# What was the most gratuitous piece of nudity you've ever seen in a movie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 12, 2019, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743 "2019-12-12T09:59:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/121 "2019-12-15T02:03:50Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > 3 pages in, and nobody mentioned the coed shower scene from Starship Troopers? Or any of the other boobs in that movie? I am fairly sure I heard that movie mentioned much earlier in this thread probably in the pre-zombie part of it. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/122 "2019-12-15T02:30:30Z")
nm duplicate ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/123 "2019-12-15T03:32:00Z")
RoboCop, and the naked breasts in the co-ed changing room. Demolition Man, and the topless woman dialing Stallone and getting the wrong number. ---
**Author:** ![Drum\_God](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drum_god/32/44_2.png) [@Drum\_God](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drum_God)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/124 "2019-12-15T03:39:58Z")
Why have people called this a zombie thread? The earliest post I see is 12/12/2019. That’s only two days ago. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/125 "2019-12-15T03:40:42Z")
Most Incredibly Bothersome Nudity: Oliver Reed and Alan Bates buck nekkid rasslin’ in front of the fireplace in _Women in Love_. Terry Jones when he played the organ sometimes. Isn’t _Susperia_ basically one, big, gratuitous nude thing? ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/126 "2019-12-15T04:23:31Z")
> [@Guest-starring\_Id](#): > > Terry Jones when he played the organ sometimes. Whose organ? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/127 "2019-12-15T05:06:58Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > Why have people called this a zombie thread? The earliest post I see is 12/12/2019. That’s only two days ago. Must be the Linnea Quigley posts. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/128 "2019-12-15T05:10:32Z")
Thought of another one; Jobeth Williams in [_Teachers_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUewxOm3ztU) (1984). She and Nick Nolte played high school teachers and there was a scene where they were arguing in the school corridor. And for no logical reason, Williams decided to take off her clothes. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/129 "2019-12-15T05:41:46Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Whose organ? 😛 :smack: Actually - I forgot - no comedies. I dunno, man…That big huge freakin shlong appearing out of nowhere at the beginning of Bergman’s _Persona_ is, well…I dunno, maaaan… Really - I really really really really challenge anyone to cinesplain\* to me its relevance to the flick. \*Just checked google - not there - copywrong claimed, now, on new word!🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/130 "2019-12-15T06:05:34Z")
Ok sure - I realise that bit was about all that 60’s stream-of-consciousness collage thingie (well, from what I can gather), but it would’ve been nice for a heads up;) so I could wear sturdy protective goggles for it anyway, so, I think I’ll just step away from the whole thing about now. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/131 "2019-12-15T06:56:30Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > Why have people called this a zombie thread? The earliest post I see is 12/12/2019. That’s only two days ago. Maybe because there was gratuitous zombie nudity in Night of the Living Dead? Otherwise, beats me. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/132 "2019-12-15T07:43:56Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > Why have people called this a zombie thread? The earliest post I see is 12/12/2019. That’s only two days ago. Maybe they were typing ‘bazooms’ and their spell-check took over? ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2019, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/133 "2019-12-15T16:54:10Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > I’m sure that I’ve read somewhere that shooting of the movie Walkabout was delayed for some reason (finances?) such that, by the time shooting did take place, Jenny Agutter had passed some critical age threshold, which allowed her part to be rewritten with nude scenes. > > My memory is sketchy on the detail here (sorry! - anyone help me out?), but if that is correct then it’s pretty much the definition of gratuitous, surely? > > j > [@JKellyMap](#): > > I thought it was helpful to emphasize the freedom-from-civilization the girl character felt out in the desert. While perhaps not in the original script, I wouldn’t call it gratuitous. > [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > I agree, I don’t think that could be called “gratutious”. I’ve never seen the movie, but I read the book in middle school, and that scene is a pretty important bit of character development. The girl Mary, and her brother Peter, are a pair of middle-class, respectable Anglo-Australians who wind up stuck in the outback (plane crash, maybe?). They’re rescued by an Aborigine boy, and part of the story is the conflict between the girl’s sense of propriety and the Aboriginal boy’s culture - she’s shocked by his nudity, for example. > > In the book, Peter brings a koala to his sister to hold, and its claws tear holes in her by-then