The highly anticipated film Fifty Shades of Grey is being unleashed on New Zealand this week. Dominic Corry takes a peek at some of the cringiest sex scenes shown on the big screen.
As I write this, I have not yet seen Fifty Shades of Grey, the breathlessly anticipated film adaptation of the fan fiction-derived publishing phenomenon which hits cinemas all around the globe this week.
Even in the unlikely event that it ends up being the classiest mainstream sex drama since say, Philip Kaufman's Henry & June (1990) or Jean-Jacques Beineix's Betty Blue (1986), I am reasonably confident there will be plenty of cringe-inducing moments. Especially during the sex scenes.
To celebrate my presumption, I am going to cite here my favourite cringey movie sex scenes from the past few decades.
Best to start off with the most legendarily cringey sex scene in cinema history, the squirm-inducing nightmare by which all other cringy sex scenes are judged. I am of course referring to Kyle Maclachlan and Elizabeth Berkley's furious pool-based romp in Paul Verhoeven's infamous 1995 camp classic Showgirls. In a wonderful demonstration of the kind of ridiculous movie passion that is all but gone from modern cinema (shall we blame the internet?), the pair thrash about endlessly like very unsexy sea lions as a water feature rains down upon them.
The scene deserves extra credit for standing out amongst all the other crazy things happening in Showgirls - the stair-pushing, the hair-pulling, the angry chip-eating. This is truly Verhoeven's sexiest hour.
Verhoeven famously later said that in retrospect, he believes he should've put a serial killer plot into Showgirls to distract the audience from the film's crude commentary on the American dream. Which is about as awesomely cynical a thing as you could imagine a director saying, and I love it.
Ahead of seeing the film, I already feel like this kind of thinking may have suited Fifty Shades of Grey. A knife-wielding murderer can justify a lot of lovey-dovey cheese. Hire Verhoeven or Brian De Palma to direct it, and we might actually have something interesting.
If this Sex Scene Was A Romance Novel, It Would Be Called:Still Waters Splash Big
Colour of Night (1994)
A scene from the movie Colour of Night.
Coming a close second in the narrow field of sexual cinematic swimming pool shenanigans (see also: The Secret of My Success) is a scene from this hilarious Bruce Willis howler in which he plays a psychiatrist investigating his friend's murder. Jane March - who previously starred in the don't-watch-it-with-your-parents sexy arthouse drama The Lover (1992), not altogether un-cringey itself - plays the mysterious and (spoiler!) boy-ish vixen with whom Bruce begins a passionate affair.
They hump endlessly, most infamously, and cringe-inducingly, in the pool, where Willis and March's lack of anything resembling chemistry is laid bare. Witnessing this scene cannot help but conjure up the thought of an aged chimpanzee pawing at a carrot.
The scene got some tabloid attention at the time due to the fact that Little Bruce can be glimpsed in one of the underwater shots. If we are to pay attention to such things, Little Bruce appears to denote a lack of interest in the task at hand.
If this Sex Scene Was A Romance Novel, It Would Be Called:Die Soft
Like Colour of Night, Body of Evidence arrived amongst the glut of post-Basic Instinct would-be erotic thrillers which sought to replicate the success of Paul Verhoeven's popular Michael Douglas/Sharon Stone starrer. It was a glorious time for cringey sex scenes. (See also: Jade, Traces of Red, Sliver, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure)
In this, the most shameless of all the Basic Instinct rip-offs, Willem Dafoe plays a defence attorney whose latest client is a mysterious vixen (played by Madonna!) accused of killing her older lover. With sex!
Naturally, they begin an affair, and sadomasochistic games come into play. The most cringey sex scene in the movie has Madge, mid-coitus, dripping candle wax on an alarmed Dafoe, who played Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.
The awfulness of the scene is compounded by the film having been released during Madonna's Sex book period, when the Material Girl was doing everything short of going door-to-door and screaming in people's faces to show how edgy and sexual she was. Every second she's on screen in Body of Evidence, she betrays a cheap desire to shock, and it's very cringe. Also, her acting is particularly terrible in this movie. She makes the candle seem expressive.
Hopefully the Fifty Shades of Grey filmmakers took a long look at this film for tips on how NOT to artfully integrate bondage and S&M into a broadly-targeted movie.
If this Sex Scene Was A Romance Novel It Would Be Called:Desperately Waxing Willem
Among many other misjudged elements in this George Lucas-produced flop is a skin-crawlingly painful sex scene between Lea Thompson's nubile rock star and the title character, a suspiciously portly duck with an unconvincing animatronic head.
Thankfully, the scene never spills over into actual bestiality, but it revels in teasing the possiblity for way too long. Thompson eventually reveals that she's "just kidding", having sustained the gag long enough to make her character seem in need of serious psychriatric help.
As this article delights in pointing out, Thompson also featured in another memorably uncomfortable pseudo sex-scene, making a meal of the hot mum-on-son action in Back to the Future.
If this Sex Scene Was A Romance Novel It Would Be Called:The Safe Word is 'Quack'
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
A scene from the movie The Matrix Reloaded.
Enough time has passed since the disappointment of the Matrix sequels for me to be able to enjoy the films' more ludricous aspects, not least of which is the time when humanity's uprising against their machine overlords paused for a grimy cave rave, during which Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie Anne-Moss) totally do it. The intercutting. Oh the intercutting! I guess Neo is technically a virgin when this happens.
If this Sex Scene Was A Romance Novel It Would Be Called:Hot Zion Nights
Adrian Lyne's sultry erotic drama has a lot to answer for - it pretty much inspired the whole genre of "classy" erotic films, generating a legacy that includes Basic Instinct, Showgirls and now Fifty Shades of Grey.
A critical reception like the one 9 ½ Weeks received would probably delight Fifty Shades director Sam Taylor-Wood. But she would also no doubt be aware that today's snark-centric culture won't allow for that.
9 ½ Weeks' most notorious sex scene, in which Mickey Rourke teasingly feeds Kim Basinger a range of food items, may have at one point seemed genuinely erotic to some people, but it's become such a pervasive pop culture punchline, it's impossible to watch these days without feeling cringey. Or thinking about what happened to Mickey Rourke's face. See for yourself.
If this Sex Scene Was A Romance Novel, It Would Be Called:Fifty Shades of Grey Poupon
* What are your favourite cringy sex scenes? Don't be shy! We've all seen 'em! Nobody say Two Moon Junction - that movie is just so, so beautiful! Comment below!
