While there are many things that should never be seen by sensitive eyes – sea cows, croc shoes, white people with dreadlocks – when it comes to the subject of movie nudity, beauty is almost always in the camera eye of the beholder. This was a tricky list to compile. Conventional wisdom offers up the obvious and tired traps: she’s fat, he’s old, that’s not anatomically sound – all cheap shots likely to land you in a hot tub full of trouble. Sure, few were thrilled to see Kathy Bates lower her largesse into the spa in About Schmidt or a neatly tucked-up Buffalo Bill gyrating in The Silence Of The Lambs, but the surprise of each squeamish moment worked perfectly in the context of the film. The criteria more or less came down to two things, then: either the scene should be deliberately and fantastically repugnant or, as in most of the cases here, draw unintentional laughter on account of the sheer misplaced vanity of the participants. Oh, and bad sex scenes didn’t count; we’ve covered that before. So before you start crying foul remember that it’s inevitably a matter of personal taste (hey, Halle Berry would have been number one for Swordfish if I had my way). And if you think this is a fun job, try typing “Martin Lawrence naked” into Google and see what kind of unpleasantness that leads you to. Happy nightmares.
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Ken Davitian and Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat
2006
This one was always going to be a tough call. How, you wonder, could one of the funniest scenes in any film be considered for the top spot on any “worst” list? The answer is easy: Borat’s tour de force of flab, fur and flaccid fondling triumphs precisely because it is so appalling – one moment we’re watching a quaint, socially enlightening little ethnic documentary, the next we’re being assailed by the sight of a six-million pound mound teabagging our hero before streaking like fat out of Hell through a horrified hotel lobby. And, unlike many of the other shameful exhibitionists on this list, in this instance we’re laughing with, and not at, them.
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Demi Moore, Striptease
1996
What better way to cushion your comical descent to the floor of a strip-bar stage than with a pair of suspiciously symmetrical protrusions? Yep, Demi’s hemispheres get the money shot nobody was waiting for in this insipid vanity project, where the future Mrs Kutcher writhed and moaned while creeps and Burt Reynolds leered at her silicon valley. At least she’d been more modest – if no less gross – in her naked-and-knocked up Vanity Fair cover shoot.
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Michael Douglas, Basic Instinct
1992
Sharon Stone’s Southern exposure is hardly the most alarming moment in Paul Verhoeven’s sleazy thriller: that dishonour belongs to Michael Douglas. No-one’s begrudging an aging man’s prerogative to display his wares for the paying audience – but when gravity ceases to be a friend, it’s time to pull those trousers back up. There was a period when Douglas seemed to be exposing his Earth-bound posterior so often that the surest way to green-light a project was to get his ass in talks to be attached. Then again, he was a confessed sex addict.
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Kate Winslet, Titanic
1997
Pass the sea-sickness bag: As though the whole “King Of The World” sunset scene wasn’t cheeseball enough, James Cameron’s soggy melodrama gets all soft-focus erotica on its unsuspecting family audience, going topless with sepia-tone candlelight and a cooing new age score. Cameron’s lens caresses Winslet’s heaving bosom so tastefully it makes you wish Russ Meyer had stowed away on the doomed vessel instead, while the knowledge that the director himself – and not panting, lip-licking Leo – is actually the one sketching the community-art-class nude portrait makes it all extra grisly to endure.
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Harvey Keitel, The Piano
1993
We get it, Jane Campion. Exploring full-frontal male nudity is a fearless artistic endeavour in an age of shallow, female-objectifying titillation. You are an Artist. And yeah, we really enjoyed seeing a butt-naked Harvey Keitel covered in Maori tattoos while he engages Holly Hunter in a sensitive scene of “sexual awakening”. So bold.
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Nicole Kidman, Birth
2004
For those of you who think seeing Stepford thesp Nicole bereft of attire is an appealing prospect (and clearly you haven’t seen Eyes Wide Shut), consider the Deeply Serious Actress taking a bath with a 10-year-old boy. Oh wait, it’s all in the name of craft: the kid’s actually her dead husband reincarnate. “What are you doing?” asks Nicole as the little guy strips off to take a splash with her. “I’m looking at my wife,” he replies. We’re looking for the exit.
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Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell, Miami Vice
2006
Colin Farrell naked: worrying. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx naked in the space of minutes: now that’s just terrifying. Sure, their bodies are buffed and taut, but it’s the way Michael Mann edits their respective scenes together that generates the real revulsion – the oh-so angsty detectives shed their skins and zero in on their girls to the laughable sound of gruelling man-rock, at which point the film officially surpasses Psycho for the Scariest Shower Scene Ever.
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Lia Beldam and Billie Gibson, The Shinning
1980
Here’s the scene that should be prescribed viewing for teenage boys and mens mag readers whose pause button is worn out from too many T&A marathons. Svelte young Lia Beldam emerges nude from the bathtub in The Overlook’s room 217, much to the lascivious delight of caretaker Jack Nicholson – only to fiendishly turn into the cackling, decomposing old corpse of Billie Gibson. Jack’s lucky this kind of thing doesn’t happen in his real life of chasing young tail.
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Lin Shaye, There's Something About Mary
1998
Academics would have a field day discussing cinema’s “subjective gaze” after seeing Matt Dillon’s peeping Tom peer through the binoculars at his neighbour. We’ll put it in more succinct terms: “Eeeew!” Proof that tanning is treacherous, the object of Dillon’s gaze turns out to be not a young fox but a leathery old bag with a chest like a raccoon’s scrotum – gamely played by Lin Shaye in what we sure as Hell hope are some creative prosthetics. Pass us the SPF1000+.
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Female Duck, Howard The Duck
1986
Movies of the ’80s were notorious for nude flashes that bore absolutely no relation to the plot – you know, the hero busts through a wall in pursuit of a villain and conveniently interrupts a disrobing double-D – but even by those lenient standards this scene is inexplicable. Less than five minutes into this infamous Lucasfilm trainwreck, Howard is blasted through a wall and sails over the head of a bathing female duck – complete with perky white featherless breasts. Ducks endowed with human parts? At least it explains the interspecial romance that follows.
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