An epic lesbian romance, awoman escaping a cult, a very adult whodunit, an insane Ken Russell flick, and an 80s icon's best nude scene were all unleashed upon the public on October 21 in Movie Nudity History!
2016: The Handmaiden
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from our SKIN-depth Look at Park Chan-wook's Films
WhileOldboywill always be my favorite of Park's films, this one might just be his best. Once again porting another culture's story over to Asian culture—this time, early 20th Century Japanese controlled Korea—Park's adaptation of a 2002 Victorian-era novel "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters is a whodunit of the highest order with some of the best lesbian mainstream content put on film sinceBlue is the Warmest Color.
Min-hee Kimstars as Lady Hideko, a wealthy heiress who finds herself a pawn in a game being played by a conman calling himself Count Fujiwara (Jung-woo Ha), and his expert pickpocket companion Sook-hee (Tae-ri Kim). The Count's plan is to seduce, marry, and ultimately commit Lady Hideko to an insane asylum, leaving him in control of her immense wealth. He hires Sook-hee to take a job at Lady Hideko's home as a handmaiden, in hopes that she will gain her trust and help push her into the arms of the Count.
It is thought that Lady Hideko is desensitized to sex, and therefore immune to the Count's charms, but these foolish men like the Count and her controlling Uncle Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong) clearly do not understand women. As both Hideko and Sook-hee come to discover that they were being used by the powerful men in their lives, they set out to exact revenge and begin a torrid love affair. Park's constantly moving camera becomes painstakingly controlled in the lesbian encounters betweenMin-hee KimandTae-ri Kim, utilizing gorgeously realized symmetrical compositions...
There's a joyous exploration of sexuality happening in the back half of this film as these two women from very repressed upbringings discover that there is indeed pleasure to be found in sex, providing you take pleasure in the person with whom you're having sex. It's a lesson that's particularly resonant due to the film's setting, just another reason Park is so savvy as a filmmaker.
2011: Martha Marcy May Marlene
After a childhood spent playing second fiddle to her older twin sisters, Elizabeth Olsen stepped out of Mary-Kate and Ashley's shadow on this day nine years ago in this acclaimed thriller! Elizabeth turns in a stunning performance as a woman escaping a cult run by Oscar nominee John Hawkes, making a run into the loving arms of her sister (Sarah Paulson) whom she abandoned years ago to join the cult. True escape is another matter altogether as she lives in constant fear of being found and returned to the cult she attempted to flee, never feeling relaxed in a world she no longer recognizes. It's a powerful little film with a pretty pitch black ending!
Elizabeth reclaims the term Olsen Twins by going nude in this flick, making her starring debut and nude debut in one fell swoop...
2005: Where the Truth Lies
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from our SKIN-depth Look at Atom Egoyan's Films
In a filmography rife with dark films exploring even darker themes, it's hard to argue that Atom Egoyan haspresented a bleaker vision of humanity than this 2005 flick. Based on the novel of the same name by Rupert "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" Holmes,Where the Truth Liesdeals with the legendary Martin Lewis-esque comedy team of Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), whose partnership abruptly ended in the late 50s. The film opens with the two comedians finishing up their latest 39-hour telethon in Miami and flying to a New Jersey hotel owned by notorious gangster Sally Sanmarco (Maury Chaykin). Upon arriving in their suite, they discover the dead body of Miami college student Maureen O'Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard) dead in their bathtub.
Fifteen years later, we're introduced to Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman), a journalist who has been hired to serve as Vince's ghost writer for his upcoming autobiography. Unbeknownst to him, Karen has pledged to Maureen's mother that she will get to the bottom of the now-cold case of her daughter's murder, though Collins eventually ends up blackmailing her into not speaking with him about the incident. His blackmail scenario involves him getting Karen drunk and then inviting an escort calling herself Alice (Kristin Adams) to come over for a threesome, photographing enough pictures of the encounter to hopefully buy Karen's silence...
Meanwhile, Lanny has been anonymously sending Karen pages from his own upcoming autobiography, in which he goes into much more explicit detail on the events that led to him and Vince parting ways. We're reintroduced to Lanny and his "manager" Denise (Rebecca Davis), who bares some phenomenal full frontal in a hotel room...
