You would think trained actors would be able to have good sex on camera.
But a good sex scene is hard to film well, and when it doesn’t go well the end result can easily make stomachs churn. There are some films that just stick with you for all the wrong reasons, and these eight films take the cake for the most gut-wrenching and cringe-worthy sex scenes in cinema.
Check out the films below, and let us know in the comments or on Twitter @Popdust what films we missed that should have made the cut.
Antichrist
One of the most brutal art house horror films ever made, 2009’s Antichrist consists of some of the most disturbing sex scenes in cinema. The story revolves around He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a traumatized married couple who head to a cabin in the woods after She experiences debilitating depressive episodes following a family tragedy.
Once at the cabin, Gainsbourg’s character slowly becomes unhinged and sexually violent. Antichrist‘s graphic violence and combination of real and simulated sex scenes make for a bruising mental ride. In one of the film’s climactic scenes, Willem Dafoe’s testicles are crushed into an extremely graphic bloody pulp…and that’s not even the worst part of the scene, let alone the whole movie.
Gigli
“It’s turkey time! Gobble, gobble!” Gigli was so abhorrently terrible that it still serves as a shock that J Lo agreed to it. The film was an abysmal disappointment from its release. Shot on a $75 million budget, the film grossed a measly $7 million.
Critical chatter quickly placed it as one of the worst films of all time, and the box office bomb sent director Martin Brest fleeing into the shadows. As of 2020, Gigli still remains the last film he’s directed.
Jennifer Lopez, a lesbian assassin, finds herself unable to resist the hyper-masculine toxic musk of Ben Affleck, who plays a braggadocios Italian so-and-so. It features one of the most cringe sex scenes in cinema, and the overall tone of the project is just nausea-inducing.
“You know why I’m f***ing sad?” cries out Affleck at one point in the film. “Because I got this f***ing beautiful-sexy-gorgeous-heartthrob-o-rama-f***ing-smart-amazing-bombshell-seventeen-on-a-f***ing ten scale girl sleeping in my bed right next to me. And you know what? She’s a stone cold dyke…dyke-a-saurus rexi.”
Gigli strives to sympathize with the hyper-masculine ideology of Italian conservatives, a strange stance even in 2003.
Bad Teacher
While it’s actually meant to be ludicrous and hilarious, there is still something so painfully uncomfortable about watching two grown adults dry hump their jeans together, and Justin Timberlake’s ejaculate stain afterward still activates my gag reflex to this day. It’s definitely an image that we’d all like to unsee.
Splice
This 2009 science horror film is disturbing for many reasons and actually received a lot of critical praise, but the whole hybrid alien-human incest sex scene between Adrian Brody and a genetically mutated experiment takes the cake in terms of the weirdest sex scene in film.
The alien, Dren, who is basically Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley’s own daughter, does eventually get to turn into a man and kill Brody for essentially assaulting her, so, I guess, in that case, justice is served? Splice overall is just an unsettling piece of work.
300: Rise of an Empire
300‘s highly anticipated sequel quickly fizzled out like a day-old bottle of seltzer; and judging from the insanely weird sex scene between Artemisia and Themistocles, it’s easy to see why. There is something strangely humorous about a hyper testosterone-heavy sex scene like this one, which involves aggressive hair pulling and crashing around the room all in the name of pride.
Fifty Shades of Grey
Fifty Shades of Grey fails so gloriously and results in some strangely PG sexual exploits for a movie hyper-focused on unhealthy sex. On one hand, the writing is comically terrible, (“Because I’m fifty shades of f***ed up, Anastasia!”), but the film truly falters thanks to the severe lack of chemistry between leads, Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.
Take for example the “Biting Your Lip” scene above, in which the sex fades in and out like a poorly crafted video-game cutscene, with mild moans being heard and not much else. The film’s countless controversies and inaccurate, toxic depiction of BDSM aside, it’s all presented via a surprisingly vanilla execution considering the subject matter at hand.
Showgirls
Probably the most hilarious sex scene on this list is the pool scene in Showgirls. The film follows Nomi Malone as she arrives broke in Las Vegas with a dream of becoming one of the town’s top showgirls and eventually achieves that goal.
The film itself is fairly bland, but it turns out nothing is less sexy than watching Elizabeth Berkley wriggle around in the water like a fish gasping for air. It also doesn’t even seem like her partner (Kyle MacLachlan) is really into it. Regardless, the scene is quite memeable.
The Room
While its horrendous quality made it a cult classic (and the premise of 2017’s The Disaster Artist) The Room is best known for its horrendous sex scenes involving Tommy Wisseau’s member and Juliette Danielle’s naval; and while it’s not that graphic, the thought alone twists even the strongest stomachs into knots. Luckily, The Room in all its glory is all hilariously terrible and impossible to take seriously.
