Someone on Letterboxd has put together an extensive list of movies where the actors are having unsimulated sex.
Just for clarity, that means the stuff you’re seeing on screen is the real thing and not just professional performers pretending to pork.
There’s no judgement here, if that’s the sort of thing you want in a movie then there are directors out there making movies which cater to your tastes.
Of course there are some usual culprits on the list, including the infamous movie Caligula which had to have so much footage cut out before it was allowed to be shown.
The flick was immediately banned in a whole load of countries, with Italy seizing film reels of it that entered the country and branding the movie ‘flagrantly obscene’.
Of course the Nymphomaniac movies make the list (Nordisk Film)
It did star big names of cinema such as Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Peter O’Toole and more recently a new version of the movie was released that was better received by critics than the original.
The list also features the likes of Antichrist, I Am Curious (Yellow) and Starlet.
Meanwhile, if lists about films that contain unsimulated sex scenes is what takes your fancy then we previously rustled up a list of our own containing 10 of the most notorious movies.
Peruse through the titles, learn a bit about these films and the way they were received and then decide if this is the sort of cinematic experience for you.
By their very nature these movies have ended up being controversial with the censors and the topic of sex depicted on the big screen is one which is still diligently discussed.
The role of intimacy coordinators has only grown in film production, and a number of stars have spoken out in praise of having someone on set who is responsible for making sure everyone’s OK with what’s happening whether the rumpy-pumpy people are watching is unsimulated or not.
The Letterboxd list wouldn’t be complete without Antichrist on there (Curzon Film)
Nicole Kidman recently spoke out about her part in the film Babygirl, which had ‘radically long takes’ during the sex scenes – which were not real.
Intimacy coordinators worked to ‘precisely structure a given sequence’s many twists and turns’, and Kidman said she ‘never came out of it, really’ while they were filming the scenes.
She said that while the lengthy filming process often left her feeling ‘ragged’, she still felt ‘incredibly safe’ thanks to the effort that went into the scenes.
Perhaps with such precise coordination and work going into sex scenes there’s not really a need for them to be unsimulated any longer.
If the alternative, which most film shoots like Babygirl use, is enough to look like the real thing then perhaps the movie with unsimulated sex in it is a dying breed.
There are other dangers to doing it unsimulated as well, as actor Melvin Van Peebles wrote, produced, directed and appeared in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song where he contracted gonorrhoea from a co-star.