In my almost year long adventure of posting movie reviews (and my lifetime adventure of watching movies) one thing I have been sure to note in the review was “sex/nudity”. Sometimes, I think about removing this category altogether because it seems like more and more movies I’m reviewing these days have neither. This has got me thinking as to whether or not this is a sign of the times.
When I was a youngster, I remember watching the Alien movies to see full frontal female nudity. I remember Michelle Pfieffer in her Catwoman suit in Batman Returns. It seems like some things never change in movies, specifically horror movies catering to teenage boys not only in a scary/gross out way but also in an “OMG BOOBIES!” way.
I tend to find that 99.9% of the time nudity in any given horror movie is irrelevant and could easily be worked around. A prime example of this is the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which despite being something where there should be allowed nudity there was not due to camera angles and what not. But that’s probably why Hitchcock is a master at what he does and so many other modern directors feel like if their plot is thin or their movie not so scary at least teenage boys might want to own a copy because “she has really big boobs”.
In the rare case when nudity is actually relevant to a plot and perhaps cannot be avoided, I don’t mind it being present in a movie. Someone will probably somehow tie this in to some sort of sick and twisted fetish or something, but I remember in one particular horror movie the stupid college aged kids in the woods decided that even though everyone was being murdered they should still get naked and have sex. During this scene, they naturally got killed themselves, which is what you get for stopping to fulfill your carnal desires when, you know, people around you are dying. There was some justice in that, even though some will make the claim that horror movies like Saw and Hostel project an image of violence and gore onto the sexual mind so much so that the two cannot live apart. To those people, I simply say it is just a movie, learn the difference between that and real life. (As an example in another scenario, seeing a movie where someone is raped does not turn one into a rapist, now does it? That image doesn’t make it so you can only be aroused when your other participant is not willing, right? Well, as long as you can separate the movie from reality, then yes, you’ll be okay)
Within any given horror movie, you never really know what to expect in terms of nudity. Recently I watched Seconds Apart, which has no real nudity and barely a sex scene, but yet still remains a fantastic film. On the other side of the coin, I also really enjoyed Piranha 3D which was just wrought with unabashed nudity which was 100% female. And that’s just the thing that you have to realize. What Eli Roth calls “the goods” in movies consists of nudity, yes, but primarily it is female nudity because it is set to cater to a male audience. Only in such rare instances as The Tripper do we see about an equal amount of male and female nudity, but that’s because they’re crazy hippies and they all get naked—male and female alike.
This just leads us to the development of the new movie Nudist Camp Zombie Massacre, which on name alone is sure to offend some people. With a name like that, though, my question is not whether or not there will be nudity (duh) but whether the male and female nudity will be equally dispersed like Warner Bros. and Disney characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But, again, much like Zack and Miri Make a Porno, here is a movie that you can guarantee will have nudity and would almost be disappointed if it didn’t. The title says it all, sure, but at least the title does tell you what to expect. And much like Zack and Miri had some laugh out loud moments despite the obvious nudity that you knew you would see, I’m sure Nudist Camp Zombie Massacre will have some cool special effects despite the “Sex/Nudity” being defined in my hypothetical review as “Of course, duh!”
So what I’ve learned while watching movies and for some reason discussing in my reviews whether or not they’re heavy on the sex/nudity is simply this. Not having nudity in a movie doesn’t automatically make it a bad movie, even in the horror movie genre. A good example of this is the original My Bloody Valentine, which in my opinion was millions of times better than the remake. At the same time, having nudity in your movie, even in a horror movie doesn’t automatically make your movie bad either. The nudity doesn’t even have to be relative to the plot and your movie can still be good. I guess what it comes down to is that nudity just doesn’t really matter when deciding whether a movie is good or not because let’s face it, Showgirls was not a good movie and that fact has nothing to do with the all of the nudity in it.
The only thing that I’m really left wondering now is how much of effect nudity in movies has on adolescent boys the way it did me when I was that age. In my day (and I was one of the last for sure) we didn’t have the internet at our disposal on our cell phones and school ordered laptops where we could type something into Google and inadvertently get an image result of someone doing something we can’t talk about in mixed company. I shudder to think what would happen if you put “nudity” or “porn” or “boobs” (I could go on, but I won’t) into a search engine. When something like this is so readily available, I wonder if seeing the R rated nudity in movies these days even matters anymore.
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