Two boner-fide horror flicks, two high profile flops, and one of the most controversial movies ever made were all released on October 14 in Movie Nudity History! Read on for all the details...
2011: The Skin I Live In
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from Part II of our SKIN-depth Look at Pedro Almodóvar's Films...
Reuniting with Antonio Banderas for the first time sinceTie Me Up! Tie Me Down!over twenty years earlier, Almodóvar gave the Spanish actor one of his juiciest roles in years withThe Skin I Live In. Based loosely on the novelTarantulaby late French novelistThierry Jonquet, the film marked Almodóvar's first foray into horror, creating a creepy tale of a brilliant doctor driven to madness by his own ruthless perfectionism. Almodóvar hoped to havePenélope Cruzplay the film's female lead, the cheekily named Vera Cruz, but she was unable to do so due to her first pregnancy.
He turned instead toTalk to Herco-starElena Anaya, gifting her with the complex dual roles of Vera (whom we'll get to in a moment) and Gal, the wife of plastic surgeon Robert (Banderas), who took her own life after catching sight of her burned visage in a mirror following a terrible car accident. Robert becomes obsessed with developing a synthetic skin for burn victims that will hopefully help him atone for his wife's death, and the obsession drives him to extreme lengths. One of those is holding Vera captive in his cellar for the last six years, using her as a guinea pig for his experiment.
However, the audience comes to find out that Vera is actually Vicente (Jan Cornet), a man whom Robert has spent the last half decade slowly turning into an identical replacement for his deceased wife through gender reassignment surgery and dozens of operations to alter her physical appearance. While Vera appears, at first, to have been Stockholm Syndrome'd into actually developing feelings for Robert, she eventually murders him and returns to her former life working at a dress shop owned by her mother.
The film's psychological horror bent is complimented by Almodóvar's signature magical realism, making it look and feel unlike any other horror movie ever made. There are obvious parallels, particularly in Vera's look, to Franju's horror masterpieceEyes Without a Face, but even that film looks and feels like a horror film. Conversely,The Skin I Live Inlooks and feels like an Almodóvar film with horror elements subtly woven throughout, and its twists and turns only further heighten those melodramatic elements which have become Almodóvar's calling card.
The film is by far Alomóvar's most skin-filled of the back half of his career, withElena Anayaspending substantial screen time in various states of undress in both of her roles, spending nearly seven minutes in total in the nude...
The film's other nude scene comes just before the one hour mark in a flashback to Vera's life as Vicente, when hehad a bizarre sexual encounter at a party with Robert's daughter Norma (Blanca Suárez). The two of them go to a secluded area where Suárez begins stripping off her clothes...
However, she becomes appalled by the sexual desire rising in her body as Vicente touches her, causing her to cry out for help, which makesRobert assume that their encounter was not consensual. This is what ultimately drives Robert to kidnap Vicente and turn him into Vera, giving Banderas perhaps his most twisted role ever. It's one he pulls off with aplomb, and if you haven't seen their most recent work together in Pain Glory, you're missing out on probably the best performance of the actor's career. Like so many of Almodóvar's muses, they truly do compliment one another in incredible ways.
2011: The Woman
Twisted, perverse sexual fetishization of violence against women continues in our next film, Lucky McKee's The Woman. Like Almodóvar's film, though, the extremes to which the film goes are part of the point it is trying to make, allowing the ultimate catharsis ofthe third-act revengeplot to unfold in the most satisfying possible manner. Unlike his film, however, this one does indeed play like full-tilt horror from minute one. Obviously the presence of new millennium scream queen Angela Bettis is an immediate tip-off that the film is pure horror, but there's none of the melodramatic sheen of the other film turning 9 today.
Bettis plays Belle, thewife of a backwoods lawyer and bible-thumping psychopath, onto whoseproperty the titular feral female (Pollyanna McIntosh) wanders one day while bathing. She is the last surviving member of a tribe of feral cannibals, but this law-abiding Christian man takes the woman captive and chains her up naked in his basement. He brings his son and two daughters down to see the woman in her current state and to observe how he's going to use scripture and corporal punishment to make a real woman out of her...
The daughters, themselves victims of the father's abusive wrath, take pity on the woman and the youngest girl Darlin (Shyla Molhusen) befriends her. This will ultimately prove their salvation when the woman finally gets free and begins to enact her revenge, eventually leaving the house and taking Darlin as her daughter. A sequel to the film, Darlin', was made last year, directed by Pollyanna McIntosh, so if you're a fan of this flick, seek that one out as well!
2005: Domino
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from our SKIN-depth Look at Tony Scott's Films...
While it was probably shocking and a bit off-putting to audiences in 2005, Scott'sfilmwritten byDonnie Darko's Richard Kelly and billing it self as "A True Story. Sort Of." proved that Scott was a director consistently ahead of his time. Keira Knightleybegan her ascent to the A-list with 2003'sPirates of the Caribbean, butDominomarked her first starring vehicle, though the following month'sPride and Prejudicewas much more successful and landed Knightley her first Oscar nomination. Knightley plays former model Domino Harvey, daughter of acclaimed Lithuanian actor Laurence Harvey and, as the film would have you believe, quite a badass bounty hunter.
