Hollywood X Movie
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Hollywood X Movie
Design by Jason Hoffman for Thrillist
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Jennifer M. Wood is a writer whose work has appeared in WIRED, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Condé Nast Traveler, Vulture, GQ, and Mental Floss, where she's also an editor.
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While the phrase "rated X" likely conjures up images of the kind of movie to which Travis Bickle might squire a date, the rating's original intention had little to do with the pornography that eventually came to define it. When the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) decided to implement a ratings system in November 1968, its purpose was to easily communicate to parents whether a flick would be fun for the whole family… or earn them a visit from child protective services.
But it didn't take long for the adult industry to join the party and co-opt the salacious-sounding X—then take it two steps further by adopting a XXX rating for its spiciest titles.
Because the MPAA neglected to trademark its ratings system (opening the door to that aforementioned porn penetration), rather than compete with or take on the adult industry to bring the X rating back to its original purpose, they dropped it altogether.
In 1990, the X begat the NC-17 rating—though some filmmakers have opted to distribute their movies with no rating at all (the ratings system was, and is, voluntary). We pored through each group—X, NC-17, and unrated—to create an adults-only celebration of movies for grownups. They may not all be masterpieces (hello, Showgirls ), but even a guilty pleasure is called a "pleasure" for a reason. Here are 50 great X-rated (NC-17-rated and unrated) movies to add to your viewing queue.
While even some of the earliest X-rated movies had a noticeable amount of nudity, sexual situations, and/or graphic language, the purpose of the rating wasn't to send a flag up to moviegoers with prurient interests; it was simply to mark a movie as being suitable for adults only (but again, not in the "adults only" designation that used to be reserved for the back rooms of video stores). Eddie Murphy's standup comedy film Raw , for example, is one non-icky movie that got saddled with a scarlet rating. For many filmmakers of the 1960s and '70s, an X rating was a cinematic badge of honor—proof that you'd made a film for only the most discerning audiences who viewed cinema as art. For the less auteur-minded individuals, it was a way to show as much nudity as you wanted and get away with it. And as the decades rolled on, it came to take on enough negative connotations that even the MPAA realized something needed to be done.
Even before the X rating was established in America, US audiences were getting an eyeful of risqué foreign films like Vilgot Sjöman's I Am Curious . But in 1968, America got its own very first X-rated gem with Brian De Palma's Greetings , a seething satire about a womanizer (Jonathan Warden) attempting to dodge the Vietnam draft. He's aided by his two best friends, one of whom is played by Robert De Niro in his first credited film role. In the years since, De Palma has admitted that the film owes a creative debt to Jean-Luc Godard's French New Wave hit Masculin Féminin . Which also might explain why De Palma played it fast and loose with the film's nudity and profanity. (Though its rating was eventually downgraded to an R.)
For several decades after its release, Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool was difficult to get your hands on, which might explain why it's not as well-known as many of its New Hollywood-era counterparts, which used cinema as a way to express the disillusionment so many Americans were feeling. Wexler was best known as a cinematographer—he won Oscars for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Bound for Glory (1976)—and used that background to write, direct, and shoot this partly improvised story of a once-complacent TV cameraman (Robert Forster) who experiences a political awakening as he's paid to witness, firsthand, the quiet revolution that is happening all around him. It's a cinéma vérité-style masterpiece that incorporates elements of both narrative storytelling and documentary-making, and culminates at the (very real) 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where a riot erupted. Wexler, of course, managed to capture it all. Though its graphic language and nudity were the official reasons given for its X rating, Wexler knew better. "What no one had the nerve to say was that it was a political X," he once said. A year later it was re-rated with an R.
