SCIENCE FICTION movies that drip with SEX
There were plenty of ways to do that. For some, it was important to ask what physical love could look like in the future and what limitations it might have. Others eroticized the relationship between a man and an alien or a machine. The most important thing, however, seems to be that the leitmotiv of most of these visions are our fears and deeply hidden desires, which we can safely talk about only after dressing them in a harmless science-fiction sheath. Here are the sci-fi movies that, in my opinion, are uniquely dripping with sex. Let me know in the comments if you would add anything to this list.
Species
I’d venture to say it’s one of the sexiest sci-fi movies ever made. Of course, taking into account what the film is about and who plays the main character. Cult in many circles of SF lovers, Species takes on the theme of reproduction between humans and aliens. So here comes something that is probably the most feared by the supporters of the theory that extraterrestrials exist and have evil plans for the earthly species. The character around whom this story revolves is Sil – a beautiful girl who is the result of a genetic experiment aimed at combining human DNA with extraterrestrial. We all know what Sil has to do to prolong this species – find a suitable mate and hint to him that her mating has just begun. And in truth, the entire plot of Roger Donaldson’s film revolves around sex, often leading to several meaty and peculiar love scenes, usually ending very badly for the representatives of the male sex. The icing on the cake of this extremely sexy film is, of course, Natasha Henstridge, a former model who looks simply phenomenal in Species and does not let you take your eyes off her.
Barbarella
Okay, writing about Species as the sexiest SF, I forgot that several other films aspire to this title. They are headed by Barbarella, who confronts sex and space in a completely unprudish manner. Natasha Henstridge’s competitor is none other than Jane Fonda, who, playing Barbarella, a cosmic super agent, created one of the craziest and at the same time the most characteristic creations in her career. It took a lot of courage and self-confidence to demonstrate one’s inexhaustible charm in a show filled with kitsch, let alone strongly attract the eyes – especially of the male part of the audience. What can be added? Barbarella is a grotesque spectacle straight from B-class cinema, which is conducive to experiencing very simple, even primitive emotions. And it does it well. It is the sex appeal that the titular agent uses as her main weapon and tool of influence. As if to make it clear that times may change, civilization may soon reach even the stars, while men will forever be stuck in their handicap, salivating at the sight of properly exposed legs clad in stockings.
King Kong (1976)
Wait a minute – you’re probably asking – a movie about a great ape, a title that everyone knows well, is supposed to be one of the sexiest science fiction movies on record? Well, yes. The explicit sexual overtones were already felt in the original 1933 film. No matter how you look at this film adventure with an element of horror and fantasy, we are dealing here with a travesty of the myth of Beauty and the Beast. Beautiful dressed in white is a symbol of order, innocence, and perhaps inaccessibility, while the ape shrouded in black represents wilderness, the power of nature and the element, also sexual. This subtext was used in the 1976 remake. Sexy and sensual Jessica Lange winks at the viewer in almost every scene, sending him a flirty look. The great ape with his inexhaustible energy notices these signals and abducts the woman, wanting her to be her toy from now on. Every time I watch the scene in which the monster smacks naked Lange with his huge finger, I realize that this is probably one of the most surprising and strange erotic scenes in the history of cinema. At the same time, I realize that, contrary to appearances, its plot justification is fundamentally solid – just director John Guillermin in this case was a bit braver and was not afraid to openly say what this story is really about. That’s why I like this vision.
Hollow Man
Who like who, but Paul Verhoeven perfectly understands what is the connection of eroticism and science fiction. In almost every of his films he includes either sex scenes or explicit sexual references. If I had to point to one sci-fi film by a famous Dutch director whose aura of eroticism I like the most and which can find the most interesting plot justification for it, my choice would be Hollow Man. Although in my review of this film I was critical, I must admit that there is something striking about this kind of use of invisibility. In Hollow Man we meet a scientist sick with ambition, who hides inexhaustible lust. As soon as the curtain falls and he has the opportunity to hide behind the consequence of his invention, demons come out of him. In the end, he can start doing what he always wanted to do, and what he could not do due to moral restrictions. His female colleagues are therefore sexually harassed and his cute neighbor is raped. I dread to think what these hidden desires would have ultimately led to if Verhoeven had been given a little more space by the producers to use.
