9 Movies With Way Too Much Gratuitous Nudity

Ever since humanity learned to doodle on the walls of the caves it called home, we have been treated to depictions of sex and the human body in art. It is hardwired into our DNA to enjoy the sexual act, and it's nearly impossible to look away when we see it presented on screen.

Filmmakers who portray sex and nudity in their pictures walk a fine line: if you can justify the inclusion of bare skin, like the recent Palme d'Or winner Blue Is The Warmest Colour, a feature that chronicles the love affair between an underage student and her female teacher in graphic detail, then you have earned respectability while also appealing to the baser desires of moviegoers; however, if you fail to justify excessive amounts of nudity and sex in your feature, then you have crossed the line from being an artist to a purveyor of smut, like Zalman King.

For your consideration, I present a list of 9 films that crossed the line from art to smut and never looked back, movies that threw as much T & A at the screen as possible for the sake of it: 9 movies with way too much gratuitous sex and nudity.

9. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

A hilarious parody of musical biopics, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story skewered the tendency for biographical films about musicians to ignore the music and instead wallow in the excesses of the Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle. The film satirises the gratuitous nudity and sex this trope entails by showing the titular rock star, Dewey Cox, engaging in all manners of sexual excess, including orgies and wife swapping.

While it failed to recoup its budget at the box office, Walk Hard won over critics and strong word of mouth led to a cult following and significant DVD sales. The theatrical release contained more than its fair share of nudity, but the unrated version released on DVD, entitled The Unbearably Long Self-Indulgent Director's Cut, doubled down on the gratuitous nudity and sex, extending a scene of Dewey's band waking up after an orgy in a crowded room of naked people, depicting Dewey reveling in even more coitus and showing Dewey picking up one of the male members of his band.

The Unbearably Long Self-Indulgent Director's Cut crosses the line from showing abundant nudity to satirise the cliché of rock star excess in biopics to showing nudity for the sake of nudity and so finds itself as the first entry on our list.

8. What?

Roman Polanski's little-seen 1973 improvised comedy What? contains little else besides gratuitous sex and nudity. The film chronicles the Alice in Wonderland-like journey of a young American girl, Nancy, who takes shelter in an Italian villa after escaping from a would-be rapist.

The inhabitants of the villa are wacky, sex-crazed characters who menace and taunt Nancy during her stay. Nancy spends the majority of the feature topless, or, in various states of undress. Among the many sexual mishaps she must endure, one of the most galling occurs when she awakes to find a strange man performing cunnilingus on her in her sleep, at which point he angrily demands what she thinks she's doing in the villa.

This odd, and extremely sexist film, will literally cause you to say "What?" during most of the run time. Polanski's only apparent motivation in making this slapdash feature was to have an excuse to film star Sydne Rome naked.

What? remains an aberration in Polanski's filmography, wedged in-between his adaptation of Macbeth and his masterpiece Chinatown, and is of interest only to Polanski completists or film buffs interested in abundant nudity.

7. The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson confused audiences and critics alike with his follow-up to the Academy Award nominated There Will Be Blood, 2012's The Master.

The story concerns the relationship between Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a character modeled after Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and his disciple, a degenerate drunk Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix); the duo have a tumultuous relationship, with Dodd attempting to cure Freddie of his chronic drinking and violent outbursts via his self-help system known as "The Cause", but ultimately failing to save Freddie from himself.

The Master can be interpreted as a symbolic work, with Dodd representing the rational super-ego to Freddie's bestial Id. Freddie is an untamable force driven by his basest desires, and Anderson does not shy away from showing Freddie acting on his impulses, from making love to a sand sculpture of a woman, to numerous sexual liaisons, to one particularly bizarre scene that earns The Master a spot on our list.

During a party one of Dodd's disciples throws for him, Dodd leads the partygoers in a sing-along while Freddie watches from the sidelines; normally this wouldn't be anything to write home about except that Freddie imagines all the female partygoers with their clothes off, including Dodd's pregnant wife, played by Amy Adams.

