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 a surprising venue for movie nudity: musicals.
Musicals sometimes get a bad wrap, but I don't really know why. I feel like people think they are cheesy or stuffy, but they can truly be anything under the sun. While you are picturing some old Gilbert and Sullivan operetta or a community theater production of Oklahoma!, I'm being watching musicals with some naughty or edgy material. They exist!
There are plenty of musicals with sexy numbers and costumes like 1972's Cabaret, 1975's Tommy which featured Ann-Margret covered in mud, and the very recent In the Heights, but these musicals all went the extra mile by showing just a little bit more skin and sexiness.
Here are my Staff Picks for musicals:
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
With a title like this one, it is easy to get that this musical comedy would be filled with sex. It sort of is, but it mostly features hot women in lingerie singing. That includes the top-heavy Dolly Parton showing off her famous cleavage when she plays the brothel madame. She runs The Chicken Ranch, a classy bordello where she makes sure these fine Texan gentlemen have a good time with her girls.
We do get to check out bare boobs in the movie! Anne Gaybis has a nude scene where she sits topless in bed after she just had a rousing rendezvous with one of her johns.
This musical has good tunes, beautiful women, plenty of laughs, and the voice of the angelic Dolly Parton. What's not to love?
Hair
Milos Forman directed the 60s hippie love fest that is Hair and he put a unique spin on it. Let me be totally honest with all of you: Hair is my favorite musical and I actually think that the movie put a rare spin on the stage version that made it better.
That's crazy, I know because that never happens! Let me explain. The stage musical is more of a party of hippies and a celebration of love with the Vietnam War being a very real threat in the background. Truly, most of the first act is just all of them sitting in a circle singing songs that either introduce characters or issues that are concerning this rag-tag group of Aquarians.
The film infused more of a plot into the, well, plot. The movie puts that threat front and center AND puts a twist at the end that made all of this click even better. I will obviously talk more about Hair at some point in our Hippie Hotties column, but I want to take a moment to highlight Beverly D'Angelo's nudity in the movie. She goes topless twice! She skinny-dips and she takes her clothes off for a car quickie. Good morning, star shine indeed!
Forbidden Zone
And now for something completely different. Forbidden Zone is a cult classic and you may have never heard of it - you will also be like 'why have I never heard of this?!' when you learn more about who is involved in this WEIRD musical. It's also known as the Oingo Boingo musical because that's who does the music.
Richard Elfman directed this sci-fi musical with a purposefully playhouse-looking set. Richard's very famous brother Danny Elfman composed the music of this musical that is based on a cabaret act they did in LA called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo...which is how the band was formed.
This New Wave musical draws from midnight movies and the absurd to make a musical that takes us to the Sixth Dimension, hell, color and black-and-white and...a classroom?
We go all over the place in this 1980 adventure that is definitely worth watching. The film is purposefully made to look like it was made for practically no budget, but it definitely had money behind it to make it look and sound this flawless. The cardboard set pieces and goofy costumes are all a part of the aesthetic!
Herve Villechaize stars as the ruler of a topless society that includes Susan Tyrrell (she plays both the evil Queen Doris as the nice Ruth Henderson), who was his then-wife in real life. Gisele Lindley plays the princess of hell who enjoys teaming up with Queen Doris to torture a sweet French girl played by Marie-Pascale Elfman who was married to the director at the time. What an incestuous, fun musical!
Rent
It's easy to love to Rent, the iconic late 90s musical about bohemians living in New York City that gave us all the song "Seasons of Love". It is kind of hilarious to think about all of these young people not paying rent in Manhattan's Lower East Side today, but suspend your disbelief and go back in time to when Rent is supposed to take place. Rent is about artists and people with HIV learning to live and love each other in a changing city.
Idina Menzel was in the stage show and she reprises her role as a very eccentric bisexual artist by showing her ass in a big musical number. She also has a powerful song called "Take Me or Leave Me" in which she fights with her neurotic girlfriend, explaining that everyone in the city basically wants to bang her and her girlfriend should be okay with that. Well, then!
