Best Porn Films Of All Time

Best Porn Films Of All Time
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From behind-the-scenes dramas to shocking big-budget productions, these are the kind of films that combine great sex with even greater stories.
Go ahead and be honest: You landed here for a reason. Pornography is a universal interest and a booming business, something that pretty much everyone on the planet has some sort of experience with. It's no shock, then, that the subject has seen itself on the big (and small ) screen over and over again. Sometimes movies about porn can be as sensuous and titillating as the real thing—especially since a handful of them have featured A-list actors willing to bravely bare all in front of the camera. Movies about porn run the gamut from dark and gritty dramas, hijinks-heavy comedies , and documentaries about the entertainers themselves. Whatever your desire, here are a bunch of porn movies that perfectly sync great sex with great stories.
It should comes as no surprise that a career in adult entertainment comes to an end eventually. But this documentary, featuring former porn performers now out of the game, offers a compelling look at what life after porn is really like.
This sequel (!) follows even more porn stars, who reveal where their post-porn lives have taken them.
Wow, another one (!!). Here’s another entry into the After Porn Ends trilogy in which former performers give an inside look at their lives once the cameras stop rolling.
Nothing brings a small town together quite like a challenge. Jeff Bridges stars as a lovable loser who enlists his neighbors to make a porno.
Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough film is this ensemble-driven epic, starring Mark Wahlberg as a well-endowed young man who is seduced by the glamour and rush of the porn industry that peaked in late '70s California.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed, and starred in this film about a good-hearted New Jersey meathead struggling with intimacy thanks to an overpowering porn addiction.
Starring Penny Dreadful ’s Eva Green, The Dreamers is about an American tourist who visits France and has a sexual experience with a pair of siblings. How very French.
Carla Gugino stars in this comedy about a retired porn star whose straight life is in chaos—so she takes a job as a sex-ed teacher at a local high school.
A 1974 French drama based on the best-selling erotic novel of the same name, Emmanuelle ’s success spurned nine sequels including Emmanuelle in Space. The softcore classic explores a woman who cheats on her husband for the first time as she plans on visiting him overseas. Sounds like the perfect time!
An NYU film school graduate gets an internship at a pornographic studio called Grind Productions after failing to strike it big in Hollywood. Hoping to turn her luck around, she directs her own movies at night and employs the porn actresses to try out some “real” acting.
A parody of the cult science-fiction film Flash Gordon , the aptly named Flesh Gordon proved that X-rated parodies could do everything the original could even on a much-smaller budget… and with sex.
What happens when a former porn star moves in next door? You try to get her to go to prom with you.
Paul Schrader directs this dark and bleak crime thriller about a man (George C. Scott) whose all-American and conservative world is shattered when he discovers that his missing daughter has turned up in a dirty movie.
Rashida Jones produced this Netflix original documentary that explores young women who work in the porn industry and the working conditions that make their jobs...unique.
Following the success of Hot Girls Wanted , Netflix launched this six-part docu-series that gives a more expansive view of how technology has changed the contemporary porn industry.
Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard star as two straight buds who accept the ultimate dare: to film—and star in—an amateur porno together.
An X-rated film that follows a silent picture director that refuses to move on to “talkies,” Inserts stars Richard Dreyfuss and premiered in the same year as Jaws . He turns his Hollywood mansion into a massive porn studio and loses his mind as he churns out one erotic film after another. Fun!
This documentary looks at the most famous pornographic film in film history and its effect on both the adult entertainment industry and popular culture writ large.
Half XXX-rated porno and half heist film, The Jade Pussycat follows a man named Johnny Wadd who is searching for the priceless, titular art piece. Reportedly , Paul Thomas Anderson had the entire cast of Boogie Nights watch The Jade Pussycat before filming the famous Mark Wahlberg porn industry film.
This dark drama, based on a true story, follows two porn producers who try to steal the up-and-coming gay entertainer Brent Corrigan from his contract. It's a devious plot—that leads to murder.
Produced by James Franco (who also starred in King Cobra ), Kink is a documentary about Kink.com, the former go-to spot online for BDSM content.
Amanda Seyfried plays the infamous Linda Lovelace, whose on-camera skills turned her into an unlikely star.
When a teenage boy discovers that his favorite porn actress (Kim Cattrall) is performing at a strip club in Indiana, he takes the trip to visit her in hopes that she’ll have sex with him. Little does he know, she’s aged a bit since starring in adult films in the 80s.
In Shane Black’s comedic crime thriller, Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling play bumbling L.A. detectives searching for a woman who has gone missing after starring in an amateur porn.
Bettie Page (played by Gretchen Mol) was one of the most infamous sex icons in American history, a woman whose steamy bondage pin-up photos caught the attention of even the United States senate.
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone star in this screwball comedy, written and directed by Parker, about a nice young Mormon boy who embarks on a missionary trip to Los Angeles—where he gets caught up in the sleazy world of pornography.
A classic Japanese satire from 1966 depicts an ordinary everyman in Mr. Ogata who leads a fairly ordinary...minus his extraordinary job as a dirty film director.