While it could be argued that this scene is justified thematically because it illustrates Freddie's feral nature and Dodd's lecherous tendencies, it goes on for way, way too long, playing out in real time along with the music. Even though I consider The Master a masterpiece, I have to admit this scene crosses the line from art to exploitation.

6. Barbarella

1968's Barbarella opens with a famous scene of a naked Jane Fonda, who plays the titular heroine, floating through space while the credits play and instantly earns a spot on our list of films with gratuitous nudity before the ribald narrative even begins.

Produced by B-movie icon Dino De Laurentiis, Barbarella adapts a bawdy French comic strip to the big screen, bringing with it all of the all the over the top smuttiness and innuendo of the source material. In the film, the sexually vivacious Barbarella must travel to into uncharted space to apprehend the nefarious Duran Duran (the namesake of the 80's pop group), who has his hands on a weapon that could spread untold destruction throughout the galaxy. On her quest, Barbarella meets many different alien creatures, most of whom she has sex with, before being captured by Duran Duran and placed in the Excessive Machine, a device that kills those imprisoned within it via excessive sexual ecstasy.

The courageous Barbarella's insatiable sexual appetites prove too much for the Excessive Machine, which short-circuits when Barbarella reaches climax. Barbarella's plot has little else on its mind than sex, nudity and sexual innuendo. While the filmmakers intended us to take Barbarella's exploits as farce, that doesn't pardon the film's gratuitous sex and nudity, which lands it at number 6 on our list.

5. Piranha 3D

In 2010, director Alexandre Aja decided to cash in on the 3D boom that followed in the wake of Avatar with his revamping of the Joe Dante-directed 1978 cult classic Piranha. Aja utilized 3D to deliver horror fans the pulpy thrills they expect from the genre, including excessive nudity and sex scenes rendered in all 3 dimensions. One particularly memorable scene occurs when two of the female characters engage in an extended underwater lovemaking session that lasts for minutes onscreen; this scene has no bearing on the plot, or, the development of the characters as individuals and is therefore completely gratuitous.

Despite Piranha 3D's stomach-churning gore and superfluous nudity, critics took the film's excesses as a tongue-in-cheek homage to the horror genre and gave the feature a favourable 73% rating on the review aggregator website Rottentomatoes.com. Audiences also responded kindly to Piranha 3D's over the top spectacle, making it a hit to the tune of $83 million dollars at the world-wide box office.

A sequel, Piranha 3DD followed in 2012, retaining the excessive nudity but none of the wit or winking homage. Even though critics decided to look the other way, there's no denying that Piranha 3D takes its homage to pornographic extremes and loses sight of the satire in many instances.

4. Heavy Metal

In 1981, Ivan Reitman helped bring an animated version of the comic book Heavy Metal, known for its abundant nudity and gore, to the big screen. The movie consists of a series of fantasy and science fiction vignettes linked together by the presence of a mystical green orb known as the Loc-Nar.

The Canadian production tapped notable Canadian comedies from the sketch comedy series SCTV to help voice the feature, including Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy, and John Candy. The film version of Heavy Metal received largely dismissive reviews on its release but enjoyed a healthy box office.

Despite the cool critical reception, audiences kept coming back to see the very adult cartoon and Heavy Metal developed a cult following at midnight screenings akin to the cult around The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Heavy Metal's continued popularity can be attributed to its willingness to throw as much animated T & A at the screen as possible.

Each vignette finds ample opportunity for its animated female characters (all of whose proportions defy human physiology as we know it) to disrobe, from a mystical female warrior who must swim nude in a purifying pool before she goes into battle, to a secretary abducted from the White House and seduced by an alien robot, to a nymphomaniac queen who rules tyrannically over an alien planet.

Heavy Metal is juvenile male fantasy distilled into its purest form; no vignette represents this more so than "Den", the tale of a nerdy teen transported by the Loc-Nar to a planet called Neverwhere where the Loc-Nar then transforms him into a well hung bodybuilder who finds himself a hit with ladies. Heavy Metal's no holds barred approach to nudity and violence won it an enduring audience and a spot on our list.