For his film, Scott intensely researched the world of bounty hunters and came away with the lesson that many of them are raging cocaine addicts. This informed Scott's style for the film which is sort of an amalgamation ofOliver Stone'sNatural Born Killersand The Wachowski'sThe Matrix, with all the macho fetishism of guns one mightexpect from a latter-dayRambofilm. In true macho movie fashion, Knightley even received a second degree burn on her neck while firing two machine guns at the same time when a hot shell attached itself to the actress' skin.
While the film isn't necessarily what I would call successful 15 years after its release, it's much better than its reputation suggests, particularly in an age when this film's editing style is much more in line with the trends of the time. If nothing else, you should check it out for Knightley's multiple nude scenes in the film...
1994: Exit to Eden
While the late, greatGarry Marshall didn't always direct family friendly films, even his R-rated films were things like Pretty Woman and Frankie Johnny. In other words, stillsomewhat family friendly, softball Rs. His only two ventures into truly adult territory were his first film, 1982'sYoung Doctors in Love, and Exit to Eden, released on this day in 1994. Anne Rice,like Michael Crichton andJohn Grisham, was oneof the hottest authors of the day and the rush was on in Hollywood to bring just about everythingshe wrote to the screen.
One month before her star would explode with the release of Interview with the Vampire, this film landed the honor of being Rice's first book to be adapted for the screen. Pitched as an erotic comedy—believe me when I tell you it sounded as stupid 26 years ago as it does today—the film found Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O'Donnell playing undercover copsattempting to infiltrate an exclusive island resort called Eden, where your every sexual fantasy can be fulfilled. While they attempt to sniff out an organized diamond smuggling ring operating out of the resort, Strictly Ballroom's Paul Mercurio plays a schmo with submissive fantasies that find him falling for the island's head mistress Lisa (Dana Delany).
It's exactly the kind of erotic comedy you'd expect from Garry Marshall, written by Anne Rice, and starring Rosie O'Donnell Dan Aykroyd in a more or less separate movie from Mercurio and Delany. That is to say it's borderline unwatchable. Two films competing for screen time with a director who obviously favors the comedy, but also can't squander the honest performances he's getting out of his other actors. Mostly it's a movie at war with itself, so better to fast forward to the good parts here at Mr. Skin!
Dana Delany knocked everyone's socks off, delivering the best nudity of her career! We get to see some frontal from Dana as she emerges nude from a pool, along with bonus frontal from the late Stephanie Niznik, in her film debut...
There's plenty of additional nudity from a coterie of nude beauties working at the resort including Alison Moir, Tanya Reid, Julie Hughes, Sandra Taylor, the list goes on and on…
1972: Last Tango in Paris
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from our SKIN-depth Look at Bernardo Bertolucci's Films...
Finally this week, on this day 48 years ago, audiences got their first taste of this film that remains controversial to this very day.For his first film in English, Bertolucci plumbed the depths of his deepest and darkest sexual desires with1972'sLast Tango in Paris. Among the most controversial films ever made, and rightly so, it's impossible to watch Bertolucci's sixth narrative feature today without knowing the extreme mental duressMaria Schneiderendured from both her co-star Marlon Brando, and her director. Bertolucci had intended to castDominique Sandaas the female lead in the film, but when she became pregnant, he began his search for a new starlet.
Schneider was no novice when Bertolucci "discovered" her, having appeared in over a half dozen films in her native France. However, at only 19 years of age, she was still substantially younger than both Brando and Bertolucci, who used a number of manipulative techniques to elicit the performance they wanted from her. According to Schneider, Bertolucci would frequently withhold information about certain scenes from her in order to capture a more real and honest portrait of aggression and frustration from her.
For context, Brando plays an American living in Paris, mourning the death of his wife by suicide. While looking at an apartment for rent, he meets Schneider's character who is also interested in the apartment, and the two begin a torrid, anonymous sexual affair, with Brando wanting to know nothing about Schneider, while simultaneously offering her no personal details about his own life. Brando becomes increasingly controlling and obsessive, bringing us to the infamous "butter scene" which you can watch below in full...
Schneider has said time and again in interviews that she was not informed about the content of the scene and that Brando repeatedly ensured her that nothing untoward would happen to her during filming. Even without being actually physically assaulted, however, the scene took an obvious emotional toll on the actress and she has said repeatedly that the tears she sheds in the scene are real.
This begs the question, what amount of suffering for an actor can be deemed acceptable? Is it okay that Stanley Kubrick haranguedShelley Duvallmercilessly for months on end in order for her to achieve the frazzled mental state he wanted herin because the end result,The Shining, is a great film? Does achieving greatness absolve you of any actions you took in order to achieve that greatness? These are not questions I can answer in a way that will satisfy everyone, which is what makes them such good topics for discussion.
I always subscribed to the notion that pain is temporary, but art is forever, but I never thought of the potential for ignored collateral damage such a statement wields.For me, that phrase meant, suck it up and walk on that broken ankle for one more take. Your foot will heal but the film will fall apart without this shot. That kind of thing is much more understandable. The fact of the matter is that some wounds do not heal. Not through time or avoidance or any other means at our disposal, and as a viewer, you must have your own moral compass that determines your viewing habits.
People can say, "I don't watch Roman Polanski films because he's a terrible human being," and all I can think is that they're cheating themselves out of at least two of the greatest films ever made by instituting such a policy.But even that situation is removed from the making of any of his films. Yes, he may be a terrible person off set, but at least he comported himself properly on set. I'm not entirely sure the same could be said for Bertolucci withLast Tango.