In Aphrodesia’s Diary , a woman relives her greatest sexual experiences by rereading her old diaries in a luxurious hotel room. The film was released during a period in the 70s known as the “Golden Age of Porn,” when erotic films were widely released.
Considered a “pink film” in Japan, which means that it was theatrically released despite sex and nudity, Esa, a.k.a. The Bite or The Pimp in the U.S., features a young gigolo who seduces young woman for the enjoyment of older women who watch behind a two-way mirror.
“If you liked Deep Throat and Singing in the Rain ,” the poster for 1980’s Blonde Ambition read, you’ll love this parody of 40’s MGM studio musicals infused with real, hardcore porn.
Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie was a game changer, and the first pornographic film to get a theatrical release in America. The artsy film also kicked off the “Golden Age of Porn” in the 70’s when erotic films were widely available to view.
Directed by Sweden’s Erika Lust, Cabaret Desire, which won the 2012 Film of the Year award at the Feminist Porn Film Festival, follows a group of people who meet up to hear erotic stories and poetry.
There’s a new way to win football games, and it was discovered by the horny teen cast of 1973’s The Cheerleaders . Fueled by school spirit, a group of cheerleaders decide to exhaust the opposing team by having sex with them the night before so that they won’t have energy for the big game.
If you’re starved for plot, The Devil in Miss Jones has you covered. This 1973 film follows a woman sent back from the afterlife as the embodiment of lust to earn her place in Hell.
Though there are very few erotic films in the Western genre—shocking when you have cowboys at your disposal—the Wild West makes for a great setting in this 1975 classic.
The Mitchell Brothers, influential siblings that ran the famous O'Farrell Theater strip club in San Francisco, are the subject of this biopic about the porn industry starring real-life brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.
Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt is perhaps one of history’s most notorious pornographers. Woody Harrelson earned an Oscar nomination for this biopic that depicts Flynt’s efforts to shake society’s puritanical status quo.
Falling on hard times after reaching the top of the XXX market, adult film star Mikey Saber returns home to Texas and tries to start a new life. Instead, he ends up angering everyone around him, including his estranged wife, a marijuana dealer, and a young teen being groomed into a porno actress.
Respectable tells the tale of Mary Millington, a famous British porn star in the 70s that rose to the height of the industry before she was photographed topless outside of the Prime Minister's residence.
Based on the 1971 Off Broadway play, Score features a tennis match that slowly turns erotic. (Anyone who has ever joked about tennis player grunts will completely understand what kind of material Score is working with.) Sylvester Stallone also appears as a young repairman.
Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi offers an intimate behind-the-scenes look at his life and career on the eve of his retirement.
A married couple (Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel) accidentally upload a particularly steamy home movie onto the cloud. Hilarity ensues when they go to extreme lengths to prevent their friends from watching it.
The final frontier for "Emmanuelle." Like James Bond’s Moonraker or Fast & Furious 9 , it’s only inevitable that a franchise that becomes larger than life must venture out into the unknown.
A spinoff of the nine-film "Emmanuelle " franchise, Black Emmanuelle sent the softcore French film star, now played by Laura Gemser, on a globe-trotting trip throughout Italy, Spain, and Nairobi, Kenya.
No, this Flaashpoint film isn’t when The Flash entered the speed force, but instead when “The Queen of Porn,” Jenna Jameson, was given a massive $220,000 budget to make a movie about a sexy female firefighter.
Bob Fosse directs this mockumentary-style biopic of Dorothy Stratten, telling the tragic story of the Playboy playmate’s rise to fame—her career cut brutally short at the hands of her violent boyfriend and manager.
In Sean Baker’s unassuming indie dramedy, an unlikely friendship forms between an 85-year-old woman named Sadie and a 21-year-old woman named Jane, the latter of whom is an up-and-coming porn actress.
Written and directed by The Godfather ’s Francis Ford Coppola, Tonight for Sure depicts a Sunset Strip burlesque show. Two men in the audience, tortured by previous sexual experiences and dying for a night of mischief, rig the electrical box at the venue to blow at midnight.
A young man leaves the monastery to pursue his first gay relationship in A Very Natural Thing , a coming-of-age LGBTQ+ drama.
The film that gave us Elektra Luxx (a porn star character that later starred in her own film), Women in Trouble consists of ten vignettes about porn actresses whose lives become unexpectedly intertwined.
Val Kilmer stars as the well-endowed John Holmes, an actor whose post-porn life spins out of control—and into the dark, criminal underbelly of Los Angeles.
Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks star in this Kevin Smith-directed comedy as a pair of roommates and best friends who come up with an enterprising way to pay their rent—although they didn’t expect the ways that starring in a porno would complicate their friendship.
Nicolas Cage stars in this unhinged (naturally) noir about a private investigator who believes that he spots the girl he’s looking for getting murdered for real in a snuff film. Directed by Joel Schumacher, 8mm also stars Joaquin Phoenix as adult video store employee Max California.
A German documentary about the porn industry that portrays the profession as a functioning workplace full of producers, actors, and a doctor who all attempt to keep the working women healthy and safe.