3. Flesh Gordon

Directors Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm grew up watching Universal Pictures' Flash Gordon serials and wanted to pay tribute to the swashbuckling tales that thrilled them in their youth by creating a homage to the science fiction epic. They did so in the most adult way imaginable. The homage/spoof of Flash Gordon, Flesh Gordon, recreated the lo-fi FX of the Flash Gordon serials in loving detail, but added a few extra helpings of nudity and sex.

Flesh Gordon's plot hews fairly close to Flash Gordon's and concerns the heroic Flesh's quest to save the Earth from the evil Emperor Wang's "Sex Ray", a device that has turned everyone on earth into nymphomaniacs. Many of the artists that helped create Flesh Gordon would move on to greater things, including Greg Jein, the man responsible for the miniatures in Flesh Gordon, who would go on to do special effects work for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Close Encounters of The Third Kind, and also make-up artist Rick Baker, who would eventually receive an Academy Award for his work on the classic horror flick An American Werewolf in London. Even actor Craig T. Nelson makes an un-credited voice appearance as The Great God Porno.

Although clearly-talented people worked hard on Flesh Gordon to make it a loving homage to a serial that had a huge impact on their youth, it doesn't change the fact that Flesh Gordon is nothing more than a glorified albeit hilarious skin-flick, which is probably why it had to be re-edited to receive an R-rating after the MPAA slapped its first cut with an X-rating.

2. Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

Audiences loved the antics of stoner duo Harold and Kumar in their first feature film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, so the pair decided to re-team for a cash-in sequel, 2008's Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The sequel's bold title promised to redress the horrific human rights violations occurring at the Guantanamo Bay via the comedy stylings of two chronically stoned slackers.

Instead, Harold and Kumar spend about five minutes of screen time trapped in the prison before they promptly escape, addressing none of the thorny social and moral issues around the prison and its detainees. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay's exploitative elements go beyond its attention-grabbing title. One scene in particular lands the comedy firmly at number 2 on our list.

After escaping from their extremely brief captivity in Guantanamo Bay, Harold and Kumar find their way to Miami, where they crash their friend Raza's party. It turns out that Raza has come up with his answer to topless parties: bottomless parties.

In a particular egregious display of gratuitous nudity, the camera travels through the party as the pair and Raza discuss key plot points, lingering over the naked crotches of the female partygoers. For promising social commentary but delivering little more than stoner hijinks and gratuitous nudity, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay earns runner-up on our list.

1. Striptease

Cinephiles often cite the 1995 Paul Verhoeven-directed debacle Showgirls as a high water mark for terrible films whose primary appeal lies in the outrageous amounts of gratuitous nudity contained within them, but the very next year saw the release of another misbegotten picture that gives Showgirls a run for its money in the race for number one in camp stupidity and excessive skin-bearing: 1996's Golden Raspberry Worst Picture winner, Striptease. Unlike Showgirls, a film that some have gone on to defend as a satire of the American dream, nobody seems to remember or particularly care about Striptease and with good reason: not only is it stupid, it's also boring.

Prerelease, Striptease earned notoriety because star Demi Moore underwent breast augmentation surgery before shooting started, which tells you that the film had little else but nudity going for it. The plot concerns Erin Grant's (Moore) struggle to retain custody of her daughter while making a living as a pole dancer. Critics found Moore's character too dramatic for the material, especially given that the film's supporting characters come across as cartoonish. Even worse, many critics complained that the nakedness, the main selling point of the film and the reason for it existing, failed to provide enough titillation.

Striptease earns our top spot because, aside from stripping being its main selling point, the feature failed to deliver the goods in a way that appealed to audiences, which renders the excessive nudity even more gratuitous. This failure of a film can't even muster a cult following, like Showgirls, and seems doomed to obscurity. Any other famous examples we missed? Keeping in mind I left out Showgirls intentionally because it shows up on these lists too often. Let us know in the comments.