Ten of the Most Disturbing Sex Scenes

Here are ten of the most disturbing sex scenes ever.
For mature audiences......

Warning: In the case of sexual
epilepsy, your implants can
be used as flotation devices.


With the release of the hotly-anticipated Nymphomaniac from Hitler-sympathizer Lars Von Trier (yes, yes, we know he was supposedly joking, ha-ha, you’re frigging hilarious), a film that features numerous scenes of explicit (and real) sexual encounters that are not in the least bit erotic, that got all of us here at Movie Sleuth thinking: Obviously not every sex scene in a film is going to be arousing; in fact, some are downright hilarious and awkward.

But then there are those sex scenes that achieve some kind of anti-nirvana. The kind of movie sex that makes you crave a shower and some sort of super-cleanser to fumigate the images from your eye sockets. Quite frankly, there are too many to list, so we had to set some simple ground rules.

First, it cannot be a rape scene; it has to be an actual sex scene. Why? Because honestly, the rape is the disturbing act; not the content itself. Movie rape is an entirely different kind of animal, so films like The Accused and I Spit on Your Grave are out the window. And for the more screwed up in the head who were looking to get their rocks off to the reminiscence of “newborn porn,” you’ll find none of that here, either.

Constipation is no laughing matter.
Second, despite the many men out there claiming to have an ongoing love affair with Miss Michigan, masturbation does not count as sex. Sorry, but you’re still a virgin.

Antichrist—This is one of those films that you’re content to forget on the grounds that its sex scenes are so blood-blowingly anti-erotic that your mind immediately searches for something else to think about when you leave the theater. From the hardcore black and white penetration shots juxtaposed with negligent infanticide, to the genital mutilation showed in more detail than you can shake a pair of rusty scissors at, all the way over to the hell-spawned imagery of hands reaching out from the ground to clutch at the nude and thrusting ass of Willem Dafoe, and round it out with a blood-filled money shot on Charlotte Gainsbourg’s chest… there you have Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. Never mind that it’s a powerful and polarizing masterpiece; its visual mastery only makes the carnage all the more difficult to ingest without a gag reflex. If you can successfully masturbate to this, your next step should be to call someone with a license to dish out pills.

Bad Boy Bubby— There’s just something about seeing an Oedipal complex coming to life on screen that makes me go a big rubbery one. Rolf de Heer’s bipolar dark comedy spends an unrelenting 30 minutes establishing the life of Bubby as the sex toy pawn of his psychotic mother. Imagine Carrie White’s mom, plus a hundred pounds, and with nude scenes of such disgustingly explicit incest, any man who watches it will be lucky if he achieves an erection within the next calendar year. After Kathy Bates scarred our eye sockets with her turn in About Schmidt, men finally had something other than thinking of baseball to prolong their pathetic sex lives. Now, with this film, I believe we’ve found the cure for libido all together. I’m not sure if that’s what de Heer’s goal was, but there it is.

"I just love Toto! They're my favorite band!"
Crash (1997)— On three different occasions, David Cronenberg has managed to churn out solid adaptations of novels that the studio system had deemed “unfilmmable.” One of these was his terrifically controversial, and just plain terrific, adaptation of Crash. No, not that one. This one much more sex and far less racism. It’s a film that is erotic in name only, and gives us characters who have somehow drawn a fetishistic connection between sex and car crashes, to the point where Holly Hunter’s broken and mangled leg becomes a source of throbbing arousal for James Spader. Then again, this is James Spader we’re talking about. To quote Brad Jones, “The man could have sexual chemistry with a ferret.” But what drives this film at its core is the nature of perversion, and that’s what makes it so intriguing: Cronenberg never shies away from showing us how warped his characters’ minds are, from showing Spader make sweet passionate love to a mangled limb, to Deborah Kara Unger taking it spread eagle after being thrown from a rolled vehicle. You know, if you had cut-rate insurance, you could be paying for those penicillin injections yourself.

Endless Love (1981)— There are a lot of weirdo exhibitionists out there who get off on the idea of being watched while they’re plowing their significant other like Michigan’s winter-scorned highways, but I’m pretty sure that Mom is not on the top of the audience VIP list. Any love scene between the two leads in this movie already feels contrived and ridiculous, but when Shirley Knight watched Martin Hewitt chisel away Brooke Shields’ hymen like it was his job, it suddenly became peel-the-skin-off-your-face gross. This feeling was only enhanced later with the mother’s confession that she went and boned her husband while imagining it was her daughter’s lover. Suddenly it makes sense why every teenage girl wants a lock on her door.

"My life is nothing but a
series of ass to ass comments.
Noah. Ass to ass.
Hulk. Ass to ass.
What?!!"
Requiem for a Dream— Only a really skilled director—or a really vindictive sadist—could make the sight of Jennifer Connelly standing bottomless in front of a mirror something sad to behold. For anyone who has seen this film, it’s an experience like none other, and one of the most depressing masterpieces of the last twenty years. Not the least disturbing image of which again involves the lovely Connelly, devolved into nothing more than a crack whore, performing sexual favors for money, and in some cases, putting on a show for a room full of Patrick Bateman’s best friends when she isn’t giving head to Goliath. Darren Aronofsky’s trademark editing and juxtaposition in the scene only make it more difficult to watch. “Ass to ass” may now be an internet meme thrown out there for laughs, but make no mistake: In context, it’s a segue into one of the most anti-erotic moments in film history.

A Serbian Film— I already told you there would be no “newborn porn,” so why did you smile when you saw this vomitarium on the list? You sick bastages. But I’m sure you’re all pictures of mental health compared to the imaginations that wrought this hell-spawned masterpiece of filth onto the planet. If there is a sensibility left to be offended once you’ve watched this film, you might as well take it out into the desert yourself, beat it with a metal bat, and lay it broken and bleeding next to Joe Pesci. Because if you don’t, the makers of A Serbian Film will eventually come and find it anyway. Better that it die by your hands. Just like the blonde porn actress who suffers the ultimate donkey punch at the hands of our doped-up protagonist. Not since Sharon Stone laid waste to her first victim during the opening credits of Basic Instinct has a orgasm been cut so violently short. Don’t lose your head over it.

Sleeping Dogs Lie—  Sometimes it’s the things we don’t see that turn our stomachs the most. Like Hitchcock always said, it’s more effective to know the bomb is under the table and not have it go off. When you’re confronting a subject like the consequences of committing bestiality—“It’s called ‘interspecies erotica,’ fuck-o!”—I suppose less is more. Why show us the act of a woman deciding it would be a good idea to slob on some pup-peroni when you can just show us the image of her hocking a big doggy money shot loogie into the bathroom sink? Bobcat Goldthwaite has always been the guy with the crazy voice in Police Academy. Now he’s the guy who directed a film that’s on this list of the most disturbing sex scenes, even though it actually doesn’t have a sex scene in it. I think that deserves some kind of award.

"If you don't change my litter box
soon, I'm gonna eat
your face......before I
have sex with my mom again."
Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers— When it comes to adapting King’s work for the small screen, Mick Garris has made what is arguably the best television miniseries of all time—I don’t think there’s anyone out there who will deny the awesomeness of The Stand. But when these two put their heads together for a theatrical release in the early 90s… the standard reaction walking out of this turd burglar was a resounding “WTF?” Especially because it contained multiple scenes of mother-son incest between Brian Krause and Alice Krige. That’s right, the Borg Queen… and arguably one of the sexiest creepy chicks to ever grace the screen with copious amounts of nudity (see also Ghost Story). Unfortunately, even her innate ability to play crazy-sultry to perfection couldn’t save this flick from collapsing under the weight of the snot-on-skin shivers that incest themes naturally bring out in an audience, let alone when there’s an incest montage. Yes, you read that correctly: A montage of incest. From the guy who wrote The Shawshank Redemption.

Teeth— Do I even have to talk about this one? Mitchell Lichtenstein wrote and directed a film in which having sex with Jess Weixler would be the equivalent of nude-sprinting pelvis-first toward one of the Langoliers. Hack filmmakers of the 50s tried endlessly to make mundane creatures scary by giving them teeth; this is one occasion where that actually works.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man— Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s biological horror extravaganza is one of the craziest cinematic curiosities of the last thirty years. It takes all of the elements most American audiences would identify as “Cronenbergian”, amplifies them with off-the-wall Hentai-style sensibilities, and combines them with a dash of (homo)sexual repression. This culminates in the third act when Tomorowo Taguchi’s character, only known as “Man” (Lars Von Trier watch this before he made Antichrist?), whose body has become a cybernetic playground of scrap metal porn, suddenly sprouts a power drill from where his little Ken Jeung used to be. And what does his girlfriend do? She decides to feel the power between her legs and willfully—and fatally—impales herself on it. In a film full of dark, twisted, and uniquely psychedelic imagery, this is one drill kill you’re unlikely to forget.

"Guess who!!!"
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me— David Lynch seems to take an almost giddy approach to his audience sadism. From the more mainstream to the viciously cerebral, his films never fail to challenge our sensibilities or our perception of reality. Taking his still wildly popular series to the big screen, Lynch was able to expand the warped world he had created for television audiences into R-rated territory, and in doing so has crafted one of the most disturbing and surreal repressed memory flashbacks I’ve ever seen. When a demonic, white-haired, hobolicious lothario climbs in through Sheryl Lee’s window at night to ravage her frothing loins, the salacious lust she feels for this dream figure turns to horror as she is suddenly confronted with the face of her father. It’s terrifying and sad all in one stroke, and stroking is one thing you will not be doing when this scene reaches its climax. Pun intended and well meant.

StumbleUpon Reddit Pinterest Facebook Twitter Addthis

- Blake O. Kleiner