Our Staff Picks column takes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme and the "Staff Picks" section was the place to find out what films were worthy of one's time. Of course, our version of Staff Picks has a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out which films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week let's cover one of the absolute BEST years in moviemaking: 1994.
1994 was a game-changing year. It was not only a year that featured several major blockbusters, but it gave us new auteurs. Both Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith made huge splashes with their debut films. Ben Stiller directed the Gen X coming-of-age classic Reality Bites. Shawshank Redemption swept awards and The Mask was quoted everywhere you turned.
Admittedly, this year wasn't the best for nudity. Some of the biggest hits that year were shockingly devoid of it, so that only makes these movies stand out even more. In a year where it was hard to stand out, these movies managed to do it with their hot scenes:
Natural Born Killers
This Oliver Stone movie still holds up today thanks to America's continued obsession with celebrities and a renewed modern interest in true crime. The movie is about two total psychopaths who fall in love and begin a crime spree that would have made Bonnie Clyde shudder with fear. The two of them rob and murder a series of people, including hot young women like Lorraine Farris.
Death and the Maiden
This Roman Polanski film was not a hit, but it was a tit - specifically, Sigourney Weaver's tit. She plays a woman who lives in a fictional South American country who has undergone a lot of hardship under its fascist regime. A stranger visits her and her husband and she becomes convinced that he is one of the fascists, but he denies it. Her husband is not sure who to believe! Well, I'd believe Sigourney Weaver because she is topless. Easy!
The Last Seduction
This is one spicy movie! This John Dahl film introduces us to a 90s femme fatale: Linda Fiorentino. She plays a fiesty woman who steals a suitcase filled with cash from her husband. He was going to pay off his gambling debts with that, so now he's in trouble! She runs away and hooks up with a new guy in a small town where she tries to convince her new man to murder her husband. Honestly, she's really convincing! It might be because of her several nude scenes!
Lina Fiorentino had several nude scenes - four, to be exact! Like this one:
Nell
Jodie Foster blew everyone away when she played a hermitic woman who is essentially feral. She lives in the woods where she was born and raised with her mom and her twin sister Mae. Her mother died and she grew up speaking a strange language that only she and her twin knew. Now Nell is all alone and she is being observed by interested psychologists who seem VERY interested in watching her bathe in the nude.
The Crow
Is any 90s movie more fabled that The Crow? I honestly don't think so! This film starred Bruce Lee's son, Brandon Lee, as a badass who rises from the dead to avenge his and his fiancee's murders. Sadly, a prop gun went off and killed Brandon Lee on set. It was a total accident and it lead to some creative workarounds in order to still finish and release the film.
The Crow was a 90s goth kid's Bible when it came to fashion, but I think they were all also drooling over Bai Ling. Bai bore her booty in a sexy shower scene!
Dumber Dumber
Jim Carey had a great year in 1994 between this film and The Mask. In Dumb Dumber he showed off his dumbest side in a buddy comedy that reveled in goofiness. He also reveled in the rump on Lauren Holly when he shared a sneaky hug with her. Lauren wasn't wearing any panties underneath her dress!
Forrest Gump
This was considered one of the best movies of the year, if not of the decade. It even won the Academy Award for Best Picture among many other awards! Tom Hanks charmed everyone as a the terminally positive Forrest Gump, a man who never let his lack of wit get in his way. He also didn't let it stop him from wooing his girlfriend Jenny, played by Robin Wright.
While Robin Wright did not go nude in Forrest Gump, she claimed that she was really topless behind the guitar. She is also wearing a thong that is the same color as the rest of her skin which you can see here for a nude illusion:
Color of Night
This may have been the steamiest movie to come out in 1994. Bruce Willis and Jane March couldn't keep their hands off of each other...neither could Lesley Ann Warren who had a lesbian scene with Jane in the movie. Every single person wanted a piece of Jane March in this erotic thriller. Could you blame them?
The 90s was the era of the erotic thriller! A psychologist played by Bruce Willia tries to run away from his problems after a patient commits suicide. He moves across the country and starts practicing again, but when one of his coworkers is killed he has to take on his clients. That has terrifying results!
What's not terrifying is Jane March's totally nude body in the bath:
