The halcyon days of sex in cinema

Shannon...the queen of 90s sex cinema. All bow down.

Man, Mr. Skin ain’t got nathan on the kid.

I was in the sex-and-nudity movie clips game far before launched his website. The difference between him and me is that now he’s making a pretty robust living doing it on his website and I’m stuck in admiration and frustration that I didn’t come up with the idea first.

As with many hormonally insane young teenagers, I couldn’t easily get my mitts on hardcore porn, so I defaulted to cable television. Good thing I grew up in the 1990s Red Shoe Diaries era, when skin flicks and softcore premium TV shows reigned supreme. Thanks to a highly liberal father who didn’t care if I was watching loose titties so long as I wasn’t out doing dirt in the streets, my VCR was always programmed to record age-inappropriate material, like episodes of HBOs Real Sex, Luke’s Peep Show on Pay-Per-View, and movies like Showgirls where my childhood innocence was truly put to the test.

But I will always have a special place in my heart for the 1990s B-grade cinema that went out of its way to show as many long legs, taut tummies and ridiculously long, fake hair (and even faker boobs) in (and out of) lycra. These were the movies in which some 21-year-old first-year film school student probably hammered out scripts for a few hundred bucks a pop so there could be SOME dialogue between the naked shower montages.

Instead of searching for incrementally creative ways to tape all this filth-flarn-filth over my parents’ movies and TV shows, I undertook an amateur video editing operation called simply “The Tape:” I cut and spliced all of my favorite sex scenes and skin-revealing moments from everything ranging to Skinemax movies to random episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 (yes, Donna was that deal…don’t hate).

When you think about it, some of this stuff is better to watch at times than porn: Even though the action is simulated, a lot is left to the imagination...which can at times be a bit sexier than seeing that gyno closeup.

The Tape made it somewhere close to the four-hour mark before the project came to an end (read: I grew up). But here are five of my favorite movies that helped define that glorious project:




Body of Evidence (1993) – Damn what any of y’all have to say about it, but I had a massive crush on Madonna’s pasty behind in the 1990s. Essentially a ripoff of Basic Instinct, she plays a woman on trial for murder who ends up seducing her lawyer (a post-Mississippi Burning, pre-Inside Man, still fugly Willem Dafoe), who’s having trouble with the morality of it all. Made during Madonna's more sexually liberated (than usual) period, perhaps this movie is the most exhibitionistic thing she did. I mean, she goes apeshit in this bad boy. As with many of the movies of its ilk – and most on this list – you’re best off grabbing the unrated version for the extended scenes.

Favorite Scene: She masturbates in front of Dirty Dafoe before he ties her to the coffee table and takes her forcefully from behind. And Madonna is Madonna, so of course she enjoys it.




Poison Ivy 2: Lily (1999) – If you’re anywhere near my age and didn’t have a major crush on Alyssa Milano at some point in your life, you’re either gay or a castrati. She did a number of films during this time period of her early 20s where she worked very goddamn hard to break away from that squeaky-clean “Who’s The Boss” image, nipples-first. In a movie series that features the penis-numbingly overrated Drew Barrymore (who used body doubles) and that one chick from My Name Is Earl, Alyssa came right in and showed why she's the boss. (*crickets chirping*)

Favorite Scene: Milano gets seduced in a recliner by her much-older schoolteacher who looks like one of the Middle Eastern bad guys from True Lies.





Sex and the Single Alien (1993) – This film has always troubled me: for some reason, the scenes from it were erased from one of the original cuts of The Tape, and now I can’t find the film anywhere for the life of me. A touching story about a guy who is suddenly adorned by aliens with the power to make women orgasm just by looking at them, there is very little actual sex in this movie, but the tons of gorgeous wimins writhing and moaning to “climax” appeal to my female masturbation fetish. It’s not on video, it’s not on DVD and I haven’t seen it on television since I went through puberty. If anyone can hunt this bad boy down for me, and I have two dollars to my name, I’ll give you one.

Favorite Scene: Dude uses his talent on a woman in the backseat of a convertible broken down in the middle of nowhere. Seriously folks…find me this movie!




Bound (1996) – Gina Gershon, even in her forties, is one of the sexiest women breathing. Jennifer Tilly is also sweat-inducing, despite a voice that makes you wanna commit hari-kiri. Put them together in a lesbian-infidelity mob thriller and greatness is destined. Gina played the masculine half of the coupling, but her sheer gorgeousness shined through the baggy pants and no makeup. Unlike many of the movies on The Tape, this one is actually worth watching all the way through, if for no other reason than an always-exciting Joey Pants sighting.

Favorite Scene: There’s really only one clip in this movie that matters: their one and only lesbian love scene, in which Gina’s toes curl and make the mattress cover come off. It’s not very long, but it’s entirely impactful. Again, cop the unrated version.


Illegal in Blue (1995) – The ultimate B-Movie sex fest, and my personal favorite. A pre-Clueless-fame Stacey Dash and the peckerhead from Son In Law spend an entire movie frolicking around in the bedroom in some of the most extended sex scenes I’ve ever seen in mainstream cinema. The plot is definitely derivative of Basic Instinct and so many sex-kitten-with-a-lethal-secret movies like it, but the reason it works is because a) Stacey Dash was then, and still is, one of the most beautiful women in the world; and b) She really did look vicious in blue lingerie. This is another one that I really, truly wish someone would release on DVD. I mean, this film has a cult following from just about every pervert I know. Seriously. Can the mofuckas in charge of DVDs please get it in gear?!?!?

Favorite Scene: So many I cant even decide. The movie was like 45 minutes of fucking and 30 minutes of “plot.” If you are fortunate enough to come across this somewhere and it’s the R-rated version and not Unrated, please don’t bother. Keep looking. And then send me a copy.