Here’s an unconventional romance, in which a gay porn “fluffer”—who gets the stars ready before their scenes—falls for a gay-for-play actor.
Welcome to the most exotic place on Earth… Hotel Erotica, where sexy singles come to have special Cinemax porn encounters.
One of the earliest releases during the 1970s "Golden Age of Porn," Mona starred Fifi Watson as a young bride-to-be who must contend with her nefarious mother who forbids sex before marriage.
Including animation from actual Walt Disney and Hanna-Barbera animators, Once Upon a Girl follows a series of vignettes as Mother Goose tells the “true stories” of several children’s classics.
The Opening of Misty Beethoven is a comedy porno classic that incorporated sex into its whimsical, My Fair Lady- inspired story. The film follows a prostitute who is transformed into a master of lovemaking by sexologist Dr. Seymour Love.
One of the newest films on the list, 2019’s Perspective , which depicted the drama of a married couple who have affairs behind their significant other’s back, won multiple awards at the 2020 Adult Video News Awards.
A parody of Pirates of the Caribbean , Pirates starred Jesse James—who guest starred in a couple episodes of HBO’s Entourage— as the first mate of a 1760s pirate crew.
The success of the first Pirates porn parody upped the budget of its sequel to $8 million, making it one of the most expensive porn films ever produced. Jesse James reprised her role as Jules, first officer of Captain Reynolds’ horny pirate crew, as they take on Chinese pirate empress Xifeng.
In Pleasure , director Ninja Thyberg’s debut to the big screen, Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel) travels to Los Angeles as a newcomer who wants to reach the pinnacle of the adult film world.
Ron Jeremy is probably the unlikeliest porn star to achieve such international fame, and this documentary gives an inside look into his unexpected—yet extremely prolific—film career.
Shooting a porno flick in rural Texas called The Farmer’s Daughter , the actors in X soon find themselves threatened by a killer reminiscent of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The SXSW favorite, which pays homage to classic slasher films and 70s pornographic films, also stars Mia Goth and Kid Cudi.

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There are many categories of porn movies (opens in new tab) (choose your own adventure, everyone!), but there's just something special about vintage movies from pornography's Golden Age. Also known as "porno chic" (a.k.a best nickname ever), this period in porn history began in 1969 with the release of Andy Warhol's Blue Movie and continued through roughly 1984. By the mid-'80s, seeing porn in theaters had become less popular, thanks to the rising popularity of VHS players. At this point, the porn industry turned away from striving to be art of any kind and started its journey to its current state: short, increasingly hardcore clips (opens in new tab) on Pornhub. But, back in the Golden Age, art was most definitely the goal. These films had higher budgets, higher production values, and intricate (honestly, sometimes a bit zany) plots.
Maybe it's the hair, maybe it's the grainy film, maybe it's the good acting, or maybe it's the fact that the plots are often completely and totally deranged. Whatever the x factor (or, should we say, "xxx factor"), vintage porn is a sometimes wonderful and often weird world, and these are the wildest and most iconic movies from the genre.
'Score' is a 1974 porn cult classic that joins the niche likes of 'Deep Throat' and 'Behind the Green Door.' Directed by Radley Metzger, it's a "groovy" mixed doubles romp that has a shabby chic element, classic to the '70s. The film was originally based on an off-Broadway stage play that ran for 23 performances at the Martinique Theatre from October 28 through November 15, 1971 and featured Sylvester Stallone in a brief role (as telephone repairman Mike).
This Swedish erotic film is definitely among the more niche on this list—but it's no less of a must-watch. The indie erotic film is directed by Vilgot Sjöman and stars Sjöman and Lena Nyman. It's a coming-of-age story about finding your sexuality, jealousy, betrayal, and drama. While it is extremely sexy—it is also beautifully acted and written. If you like a little beauty with your porn, this one is for you.
Released in 1976, this pornographic film was actually the first movie directed by controversial filmmaker Abel Ferrara—albeit under a pseudonym ("Nicholas George"). As for the plot, it focuses on Pauline, a wealthy, married New York heiress who sets out on a sexual adventure made up of encounters with several different people (aka the plot of 98 percent of porn from the '70s).
This 1983 film is part of the Golden Age of Porn and tells the story of a woman named Adrianne, who reminisces about some of her greatest sexual exploits while reading her diary in a hotel room.
'Through the Looking Glass' has been called "A Serious Breakthrough for the Artistic Treatment of Explicit Sex." The plot takes a rich socialite who finds herself in an unknown world where basically anything goes. Yes, that means there is a lot of sex and it goes from there. The film is directed by Jonas Middleton and stars Catharine Burgess, Jamie Gillis, and Laura Nicholson.
'Querelle' is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's final film. While it is thought of as his most personal, it is also his most criticized due to its, um, content, and the moody Tom-of-Finland-inspired set design. The movie is originally based on Jean Genet's novel. While very sexy, it is also quite intimate and sad. Now, don't get us wrong, there are lots of fantastic scenes of homosexual sex, all behind the backdr
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Best Porn Films Of All Time

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