Entertainment

The Worst Sex Scenes Ever to Make It to the Big Screen

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Everett Collection

by Mark Hay

When done well, sex on the big screen has real potency. Take, for just a few examples, Hedy Lamarr’s orgasm in 1933’s still-effective Ecstasy, the passion in 2002’s flawed but still complex and compelling Secretary, or Brokeback Mountain for its portrayal of man on man relationships.

Yet for every worthy sex scene there are a dozen absolute clunkers — so many that trying to list them all in one place is an impossible undertaking. A lot of movie sex is bad on purpose, for the sake of humor, style, or tone. A lot more is bad because it's poorly planned or acted. But a few special disasters are bad because they try to sell us on sex that no sane human should want to be a part of. Consider the following chronological list as much a warning as a public shaming of the apparently unintentionally worst sex ever set to celluloid.

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Everett Collection 1 / 7

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Essentially one long hyper-masculine fantasy in which a French teen, Maria Schneider, decides to have a torrid affair with a doughy late-forties Marlon Brando, everything about the film is meant to suggest eroticism cranked up to 11. While the premise is overwrought, Last Tango earns a place on this list for an infamous scene, reportedly semi-improvised by Brando, in which his lecherous old man forces Schneider down on a hard floor, slathers her ass in butter, and has forceful anal sex with her. Even if you accept the film’s conceit that this was a consensual relationship, in no way is this move something that should be recreated in the bedroom.

Everett Collection 2 / 7

The Blue Lagoon (1980)

The tale of two cousins stranded on a tropical island as children and left to slowly develop their sexuality together in an uninformed vacuum, Blue Lagoon is meant to be a deep dive into the raw and innocent core of human eroticism. The execution, though, is a long, awkward, and poorly assembled hack-and-slash attempt, made somewhat creepy by the fact that its female lead, Brooke Shields, was 14 when they shot the film. But it ultimately deserves a spot on this list for being perhaps the preeminent film trying to sell us on having sex in nature — on leaves and beaches. But as anyone tempted by a sex-on-the-beech movie can attest, things pretty quickly get sandy, bumpy, and ultimately grating and unpleasant.

Everett Collection 3 / 7

Showgirls (1995)

Another famously bad movie, Showgirls has the vague outlines of a plot centered around a girl seeking fame who winds up, for a spell, as an exotic dancer. Some have tried in recent years to re-read it as a satire, but for most this is at best one of those movies that’s so bad it’s good — midnight-drunken-screening fare. The height of its absurdity is its pool sex scene, in which star Elizabeth Berkley appears to have a seizure instead of an orgasm. There might be some truth to the need for overacting in the scene, since pool sex is a great way to eliminate natural lubrication, leading to ironically dry and painful sex that will never live up to the Hollywood fantasy.

Everett Collection 4 / 7

Titanic (1997)

Almost twenty years on, there’s still enough doe-eyed love out there for the romance between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic that including it on a list of bad sex will probably solicit a few death threats. However Titanic consummates the bond between its stars with a steamy romp in a boxy, angular early-20th century car, we have to ask whether that's really the time and place. There’s no denying how steamy the handprint on the window of the car is, but anyone who stops to think about the positioning that led to it will soon realize that it probably involved a lot of hard metal poking into tender flesh. Many movies trump up the impromptu taboo of car sex, but few do so in such a poor locale or so unfortunately effectively as Titanic.

Everett Collection 5 / 7

Killing Me Softly (2002)

A twisting, turning “erotic thriller” that actually leans on faux kink in lieu of actual eroticism, and absurd, whiplashing plot twists and turns in lieu of actual thrills, Killing Me Softly is yet another bomb of a movie, so much so that it almost feels like a shame to elevate it onto a list rather than let it die a slow and obscure death. However its depiction of dominance and submission is in many ways more unfortunate than 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey: utterly lacking in the dialogue and complexity essential to a kinky relationship, it depicts an intricate strangulation fantasy tableaux that ought to come with a don’t-try-this-at-home warning. Its unrealistic depiction of kink is not only dangerous and insulting but almost doubly so thanks to the fact that it came out in the same year as the much more engaging offering in Secretary.

Everett Collection 6 / 7

Gigli (2003)

Perhaps the most notorious train wreck of a film on this list, Gigli was the end of a few careers and nearly the end of a few more. Despite using an actual couple (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez) for its sex scenes, it somehow lacks any sense of chemistry. It leans heavily on the notion that a troll of a man can turn a lesbian straight — a fantasy that promotes not a sense of sexual fluidity but ultimately homophobia. But above all else it features perhaps the worst attempt at dirty talk ever captured on film when, calling Affleck to perform oral sex on her, Lopez says, “It’s turkey time: gobble, gobble.” This is a more specific sexual critique than any other on this list, but it holds true: if anyone ever used that line in real life, it would end in tears and quite possibly enduring hang-ups about oral sex or the consumption of poultry at large.

Getty Images 7 / 7

Shoot ‘Em Up (2007)

A film so middling it wouldn’t be surprising if you’d never heard of it or forgotten that it existed, Shoot ‘Em Up is an overwrought tale of human trafficking, corrupt politicians, and a hobo with preternatural detective and gunfire skills devoted to protecting a sturdy baby through a series of over-the-top action sequences. One such scene involves an ambush on Clive Owen’s drifter while he’s in the middle of a sexual encounter with a prostitute played by Monica Bellucci. Owen’s ungodly gunplay — carried out as he continues to have sex with Bellucci — is clearly meant to be a bit absurd, but also incredibly virile, masculine, and thus hot. Unfortunately if you actually tried not just gunplay (which would be literally deafening), but any level of quasi-acrobatic multi-tasking during sex, you’d be apt to lose the groove quickly and to injure yourself in any number of ways. Yet another instance in which Hollywood’s attempts at building enticing fantasies just create potential realities in which you’d never want to have any part.

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