Rosario Dawson plays the troubled sex worker who shows us how good she is at her job when she dances in lingerie. Well, that's one way to make the rent! You will definitely want to take these ladies out tonight when you see them in these hot scenes. Yes, that's a reference to a song in the musical!
Rocky Horror Picture Show
What's not to love about THE sexy musical Rocky Horror? This wild, campy musical is one of the most famous movie musicals of all time. It actually holds the record for the longest-running theatrical release of all time because it has never stopped playing in movie theaters ever since it was originally released.
This film gave us a look at the young Susan Sarandon playing the not-so-innocent Janet Weiss. Damnit, Janet, we love you when you show your breasts in the movie. Susan was joined by Nell Campbell and Patricia Quinn who played Columbia and Magenta, the aliens working with Dr. Frank-N-Furter to make sure that his mission is complete.
Oh, right, in case you didn't know the plot of Rocky Horror Brad and Janet are humans whose car breaks down outside of a mansion that is owned by the cross-dressing Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a "sweet transvestite from Transylvania", who unveils his newest creation: the perfect man.
The perfect man winds up sleeping with Janet which drives Frank into a tizzy. He becomes angry, jealous, and vengeful to his guests. In the end, we learn that Magenta and Frank's butler, Riff-Raff, were actually aliens along with Frank and they have decided to take over his mission because he let his sexual desires get in the way. So...yeah. In case you didn't know, that's the musical that gave us all "The Time Warp". You're welcome!
The First Nudie Musical
The plot of this funny musical feels a little bit like if The Producers wanted to make an X-rated musical instead of Springtime for Hitler. An old movie studio decides to shake things up by making the first-ever nude musical. Alexandra Morgan and Susan Stewart star and give off a lot of full-frontal scenes. Bruce Kimmel and Mark Haggard directed this 1976 musical comedy with songs that include "Orgasm" and "Dancing Dildos". All of these are sung by gorgeous naked babes!
You can also enjoy Jane Ralston singing and dancing with a baton and no clothes on in her hot nude scene. It's her audition for the musical where she hops around and sing-shouts a series of dirty words - she looks good doing it!
Oh! Calcutta!
And now for another weirdo cult classic. Oh! Calcutta! is an X-rated musical by director Jacques Levy. This musical comedy about sex, genitals, and everything in between.
The music and lyrics were put together by a variety of artists at the time including John Lennon, Sam Shephard, Leonard Melfi, Edna O'Brien, and Samuel Beckett to name a few. What a crew! This avant-garde musical debuted off-Broadway in 1969 and made waves for its content and constant nudity. People were flocking to see this naughty little show and it is not hard to see why.
The erotic revue is meant both to titillate and make us laugh at just how weird and funny sex really is. It does the job! In fact, Oh! Calcutta! was revived on Broadway in 2018 and it was an even bigger success than its initial run. People are still clamoring to see what the fuss is all about.
It's nice to know that as much as we evolve as a society and become more open about sex, we still find it so taboo. We are still just as turned on and entertained by this musical now than we all were in the 60s. I think that's a testament to something great here!
That being said, it is a goofy musical. Critics at the time were intrigued, but many of them called the humor "sophomoric". But I feel like that's to be expected when you hear about this musical. Songs are about everything under the sun from swingers to sex toys to orgasms.
The first act ends with a song called "Was it good for you?" which gets called back in Rent in the song "Contact" with the lyrics "was it bad for you? It was bad for me." Hey, full circle! In fact, almost all of these musicals have a bedroom number. Hair has the song "In Bed" praising all of the wonderful things you can do in bed (wink wink) and Rocky Horror has "Touch Me" which comes after the seduction of Brad and Janet by Frank. No wonder I like all of these movie musicals so much - they all sing about sex!
Back to Oh! Calcutta for a moment. There are so many hot naked babes in the filmed version of this musical, like Samantha Harper, Margo Sappington, Raina Barrett, and Patricia Hawkins.
Watch the totally nude opening number here:
