It wouldn’t be a stretch to say some movie studio use to sneak in nudity in their movies all the time just so they can advertise it on the back of the box with “Rated R for Nudity” to entice men to rent them, so I’m wondering whats in your opinion the most gratuitous piece of nudity ever seen in a film?
For clarification, nudity that actually makes sense in context (like in the 1960’s Romeo and Juliet), nor used for a deliberate comedic effect (like in Airplane or Thankskilling) count. The nudity has to be intended to titillate but actually comes across as “What?” or “Did that just happen?” for it to count.
The movie that inspired this was the 1986 Clint Eastwood film “Heartbreak Ridge”, where in a movie that basically is mostly shirtless Marines running around in training, features a scene of them in actual combat in Grenada where one of them opens a door and finds himself walking into the shower room of a building, complete with a naked lady who walks out of the shower, then quickly covers herself up with a towel. You get a grand total of maybe 2 seconds of clear nudity and then the scene ends. It’s the only actual nudity in the film, and is more baffling on why its in there than anything else. It could be considered comedic but the scene goes by way too fast and you get too clear of a shot of the womans full body nude for that to be the case.
Has to be Mathilda May’s legendary performance in Lifeforce. She’s playing an alien in human form and basically runs around nude throughout the whole film. There’s absolutely no need in the plot for her to be naked (though I don’t remember much of the plot, which was rather silly anyway, because I only think of a nude Mathilda when I think back of the movie).
Don’t Look Now. Okay, one can make a case for a lovemaking scene between a married couple being necessary to the plot (moving on after a death in the family). But did we need to see Donald Sutherland’s entire ass, as well as his O-face?
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but wasn’t there a scene in Trading Places where Dan Aykroyd walks in on Jamie Lee Curtis while she’s undressing and there’s some gratuitous toplessness?
In Working Girl, Melanie Griffith vacuums her evil boss’s (Sigourney Weaver) apartment in her scanty underwear for no discernable reason. In this 1988 film, it came across as “Hey, check it out, women can aspire to be corporate movers & shakers and still look cute in their underwear”.
He doesn’t walk in on her; she undresses in front of him while she proposes her plan to help him in exchange for a large sum of money. The purpose of her being topless is to show she know’s she got a hot body but her biggest asset is her brain / business acumen, which is why after he (and we ) gets an eyeful, she covers them up with her hands and slams the door in his face. On the other hand, in the edited for tv version, the scene works just as well without us actually seeing anything, so I’d call it gratuitous adjacent
