturbation face-down on her bed as she fantasized that Malloy was the man receiving fellatio (and that he was watching her pleasuring herself); she began a torrid, risky sexual liaison with him after he asked her on a date and suggested: "I can be whatever you want me to be...You want me to be your best friend and f--k you, treat you good, lick your pussy, no problem"; the film was erotically shocking for Mark Ruffalo's and Meg Ryan's full-frontal nudity, and for Ryan's performance of sex acts, including her receiving oral sex (or analingus from behind); when she brought him a drink afterwards, she asked: "I want to know...how you did that to me?", and he described (after briefly revealing his genitals as he laid back), with a hands-on demonstration, how he first learned about stimulating a woman, as a prelude to more missionary-position intercourse; the exciting premise of the film was that the cop might murder her, since she believed that he was the one who had received oral sex from the murdered woman and might possibly be the serial killer who murdered other female victims that he was investigating, although he vehemently denied any wrong-doing; she also had a close relationship with her younger half-sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who worked at the Baby Doll Lounge as a stripper/go-go girl - although Pauline was in love with a married doctor (and still wanted a traditional marriage), she often spoke explicitly about her frequent sexual relations: "I can remember every guy I ever f--ked by how he liked to do it, not how I wanted to do it", and ended up as another decapitated victim; toward the end of the film, Frannie straddled and had sex with Malloy after handcuffing one of his wrists to the radiator in her apartment, as he told her: "I want to watch you f--k yourself" - before she came to the realization (in the film's reveal) that he was innocent of all of the crimes; the film was also released in other versions - including an unrated and uncut Director's Edition with more explicit versions of the love-making and basement scenes

Monster (2003)

Something's Gotta Give (2003)

Swimming Pool (2003, Fr.)

François Ozon's psychological thriller (with a violent twist ending) and enigmatic art film set in the countryside of South France contained frequent exhibitionism and nudity in its tale of an emotionally-unbalanced, wildly promiscuous publisher's daughter named Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), who came to be in the presence of an unnerved, uptight mystery-crime novelist Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling); the repressed writer was unnerved by Julie's voluptuous nudity, promiscuity, and free-spirited nature, often displayed within her view or beside the pool; in one scene, Julie pleasured herself two-handed while sunning in a one-piece white swimming suit (as she fantasized about an aroused male lover standing above her in a skimpy suit), and in another sat topless next to Sarah for extended exposure; the writer soon incorporated the events that occurred by the pool into her latest work - and became less repressed in the creative, self-awakening process

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Jonathan Mostow's blockbuster was the second sequel to the original Terminator franchise film of 1984; in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator Model 101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) time-traveled to Los Angeles in the year 1995 and appeared as a naked man amidst sparks - he then casually strolled stark-naked into a country-western bikers' hangout called The Corral; as waitresses and patrons turned their wide-open eyes toward him, his alphanumeric readouts calculated body outlines to estimate and analyze which one of the customers was deemed a suitable MATCH for leather clothing and boots; his opponent was a seemingly-indestructible prototype T-1000 android (Robert Patrick) who also appeared naked after transport; in the third film in the series, the first evil female terminator, called T-X or Terminatrix (Kristanna Loken), Skynet's most sophisticated cyborg killing machine to date, also first appeared naked (under the credits) as she approached a parked silver sports-car Lexus on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills on a moonlit night and appropriated the car and the female driver's clothing; when stopped for speeding through a red light by a police officer, she inflated her breasts after seeing a nearby Victoria's Secret billboard displaying a lingerie-wearing model with large breasts and the slogan: "WHAT IS SEXY?" - and then told the officer seductively: "I like your gun"; a protector Terminator (T-850) (Arnold Schwarzenegger) also arrived naked and in a crouched position - in the middle of the desert; he walked unclothed into the Desert Star bar, scanned the patrons for a MATCH, and then forcefully demanded the clothes of a leather-clad male stripper (on-stage and mid-performance) during a cowgirls' Ladies Night "Pleasure Men Fantasy Show"; another astonishing scene was the one-on-one fight in the film's finale between the two Terminators in the USAF's CRS building (hallway, men's room, and storeroom), when their combat became a parody of sexual relations (sparks, locked legs, twitching, etc.)