All top ten lists are, by their nature, subjective, but this one is especially so — because one person’s “WTF” sex scene is another person’s monkey spanking material. (Exhibit A: we’d qualify a lot of porn as WTF.)
A few qualifications: David Lynch probably deserves a place in this list (okay, David Lynch definitely deserves a place in this list!), but because we’ve already written an entire post dedicated to his effed up sex scenes, we left him off this time. And LAST TANGO IN PARIS should probably be on here, but we are just so damn sick of talking about that freakin’ butter scene. The SHOWGIRLS pool scene is hilarious and weird and WTF hall of fame-worthy, but we already covered that one, too.
Also, we tried to steer clear of most cinematic depictions of rape, because it didn’t seem right to include those scenes alongside crushed-chicken sex and apple-pie onanism. “WTF” just seems a little too jokey of a response to the graphic violent sexual assault in a movie like IRREVERSIBLE. Oh, and we mostly stayed away from horror movies, too, even though it’s kind of a rule of thumb that the scarier the movie, the more messed up the sex is — we just didn’t have the stomach to go there (if you do, you’ll probably enjoy this list).
Which is not to say that some of the sex in the list below isn’t kill-me-now bleak. In fact, you’ll probably want to rent MARY POPPINS after making it to number one. But just in case you actually want more, check out our earlier post, The 20 Most Disturbing Sex-Themed Movies.
10. CRASH (1996)
James Spader plays a TV commercial producer who enjoys lots of vanilla sex with his wife until he’s involved in a car crash and overnight finds himself aroused by three-car pile-ups and the injuries they cause. Turns out there’s a whole community of people who feel the same way (we suppose this notion was more shocking back in 1996, when there wasn’t an internet chat room for every fetish under the sun). The entire movie is pretty WTF, but the, er, climactic moment occurs when Spader’s character has sex with Rosanna Arquette’s open leg wound. Yep, he did. Please don’t make us type that again.
9. PINK FLAMINGOS (1972)
Does it count as a WTF if it’s a John Waters film? Isn’t his name on the billboard kind of a heads-up? You say, “WTF, I want my money back” and the ticket guy says, “WTF, it’s a John Waters movie, what did you expect?” But even for Waters, the scene where a couple has sex with a live chicken between their bodies is out there. And that’s no rubber chicken. It’s an actual, freshly dead chicken from the butcher shop that gets crushed between them while they do it. We’re pretty sure that chicken didn’t consent to be in a three-way chicken snuff film. (Apparently, the crew ate it afterwards.)
8. THE DOOM GENERATION (1995)
How to pick just one fucked up sex scene from this fucked up road movie that makes FREEWAY look like THE LITTLE MERMAID? Could it be when a teen boy eats his own semen? Or how about when another teen boy is castrated by a pair of garden shears, shortly after a MMF threeway? No, we think the winner is when Rose McGowan’s character is raped with a statue of the virgin Mary. Yep, that’ll do it.
7. AMERICAN PIE (1999)
Masturbation is as American as apple pie! The “feel-good” movie of the year. We’re annoyed at ourselves for including this in the list, but how could we not? That would be like compiling a list of the Top 10 Movie Sex Scenes Involving Dairy Products and leaving out Marlon Brando and the butter.
6. HOWARD THE DUCK (1986)
We will forgive Lea Thompson anything — even her TV show CAROLINE IN THE CITY — because she starred in SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. But we wonder whether she can forgive herself for starring in HOWARD THE DUCK. In this movie, her character strips down to her underwear and attempts to seduce a talking duck, who is on Earth to stop some kind of alien invader. Check out their flirty banter as they lie in bed together (in other words, Thompson read this script and then agreed to star in this movie):
Howard the Duck (checking out Thompson’s butt in her skimpy undies): “I have developed a greater appreciation for the female version of the human anatomy.”
Thompson: “I can’t seem to find the right man.”
Duck: “Maybe it’s not a MAN you should be looking for.”
Thompson (coy): “Do you think I might find happiness in the animal kingdom, Duckie?”
Duck: “Like they say, doll, love’s strange. We could always give it a try.”
She proceeds to fondle him and his duckie plume gets a hard-on, which he embarrassedly apologizes for like he’s just come all over her thigh. She climbs on top of him and Duckie freaks out and says he can’t do it. “I was just kidding,” she says (riiiight), and then the movie goes on like we weren’t just about to witness Lea Thompson having alien duck sex. For the record, this was a Spielberg and Lucas production. WTF?
5. BROWN BUNNY (2003)
When we watch Paris Hilton give some douche-bag guy a blowjob on screen, it’s because she’s a total airhead and lost track of her sex tape (oops!). When we watch Chloe Sevigny give some douche-bag filmmaker a blowjob on screen, it’s art. In case you hadn’t heard, Chloe Sevigny’s blowjob was 100% un-simulated. We’re not so sure about Paris Hilton’s.
4. THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (2009)
In this Dutch horror film, a German surgeon-slash-mad scientist kidnaps three tourists and turns them into a human centipede by stitching their mouths to each others’ anuses. He refers to the creation as his “pet” and attempts to train “it.” He is vastly entertained when the woman at the center of the centipede is forced to swallow excrement from the man at the front.
Just in case you were starting to think that this film was just a meditation on fascism and Nazi medical experimentation (what, you didn’t get that?!), the direct-to-DVD sequel, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE) (2011), shows a man watching the first film on his laptop while masturbating with sandpaper. Is that what you call meta porn? The man goes on to build his own human centipede out of twelve people — except because he’s just a regular ol’ pervert and not a mad scientist, he uses a staple gun. Oh, and then he rapes the back end of his human centipede with barbed wire.
Reviewing the original in the Chicago Sun Times, Roger Ebert wrote, “I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine. Wait, did Ebert just make a joke about the ass being a place where the stars don’t shine?! We really, really hope he did. Ebert went on to give the sequel zero stars, which is less shocking than the fact that Ebert had to watch the movie in the first place.
In case you were wondering where such depravity springs from: the director of these movies got his start as a director on the Dutch Big Brother TV series.
3. FAT GIRL (2001)
This French film directed by Catherine Breillat will make you want to lock up your daughters until they’ve passed menopause.
Elena and Anais are two sisters on a family vacation — Elena is 15 and gorgeous; Anais is 12 and chubby. At the start of the movie, they’re both virgins — Elena says she wants to wait for love, while Anais insists it’s better to get it over with by sleeping with a “nobody.” Then they meet a sexy Italian law student who sneaks into the girls’ bedroom at night and tries to seduce Elena… while Anais, who pretends to be sleeping, watches through her fingers. Elena is unsure about sleeping with him and so he convinces her that anal sex doesn’t really count as losing your virginity. You don’t see the resulting anal sex; instead you hear what’s happening (it’s clearly painful for Elena) while watching Anais watching through her fingers — but the effect is at least as disturbing as any of the other more explicit scenes on this list.*
Later in the movie — major major plot spoiler alert here — Elena and and her mother are killed by an axe murderer; Anais escapes but the dude follows her into the woods and rapes her. But Anais tells the police it was consensual — because he was that “nobody” she’d been looking for. Good times.
* For the U.S. version of semi-consensual underage deflowering, see the opening scene of KIDS. With bonus HIV infection! WTF.
2. JACK FROST (1997)
A serial killer is genetically mutated in a car wreck on the way to his execution. In a David Cronenberg movie, he would then become turned on by car wrecks and gaping wounds. Instead he becomes a homicidal snowman. At one point he attacks Shannon Elizabeth in the bath and proceeds to rape her with his carrot penis — at least, we think that’s what’s happening in the scene. But then again, he’s a snowman, so it’s kind of hard to tell. Maybe he’s just stabbing her with his penis-carrot? Kind of makes us miss Cronenberg’s wound fucking.
1. ANTICHRIST (2009)
This Lars Von Trier movie makes his BREAKING THE WAVES seem like a rom com. First you get marital sex — between Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg — that is deeply disturbing thanks to the way it is inter-cut with scenes of their baby boy falling out of his crib and dying — just as the couple climaxes. Dead baby! WTF? But that’s just the foreplay.
Later, Gainsbourg’s character nails her husband’s leg in place using a drill and then smashes his balls so hard they actually come off. She then gives him a handjob. We’ll say that again: she gives his twig-with-no-berries a handjob and when he climaxes — is that even physiologically possible?! — he ejaculates blood. And then — seriously, there’s actually more to come — she takes a pair of scissors and cuts off her own clitoris. Hey, who needs a cuddle now?!
MORE LIKE THIS ON EMandLO.com:
WTF? For a list that purports to mostly steer clear of rape scenes and horror flicks, this list has a lot of them. Thanks for the Howard the Duck, though. That movie was a sleepover staple. The weirdness kind of went over our heads back then.