Blog Posts about Delta Heat

Phoebe Cates’s other great ’80s teen sex comedy also

features Saw babe Betsy Russell, scream queen Brinke Stevens, and loads of sexy surprises.

If summertime 1982 served as cherry-popping Ground Zero for the decade’s teen sex comedy phenomenon—and seeing as it contained the premieres of Porky's, The Last American Virgin, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, it did—then the subsequent swelter season’s Private School (1983) was the first direct fallout. And what a gloriously radiant after-effect it is.

To be sure, a spate of raunchy teen farces did rush into theaters during the ’82-’83 school year—among them: The Beach Girls, Homework, Joysticks, Losin’ It, Goin’ All the Way, My Tutor, Pink Motel, Spring Break, (the mighty) Screwballs, and (the also mighty) Zapped!

But Private School represented Hollywood’s first full-scale attempt to concoct an all-out teen sex comedy blockbuster, calculatedly combining familiar genre tropes (nerds, jocks, nudity-producing pranks, cross-dressing one’s way into the girls’ shower room, etc.), and then adding Phoebe Cates—the naked girl from Fast Times—up on top like a beautiful, brown-nippled bow.

As Saw VI hits theaters this weekend, let’s look back at the fright franchise's most screamingly sexy ladies.

In 2004, the original Saw heralded a new approach to terror that ushered in its own extreme movie genre, dubbed by those who disapprove to be “torture porn.”

Just as Saw indirectly begat Wolf Creek (2005), The Devil’s Rejects (2005), and Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) and Hostel: Part II (2007), it also spawned sequels that have become an annual cinematic happening every Halloween weekend.

The follow-up roster thus far is Saw II (2005), Saw III (2006), Saw IV (2007), Saw V (2008) and, now, Saw VI (2009).

For all its spectacular violence, the Saw cycle has been surprisingly skingy, but it does not skimp on stocking the screen with sexbombs who have appeared nude elsewhere.

One caveat: ferociously sexy villainess Shawnee Smith, who’s appeared in every Saw movie so far, has still not done a nude scene. Why does she torture us so?

Until Shawnee strips, then, allow Mr. Skin to point you in the direction of the Saw sirens’ naked appearances.

1. JULIE BENZ
See Her in Saw(s): V

The Buzz: Fresh-faced, hard-bodied blonde Julie Benz is most familiar as Rita, the clueless mom married to a serial killer on Dexter. Julie’s breakout role came in Jawbreaker (1999), and she’s worked steadily (and aged beautifully) since then, notably returning to the big screen in Rambo (2008). In Saw V, Julie is forced to save herself by fatally neck stabbing a fellow victim of evil mastermind Jigsaw (Tobin Bell). Those things happen.

Jig Off: Darkdrive (1996)
(1:08) Julie brings rapid acceleration to this sci-fi tale of an auto-intensive future, flashing her headlights and even some back bumper as she rides a guy to glory in the sack.