Nude Scenes That Ruined The Movie
There are tasteful nude scenes, and then there are nude scenes that leave a bad taste in your mouth. You know, the kind of scenes that make you wonder what on earth convinced the filmmakers that your moviegoing experience would not be complete until you saw an actor baring it all. A scene like that can ruin the entire movie.
Below we will examine cinema's most cringe-worthy nude scenes, so that you won't have to. They run the gamut from a heroine performing household chores in her birthday suit to a wildly inappropriate use of butter. Some are simply scenes of gratuitous nudity that exist purely to titillate members of the audience (because nothing puts butts in seats like the exposed butts of attractive Hollywood stars). Others are either too disturbing to watch, or unintentionally hilarious. All of them have one thing in common: These scenes have shown so much skin that it's impossible for viewers to un-see them.
Halle Berry sunbathing in Swordfish
This moment from "Swordfish" is one of the most famous examples of gratuitous nudity and maybe the costliest. As if it wasn't enough that an earlier scene in the film showed Stanley (Hugh Jackman) hacking into the Department of Defense while a girl gave him a blowjob, the movie decides to show femme fatale Ginger (Halle Berry) sunbathing topless while reading a book.
Director Dominic Sena allegedly put a little extra in Berry's paycheck in exchange for flashing her breasts. Sena claimed that Berry was reluctant at first to go nude until he offered her a $500,000 bonus for it. Of course, Berry insisted in a later interview Sena was just being flippant when he said that. Instead, said Berry, she agreed to strip down for the role not because of money but because she felt confident enough to film a nude scene for the first time in her career. "With the success of my Dorothy Dandridge project and the critical acclaim that brought me," she told Entertainment Weekly, "I finally felt that I didn't have to prove myself anymore."
Regardless of how much this nude scene cost, it added nothing to the movie. It would have made no difference if the scene had shown Berry fully dressed (or at least wearing a bikini top).
Later that year, Berry agreed to do a more tasteful and impactful nude scene — "Monster's Ball" made much better use of her naked body.
The lady in the cake from Under Siege
No Steven Seagal action movie would be complete without a beautiful woman tagging along, so "Under Siege" gives us Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak), a stripper who bursts out of a cake in the middle of a battleship, unaware that the entire ship has been taken hostage. Just like most of the characters in the movie, Jordan was expecting a party, not a firefight, and it's fun to watch a stripper and a cook (Seagal) take down dozens of baddies. Still, did the movie really need to show us Jordan's butt cheeks?
Jordan has no idea what's happening because she took one too many airsickness pills on the helicopter ride and drifted off to sleep inside the cake. When she is jolted awake, she makes the questionable decision to launch into her stripping routine. Most characters who wake up in a strange place will not immediately start shedding their clothes. Imagine if Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) from The Maze Runner" woke up in a mysterious elevator with no memories and immediately tore off his shirt to show off his abs. Or what if Adam (Leigh Whannell) and Lawrence (Cary Elwes) from "Saw" woke up and shed everything except their boxers? This makes the same amount of sense.
The vacuum scene in Working Girl
In "Working Girl," a secretary named Tess (Melanie Griffith) impersonates her absent boss (Sigourney Weaver). Soon Tess is rising to the top in a workplace run mostly by men. In one scene near the end, she is shown vacuuming her house wearing nothing but panties and a pair of high heels. This moment was likely intended to express that Tess feels invincible and no longer cares what anyone thinks of her. However, there were countless other ways the movie could've shown this without the heroine going topless.
News flash: Nobody does household chores in the nude. Viewers have pointed out that it can't be very comfortable pushing a vacuum cleaner with your breasts hanging loose. The scene also raises some interesting questions – like, if Tess was in too much of a hurry to get fully dressed that day, then why did she have the time to put on a pair of high heels?
In a movie with an otherwise feminist slant, this nude scene sticks out like a sore thumb. Some would argue that a nude scene pandering to the male gaze undermines the whole point of the movie. To be fair, Melanie Griffith was the one who originally suggested the idea to the director, not the other way around. Even still, we suspect that some men in the audience weren't thinking about female empowerment while watching this scene; more likely, they were drooling over Griffith's body.
The swimming models in Piranha 3D
"Piranha 3D" is a remake we probably didn't need. The film is a lot like "Jaws" — if "Jaws" had shown a man-eating fish chomping down on a male member, only to spit it out moments later. There is plenty of nudity on display in "Piranha 3D," so much so that viewers are bound to grow a little bit numb to it. However, there is one moment that exemplifies the excessiveness of this movie.
In one scene, two women wearing nothing but scuba flippers are shown caressing each other underwater in an extended sequence. Meanwhile, up on the surface, pornographer Derrick (Jerry O'Connell) films them, gushing about how watching these two models glide through the water like mermaids almost makes him want to have sex with fish. (Too much information, thank you.) The porn stars Danni (Kelly Brook) and Crystal (Riley Steele) are not given much character development before they meet their bloody ends (other than a generic good girl/bad girl dynamic), which irked many fans. If you can forgive the fish-related pun, the two characters exist only as bait.