threadbare dress. Rather than put down the koala, she shrugs and steps out of her dress. The scene emphasizes that she’s coming to accept that her values and cultural assumptions are out of place in the outback. It also shows her being to recognize the beauty and uniqueness of the Australian landscape. > > So at least in the book, her nudity is integral to the plot. I assume the filmmakers were trying to convey the same message. I’ve been out of circulation for a couple of days and missed these posts. Interesting - thank you (genuinely) for the reasoned opposing view. You know what, I’m going to (mostly) concede on this one. Here’s what I think: we’re talking about “barely legal” in 1971 Britain – and it was, because of that, a controversial film. (and continued to flirt with censorship issues [well into this century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkabout_(film)#Reception), it turns out). But when you talk about “gratuitous”, you have to separate out the public perception of the film from the director’s intentions. You’ve made a decent case for Roeg and artistic intent. (Though if I was counsel for the defence, I wouldn’t be calling the jury’s attention to his work on Don’t Look Now, as mentioned upthread. But I’m happy to go with the Scottish verdict: not proven.) j ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/134 "2019-12-16T14:43:00Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Thought of another one; Jobeth Williams in [_Teachers_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUewxOm3ztU) (1984). She and Nick Nolte played high school teachers and there was a scene where they were arguing in the school corridor. And for no logical reason, Williams decided to take off her clothes. I haven’t seen that movie in a while, but I’m pretty sure earlier in the movie they were talking about taking risks or something like that and one says “You’d never walk down the hallway naked” or something similar. Sorry for lack of specifics ☹ ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/135 "2019-12-16T15:09:56Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I haven’t seen that movie in a while, but I’m pretty sure earlier in the movie they were talking about taking risks or something like that and one says “You’d never walk down the hallway naked” or something similar. > > Sorry for lack of specifics ☹ Yes, they did talk about that. I don’t think it makes the actual nudity less gratuitous. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/136 "2019-12-16T15:43:40Z")
_Tropic of Cancer_ (1970). Granted, this was the period when Hollywood was playing with movie nudity like an Amish kid and alcohol during _Rumspringen_, and the subject of the movie is Henry Miller, but the scene in question was a running nude woman (can’t remember who), three-quarter frontal shot of just her hips, in slow motion. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/137 "2019-12-16T19:32:08Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I haven’t seen that movie in a while, but I’m pretty sure earlier in the movie they were talking about taking risks or something like that and one says “You’d never walk down the hallway naked” or something similar. It’s a movie. The only reason they said that was because it was in the script. And the only reason they put that line in the script was to give them an excuse for the nude scene. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/138 "2019-12-16T20:39:16Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s a movie. The only reason they said that was because it was in the script. And the only reason they put that line in the script was to give them an excuse for the nude scene. Thanks. I wasn’t aware of how scripts worked. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/139 "2019-12-17T17:03:27Z")
No, not nudity, but one of the most demeaningly gratuitous shots I’ve ever seen - Sam Peckinpah introduces us to one of the two main characters in _Straw Dogs_ - played by Susan George - walking towards the camera, except the shot is framing only her torso. Great intro, Sam. Oh, wait - the 70s. Right. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2019, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743/140 "2019-12-17T18:56:26Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Thanks. I wasn’t aware of how scripts worked. People say that. But they often act as though they feel that events in a movie or book or TV show occur spontaneously. They don’t seem to realize that everything they see or hear in a work of fiction was a deliberate decision made by the author. Nothing happens by chance. But when a bullet misses a character, there are people who will think he got lucky. No, there was no luck involved. The author didn’t want the character to die in this chapter so he wrote that the bullet missed. And when a character dies of cancer in the final chapter of the book, it’s not because of that mysterious lump he found in the third chapter. The lump didn’t cause the cancer; the cancer caused the lump. When the author decided he was going to have the character get cancer, he wrote in the symptoms. The line about somebody walking down the halls naked didn’t cause the character to take off her clothes. The choice to have the character take off her clothes caused the line to be in the movie. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-gratuitous-piece-of-nudity-youve-ever-seen-in-a-movie/844743.md?page=8)