Midnight Cowboy is the surprisingly touching story of a naïve Texan (John Voight) and seasoned con man (Dustin Hoffman) who attempt to turn a buck by selling the Lone Star transplant as a plaything-for-hire for NYC's lonely uptown ladies. While the plan doesn't quite work out, the development of the genuine opposites-attract friendship is what sells the movie. While it's famous for being the first—and only—X-rated film to ever win a Best Picture Oscar, what's lesser known is that its rating was self-mandated. Figuring that the film's graphic sex scenes would earn it an X rating, David Picker—United Artists's then-president of production—decided to save both himself and the MPAA some time and stamp it with his own X. "We didn't want to go through the exercise since we weren't prepared to change the movie," Picker told The Hollywood Reporter . As it turns out, he may not have had to: In 1971, the MPAA—of its own volition—downgraded the film to an R.
What was originally supposed to be a sequel to Mark Robson's lovably campy adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's The Valley of the Dolls (1967) turned into a satirical remake of sorts. While it follows the first film's storyline of an all-girl band, The Carrie Nations, willing to do anything to get their big break, it ups the sex, drugs, and rock and roll ante—which is hardly surprising, considering that it was directed by schlockmeister supreme Russ Meyer. What is unexpected is Meyer's collaborator on the project: Roger Ebert. Yes, that Ebert. The Ebert who loved Superman: The Movie , hated Joe Dirt , and earned a Pulitzer Prize for his writing in 1975—just a few years after this guilty pleasure arrived in theaters.
Mick Jagger made his acting debut in this British crime drama co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, but it took a while for fans to actually see it. The movie—about an on-the-run London gangster (James Fox) who shacks up with a reclusive rocker (Jagger) and two free-spirited women—sat on the shelf for nearly two years as its distributor, Warner Bros., figured out how to handle its graphic sexual and violent content. Ultimately, they decided to release it with an X rating and let the cards fall where they may. While the original reviews were mixed, critics were impressed by Jagger, and his onscreen chemistry with Fox in particular. Eventually, it grew to become a cult classic and found renewed interest following the passing of Cammell in 1996.
On its own, extreme violence isn't always a guarantee that a film will earn an X rating. But incorporate that violence—which exists pretty much throughout all two hours and 16 minutes of Stanley Kubrick's Oscar-nominated dystopian nightmare—into a terrifying rape scene where the attacker (Malcolm McDowell) breaks into a cheery rendition of "Singin' in the Rain," and it makes the whole thing much more unnerving. There have been more brutal on-camera attacks, but the contradictory nature of what we we're witnessing makes for an uncomfortable few moments. Which makes its X rating self-explanatory. But when a couple of copycat crimes occurred in London, Kubrick volunteered to make some quick trims to the film; while he only ended up altering about 30 seconds of footage, it was enough to get the film re-rated as an R.
John Waters didn't earn the nickname the "Pope of Trash" for playing it safe with his filmmaking, and Pink Flamingos is certainly not for the faint of heart. The infamous flick sees legendary drag queen/Waters muse Divine attempting to retain her crown as "The Filthiest Person Alive." With scenes depicting cannibalism, rape, vomiting, incest, masturbation, and dog feces-eating, is it really any wonder that this cult classic wasn't deemed suitable for kids or teens?
Even if you've never seen Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris , you probably know the premise: A crusty American businessman (Marlon Brando) heads to Paris to clear his head after his estranged wife kills herself. There, he meets a beautiful young woman (Maria Schneider) and they begin a wild, frequently sadomasochistic affair based purely on sex. But there's a darker psychology happening here, if you can look past Brando's bare ass to see it. Though it was widely hailed as an erotic masterpiece when it was originally released (at least by those who weren't complaining that it was porn and shouldn't be shown in mainstream theaters), its problematic production has tainted its reputation over the years. In one of the film's most can't-unsee-it scenes, a stick of butter is used as a lubricant as Brando forces himself upon Schneider. The actress has since gone on record to say that this scene was not in the script, and she felt humiliated by it, but was too young and inexperienced to speak up. Now that contemporary attention has turned to the rampant abuse throughout Hollywood (and virtually every industry), Last Tango in Paris has become emblematic of a culture that not only permitted abusive behavior, but celebrated it. Matters were made worse two years after Schneider's death, when Bertolucci admitted he and Brando had conspired to create the scene without Schneider's consent. Bertolucci earned an Oscar nomination for Best Director for the film (Brando scored a Best Actor nod, too), while Schneider—just 19 during production, compared to Brando's 48 and Bertolucci's 31—never received accolades for her performance. All of which explains why, when Bertolucci passed away in 2018, Last Tango in Paris was the film most frequently mentioned in his many obituaries.
John Waters strikes again! Over the course of 90 minutes, we watch life unfold for Dawn Davenport (Divine) from bratty kid to single mother to stripper to criminal to murderer. As with any Waters vehicle, it's a wild, no-holds-barred ride that didn't sit quite right with the MPAA—nor did its sexually graphic language or nudity. While it initially went unrated, it's since been branded as NC-17 by the MPAA.
Like Last Tango in Paris , Nagisa Ôshima's In the Realm of the Senses teeters precariously on that line between art film and smut film. It follows the affair-turned-sexual obsession between a sex-worker-turned-hotel maid (Eiko Matsuda) and her boss (Tatsuya Fuji) that eventually ends with his death. And her severing his penis… for reasons you may not want to know about. Though the film was critically well received, it was banned in various parts of the world (including the US) because the director and actors opted to film un-simulated sex scenes in order to achieve Ôshima's vision in the most realistic way possible.
Ten years after Night of the Living Dead , George A. Romero's zombies made the move from rural farmhouse to empty shopping mall, where a small group of citizens have barricaded themselves in order to avoid the walking dead. Though the 139-minute director's cut played Cannes, American distributors demanded that it be cut down further… then still gave it an X for its violence. Sensing that the taboo rating would kill its box office chances, Romero released it unrated.
The first film in Don Coscarelli's legendary horror series introduced audiences to the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), a time-traveling undertaker with a penchant for transforming corpses into flesh-eating dwarf zombies. Which sounds reasonable. But the MPAA didn't like that famous scene where a flying silver sphere impales a man's brain. They also took issue with a man peeing himself after dropping dead, and as such branded it with the dreaded X. Fortunately, the film had a friend in Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin: There are a couple of different stories about how he helped, with one saying he told Universal they should buy the film and another saying he called a friend on the MPAA board and helped get the rating changed to an R. One of the film's co-producers, however, says it was Universal that got the MPAA to rethink their rating.
While many movie fans consider Sam Raimi 's The Evil Dead a dark horror-comedy, the MPAA wasn't laughing when the film made its debut. Though it starts out as your typical cabin-in-the-woods horror movie, it quickly takes a turn for the gory after a group of friends accidentally resurrect a demonic entity that can possess any person—or forest foliage—it likes. Yes, it's bloody. And the scene in which a horny tree branch rapes a woman is uncomfortable (Raimi himself regrets it ). While horror fiends see the film as so over-the-top that it's almost comical, critics took issue with all the gore and bloodshed and branded it a "video nasty," a British term for an obscene movie released on VHS. Though the film was banned in many countries, and still remains so to this day in some places, it clearly proved popular enough to spawn a couple of sequels (more on Evil Dead II later) plus a TV series, Ash vs Evil Dead .
In real life, alleged serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole copped to murdering hundreds of people (though their claims have been discredited by some ). In Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer , director John McNaughton's unrelenting crime drama loosely based on the two, there's no question about who or what the characters of Henry (Michael Rooker) and Otis (Tom Towles) did. The film's low-budget aesthetic—it was shot in less than a month on 16mm film with a budget of about $100,000—only adds to its creepiness, making the viewer feel more like a witness than a moviegoer. Though it was filmed in 1985, it didn't get a national theatrical release until 1990 due to legal issues surrounding its real-life inspirations and distributors getting cold feet. In order to get the film out there, McNaughton began screening it at film festivals, and it was a showing at the Telluride Film Festival in 1989—plus a subsequent 3.5 star review from Roger Ebert—that finally got the distribution wheels in motion. Is it for everyone? No. But it might be the most realistic movie ever made about a serial killer.