We get that the movie's sex and violence are intentionally over-the-top, but this underwater nude scene takes it too far. If the filmmakers wanted to take this approach, why not just make a softcore porn film instead of spending a $24 million budget on bad CGI piranhas?
The butter scene from Last Tango in Paris
One nude scene from "Last Tango in Paris" is shocking not because of the scene itself but because of what happened behind the scenes. In the notorious scene, Paul (Marlon Brando) uses a stick of butter as a lubricant when he rapes Jeanne (Maria Schneider).
Schneider knew she would be filming a scene where her character was assaulted, but director Bernardo Bertolucci omitted one crucial detail: That Marlon Brando would be smearing butter all over her body. Bertolucci sprang it on Schneider because he wanted to use her real reaction in the final film. "They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry," Schneider told The Daily Mail. While the scene is intended to be upsetting, not sexy, that doesn't excuse the director's choice to humiliate his actress in real life just to get a convincing performance.
To add insult to injury, Bertolucci told The Guardian that he felt Schneider "was a 19-year-old who ... had never acted before," adding that "I didn't tell her what was going on because I knew her acting would be better." This seems to suggest that he didn't have any faith in the acting abilities of his leading lady and was willing to manipulate her to get the desired performance.
After this film, Schneider became overwhelmed by fame, and her career was never the same. The media soon became less concerned with her acting and more interested in finding scandals in her personal life.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
Gloria's hijinks in Wedding Crashers
In "Wedding Crashers," Isla Fisher gives a scene-stealing performance as the sexually zealous Gloria. There are plenty of steamy scenes between Gloria and her boyfriend Jeremy (Vince Vaughn), but these are mostly played for laughs, and there is no actual nudity until halfway through the movie.
In the middle of the night, Jeremy awakens to a pair of nipples in his face. He discovers that Gloria has tied him to his bed and then climbed on top of him, because she's afraid that Jeremy will lose interest in her if she's not more "exciting and adventurous." When Jeremy tries to tell her that maybe bondage is a little too adventurous for him, Gloria thinks he is just being coy. Their dialogue is hilarious, but the nudity is unnecessary.
No one feels this more strongly than Isla Fisher herself, who told the film's producers that it would be a bad idea to show her character naked. Fisher argued that the moment her character shows too much skin, the audience will see her as eye candy instead of comic relief. Alas, Isla Fisher lost the battle for the comedic integrity of her character; the nude scene made the final cut. To compensate for the sexualization of her character, Fisher decided to dial up her performance to an 11. "I thought, to combat the fact that you're going to see her boobs, I have to make her even more extreme for us to still get a laugh," she told Entertainment Weekly.
The violent sex scene from Antichrist (2009)
Don't get us wrong, not all the sex scenes in Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" are awful. In fact, the opening scene is so beautifully shot and emotionally intense that some have crowned it one of the best sex scenes in cinema. However, one nude scene from "Antichrist" crosses the line.
Near the end of the movie, the nameless character played by Charlotte Gainsbourg undergoes a startling transformation. No longer is she a broken mother grieving her lost son; instead she has become like an animal. However, it's ambiguous whether it's because her grief (and her husband's lack of empathy for it) has pushed her over the edge or she has been corrupted by some kind of ancient and powerful evil.
While having sex with her husband (Willem Dafoe), Gainsbourg's character suddenly becomes hysterical, accusing him of not loving her anymore. Then she hits her husband in the crotch with a piece of firewood, instantly castrating him. Afterward, she falls to the ground, seemingly horrified at what she's done. But nope, a moment later she is stroking his penis again. We'll spare you the disturbing details, but let's just say it only gets bloodier from there.
This scene marks the moment when the terror of existential dread morphs into revolting, gross-out horror. Knowing that the greatest strengths of this horror movie lie in its ability to get under your skin without relying on jump scares or bloody kills, this violent sex scene is where the movie falls apart.
The bottomless party in Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
Nobody expects the "Harold & Kumar" movies to be high-brow cinema. Still, we think it's safe to say that many fans hoped that "Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay" would offer some amusing social commentary. With a title like that, how could the movie not lampoon America's post-9/11 policy? Instead, it spends barely 10 minutes in the titular prison. We are treated to a couple of dick jokes before Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) escape, leaving Guantanamo Bay (and most of the film's satirical potential) behind. The remainder of the movie devolves into a meandering stoner comedy that has nothing smart to say about race, politics, or the justice system.
The film hits rock bottom in the scene where Harold and Kumar attend a bottomless party. Tired of topless parties, their friend Raza (Amir Talai) decides to host a rave that he is convinced is the most innovative party idea since Jell-O shots — his dress code requires that everyone in attendance must wear nothing from the waist down. Plenty of gratuitous nudity ensues.
Worst of all, the nudity isn't even gender-balanced. Viewers see dozens of women's bare bottoms and even a glimpse of pubic hair, but only one naked guy, which is played for laughs.
The shower scene in Sixteen Candles
"Sixteen Candles" is one of the most inappropriate PG movies of all time. This high school coming-of-age story is aimed at teenagers, despite containing plenty of sexual content that is decidedly R-rated.
While the movie is centered around a compelling female protagonist, there is at least one scene profoundly influenced by the male gaze. In the girls' locker room, Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) admires the body of her popular classmate Caroline (Haviland Morris) as she showers, clearly feeling like her own body can never compare. Which would've been a nice introspective moment, if the movie didn't linger far too long on Caroline's bare breasts. In fact, the script contains stage directions that read (we kid you not): "Closeup — the world's most perfect breasts." So much for character development. The filmmakers knew that Samantha wouldn't be the only one unable to tear their eyes away from Caroline's wet body.
Ostensibly, this scene is meant to show Molly's jealousy of her classmate's body, but it's pretty clear this moment was included to please horny teenage boys. Along the way, the movie's themes of body image get lost somewhere in the steam. Surely there was another way to convey that Samantha felt like she wasn't in the same league as Caroline, one that didn't involve the bare breasts of a teenage character. This nude scene spoils an otherwise endearing coming-of-age story.
The naked ducks in Howard the Duck
If you thought "Howard the Duck" couldn't possibly contain any nudity because it stars an anthropomorphic duck puppet, you thought wrong.
In the first 10 minutes of the movie alone, we are subjected to not one, but two naked ducks. First, Howard (Chip Zien) reclines in his armchair and opens a copy of Playduck Magazine, which reads "The Chicks of Lake Superior" because this film can't resist an avian pun. One page of this magazine provides the audience with something they probably didn't need to see: A topless duck modeling some lingerie. Then, once Howard and his armchair are sucked into a wormhole, he zooms past another duck in the bathtub, her feathered breasts clearly visible. The camera lingers on this naked background character even after Howard is gone.
Throw in a commercial for jock itch and Howard's girlfriend calling him to tell him about her wet dream (because that is plot-important, apparently), and the opening sequence is oozing with sex. This is probably not what fans (or most fans, anyway) were expecting to see in an adaptation of a comic about a talking duck. It wasn't until James Gunn gave this little-known Marvel character a cameo at the end of "Guardians of the Galaxy" that viewers were able to wipe this moment from their minds.
The Hallelujah scene in Watchmen (2009)
If you want to see a movie ruined by a single scene, then look no further than Zack Snyder's "Watchmen." The scene where Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) have sex is lifted more or less from the original comic, but the presentation makes all the difference. Everything about this scene from the movie is in your face.
To be fair, the moment is almost earned. The pair have just rescued people from a burning building, and now they are intoxicated by the thrill of becoming superheroes again. Then, of course, the song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen starts playing and ruins everything. It's the most jarring needle-drop ever, and the choice of song doesn't even make sense. It's supposed to be a triumphant song (the title is "Hallelujah," after all) for a triumphant moment, except anybody who has bothered to pay attention to the song will know that it's not triumphant — it's a tortured meditation on the destructive nature of love. This is especially true of Leonard Cohen's version of the song, which clashes with what's happening on-screen.
It doesn't help that the characters' twisted poses are unrealistic. And in case there wasn't enough to stimulate our imaginations, there's also a conveniently timed jet of flame right when the couple climaxes. Thanks to all of these things, moviegoers won't be able to un-see this moment.
The sex scenes from The Room (2003)
It takes a special kind of talent to make a sex scene so un-sexy that it makes everyone in the audience laugh. This is on full display in Tommy Wiseau's "The Room," which takes "unintentionally hilarious" to a whole new level. The film follows Johnny (played by Tommy Wiseau, as if he didn't already have his hands full as director, producer, and writer) as his girlfriend Lisa (Juliette Danielle) grows bored of him and decides to sleep with his best friend instead.
How does Wiseau show Johnny's love for Lisa? By subjecting viewers to one of the most embarrassing sex scenes ever to make it to the screen. The sequence is indulgently long and shot more like a softcore porno than an actual piece of cinema. The sex lasts exactly as long as the song playing in the background as if it never occurred to Wiseau to time skip or cut the song short. (Either that, or he hoped the scene would be already MTV-ready.) Observant viewers have pointed out that Wiseau appears to have recycled leftover footage from one sex scene to use for a later sex scene in the movie, apparently uninterested in shooting another take. Worst of all, when Johnny wakes up the next morning, he takes a big whiff of the rose sitting conveniently by his bedside. We can guarantee you that precisely no one does this post-coitus.
Needless to say, this nude scene ruined the movie less than 10 minutes after it began.