Of course, all roads lead back to that fateful night all those years ago when poor Maureen ended up dead. When we flashback to that rendezvous, it starts withRachel Blanchardhaving sex with Lanny on the couch, before Vince comes in to turn this party into a threesome. That ends rather abruptly when the closeted bisexual Vince attempts to penetrate Lanny, causing Lanny to fly into a fit of rage...
As to the particulars of the murder, I'm going to leave that up to you to discover for yourself, as this film is easily one of Egoyan's best and most essential efforts as a filmmaker. Needless to say, the film's title is firmly cemented in the film's final minutes as the truth eventually comes out and Karen must decide what to do with that information.
The film was controversial from the get-go, with its explicit and almost omnipresent sexuality earning it the restrictive NC-17 rating. Distributor THINKFilm eventually decided to release the film Unrated, though even that didn't help the film to play in more than a couple hundred theaters. When it was released on DVD, they produced an R-rated cut, which rather unfortunately became the better known version of the film due to its wider availability. The Unrated Cut also got a DVD release, but most retailers and rental outlets opted to carry the R-rated version, leaving Egoyan's original vision to languish in relative obscurity. Thankfully the age of streaming has given the Unrated cut the boost it deserves and I recommend you seek it out.
1988: The Lair of the White Worm
**Portions of the following text are excerpted from Part II of our SKIN-depth Look at Ken Russell's Films
Ken Russell returns to the world of horror with this 1988 film, the closest he ever came to making a vampire film, based loosely on Bram Stoker's novel of the same name and starring a pre-fame Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi. Set in modern day England, the tale concerns a Scottish archaeologist (Capaldi) who discovers an enormous skull—which will turn out to be from a giant slain worm—on the estate of Grant's family, who is famous for having slain a giant worm some years ago.
Amanda Donohoedoesn't enter the film until about twenty minutes in, but from the time she comes on as Lady Sylvia Marsh, she proceeds to steal the show from everyone else on screen. This is a world class camp performance, up there withGina GershoninShowgirlsand Tim Curry inRocky Horror. She struts on to the scene and becomes the most dynamic screen presence of all, elevating the rather ridiculous material to the level of high art...
Donohoe's costumes are also amazing, probably the highlight of the movie, and credit must go to costume designer Michael Jeffery for dressing her so incredibly well! She's also got a go for broke attitude that really helps to sell Russell's lunacy, as when she fellates a giant worm dildo in a dream sequence, while nuns are impaled all around her...
The film's third act pulls out all the stops with Donohoe offering up poor virginal Catherine Oxenberg as a sacrifice to her worm god Dionin.And because it wouldn't be a Ken Russell movie without someone strapping on a giant dildo, Donohoe obliges...
The film is a camp spectacular, one that never quite took hold among the cult audiences. Sure the film has its supporters, but Lady Sylvia Marsh deserves to reside alongside other revered anti-religious feminist icons. It's a once-in-a-lifetime performance surrounded by a fairly mediocre movie with some detached performances, terrible ADR, laughably bad effects, and a shocking twist ending that makes absolutely no sense when you think about it for more than five seconds.
1983: All the Right Moves
The fourth and final film released in Tom Cruise's star-making run of 1983 is yourstandard high school sports movie where a gifted young quarterback dreams of landing a scholarship that will give him the boost he needs to leave his dead-end small town existence behind him. Cruise plays Armenian-American QB Stefen "Stef" Djordjevic, whose only hope of escaping his small Pennsylvania steel mill hometown is a lucrative scholarship to play college football, but those dreams go up in smoke when his coach (Craig T. Nelson) kicks him off the team following a big loss to their rivals.
While Cruise may be ridiculously miscast as an Armenian-American—he has English, German, and Irish ancestry—he was the right man at the right time for this film and the film never really dwells on his heritage. One thing the film did require of him, however, is something he has yet to do since: show his dick on film. I'm sure he's a lot more protective of his junk in this day and age but it does demonstrate at least a bit of that fearlessness which has come to be his trademark in the ensuing decades.
Cruise's love interest in the film is played by Lea Thompson, who had just made her big screen debut in Jaws 3earlier that same year, but was herself still two years from breaking out in a big way with Back to the Future. An hour and four minutes into the film, Cruise and Thompson decide it's time to take their relationship to the next level and have sex. They awkwardly undress in front of one another in one of the more honest love scenes of the era, displaying the utter vulnerability of appearing nude in front of your lover for the first time...
While Thompson would go nude again five years later in Casual Sex?, this remains her best nudity on screen from her entire career, a record that stands 37 years later!