More than 30 years after its release, Eddie Murphy: Raw is still the highest-grossing stand-up comedy movie ever released. But who knows where it would have ended up on that list if the MPAA had stuck to its guns and refused to budge on its X rating. While it was officially released with an R, this was only after several edits and reedits were made at the MPAA's request. The reason? Very, very bad words.
The second time didn't prove to be a charm for Sam Raimi . Returning to that cabin in the woods from The Evil Dead for more supernatural fun, this 1987 sequel continued the blood-gore-humor trifecta set up by the first film and achieved similar results: an X rating, which Raimi abandoned in favor of an unrated release.
At this point, one has to imagine that the MPAA board doubles up on the espresso shots when they know a Paul Verhoeven movie is coming their way. But how RoboCop , of all the director's films, managed to so utterly offend them is curious. Especially as we have no recollection of Murphy trying to seduce a vacuum cleaner or anything else that might put it in the "too sexually charged" category. Turns out, it was all about the violence. And there was originally a lot more of it. It reportedly took Verhoeven 11 reedits to get the MPAA on board with an R for RoboCop . Very smartly, in addition to editing out some of the more violent scenes, he added some quirky commercials into the news broadcasts in order to lighten the overall mood. It worked. But eventually the original X-rated version made its way onto laserdisc, then VHS, then DVD and Blu-ray, and eventually streaming.
Before you think, "What?! Helen Mirren starred in an X-rated movie?" Let's not forget that she also appeared in Caligula . Now that that's out of the way, Dame Helen plays the titular wife who, bored of her crime boss husband (Michael Gambon), begins an affair right under her husband's nose, regularly making use of the quiet corners of the restaurant they own to indulge in her carnal urges. While it's quirky and funny at times, it operates more as a morality play where no taboo—including cannibalism—is off limits. It's for that reason that when given the choice between an X or no rating if director Peter Greenaway refused to edit it down, the filmmaker went the unrated route. (By this point, X was too closely associated with porn films. And the movie's title, and bondage-themed poster, wouldn't do much to dispel that notion.)
For decades, Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodóvar has embraced his role as the enfant terrible of Spanish cinema. And it's largely due Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! that we have the NC-17 rating at all. The film features a 20-something Antonio Banderas as a mentally unstable young man who, upon his release from a psychiatric hospital, kidnaps a drug-addicted former porn star he slept with one time with the intention of making her fall in love with him. The MPAA didn't even blink at giving it an X rating, which led the studio to sue on the basis that because so many people associated an "X" with porn, it would prejudice them against seeing what was really an art film. Fortunately, they argued the point well, because the X rating was dropped altogether not long after.
So as not to be confused with their smutty cinematic brethren, in 1990 the MPAA swapped out its X rating—which they had failed to copyright—for the NC-17 designation. (Yes, this time they registered it.) Yet the rebranding effort didn't completely eliminate the icky factor that many people had come to associate with the MPAA's harshest rating, leading some filmmakers to release their works with no rating at all.
It seems fitting that a biopic about writer Henry Miller would be the first film to earn an NC-17 rating. It explores the sexually charged relationship between Miller (Fred Ward), his wife June (Uma Thurman), and Anaïs Nin (Maria de Medeiros), who assisted him on the notoriously salacious Tropic of Cancer . And it served the new rating well: It's one of just three NC-17-rated films to earn an Academy Award nomination (for Philippe Rousselot's cinematography).
In 1992, the MPAA came knocking on Paul Verhoeven's editing room door once again when he handed over his cut of Basic Instinct , the hit erotic thriller that sees a San Francisco homicide detective (Michael Douglas) matching wits—and bumping uglies—with a sexy novelist (Sharon Stone), who may or may not have murdered a man with an ice pick. Though Verhoeven claims the movie was never about sex for him (it was about "evil"), there sure seems to be a lot of copulating happening. And even when there's not, people are thinking about it. Especially when Stone, going commando, crosses her legs at just the right angle. Yes, it got an NC-17 rating. But Verhoeven was eventually able to wear the MPAA down by slightly shifting the camera's perspective. "I didn't have to cut many things, but I replaced things from different angles, made it a little more elliptical, a bit less dir
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