Alien
One of the most famous sci-fi horror movies ever made. Dirty, dark and brutal. An alien, unknown life form ravages the crew of the ship Nostromo. People struggle to survive without really knowing what kind of threat they are dealing with. Where’s the sex? Well, there is plenty of it in Alien, but mainly in subtext. It is obvious that Ridley Scott’s famous film talks metaphorically about fear, which confronts a man, paralyzes his actions and kills him from the inside. This is what the titular monster is – the embodiment of the destructive fear that lies deep in our being. What would you say if we assumed that Alien, yes, is about fear, but about sex? Suggestions of this kind are plentiful in the film. The vaginal appearance of the facehuggers and the phallic appearance of the head of the Xenomorph – that’s it. Oral insemination by the former and birth through the chest by the latter are two. Sex scenes? Here you go – an android trying to orally rape the heroine with a pornographic newspaper. In the body of the same android flows blood that resembles … sperm. The icing on the cake is the final, seemingly relaxing scene in which the heroine strips down to her underwear, revealing a bit more of her body to the viewer. When he feels safe, the monster – another cinematic symbol of sexual oppression – suddenly emerges from hiding, wanting to finish what he started. We are able to see these subtexts only after many screenings of Alien, but looking at interviews with Scott, or the work of H.R. Giger however, the thing becomes quite obvious.
Barb Wire
Pamela Anderson’s pointed, silicone breasts are certainly one of the erotic symbols of the 90s. Certainly the best-known case will remain Barb Wire from 1996, a dystopian science fiction film lined with action and dripping with sex. I like this film because from the beginning to the end it does not pretend to be anything more than what it actually is: a B-class cinema based on hackneyed SF schemes, using the popularity and charm of the actress best known for male magazine centerfolds. Barb Wire is like those one-liners that the screenwriters keep sticking in Pamela’s mouth – fierce, distanced and predatory. It’s pleasant to watch, especially when the main character is on the screen, always in a skimpy creation, always exposing her greatest assets. And although this type of beauty is not my type, looking at Barb Wire, I always catch myself thinking that I am just an ordinary dog who will never be serious when shown a bone. I won’t lie, Pamela charmed me with her one and a half hour performance, so I think the filmmakers achieved their goal.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
I’ve seen a lot of science fiction movies. I was shocked by a lot, I was surprised by a lot. None, however, caused such profound astonishment as the Japanese Tetsuo: The Iron Man. To say that this is an original film is not enough. To say that Tetsuo defies all comparisons is not enough. It’s a crazy story, ambiguous, lined with metaphors and hidden meanings. The composition of the music video and the cyberpunk style meet pure surrealism here, not allowing the viewer to determine, even for a moment, whether he is observing events taking place in a dream or in reality. As in the case of Alien, we are dealing here with sex pulsating mainly in subtext, but often coming out of hiding. Tetsuo talks about fears, both technological and sexual. In one of my articles, in which I wrote about films dealing with the subject of sex, but not being erotica, I said this about Tetsuo and I stand by my observation: “The film is full of scenes with explicit sexual overtones, implying that the main character suffers from severely disturbed sense of his own masculinity, fears female domination and independence. This is how the rape scene performed on him by a woman equipped with a mechanical, gigantic phallus can be read. On the other hand, the scene in which these roles are reversed, and this time he receives a huge drill in the place of his penis, clearly proves that the man takes the form of the machine that he himself would like to become in his deeply hidden desires.” Are you looking for something radically different in both SF and sex? Watch Tetsuo.
Heavy Metal
Animation by Gerald Potterton from 1981 is widely regarded as a cult production. And just as I think that this term has been clearly overused recently, because it’s getting easier and easier to get the status of a cult work, there is nothing exaggerated in the cultism of Heavy Metal. This work meets all the conditions to be remembered for years after its premiere. It’s uncompromising, naughty, sometimes brutal, sometimes obscenely funny, and above all, extremely sexy. The intertwining novellas, whose leitmotif is the fate of a girl confronting the ultimate evil coming from space, make up several SF stories, and each of them represents a different variety of the genre – so we smoothly switch from a dystopian world to an adventure space opera. The most important thing, however, is that each of these stories clearly drips with sex. Opportunities for casual sex between the two characters are relatively trivial, which is why it happens quite regularly, in almost every sequence. Beautiful women with athletic curves and breasts – this is the hallmark of Heavy Metal. It may be a fairy tale, but only for adult children.
Demon Seed
In one of the novels of Heavy Metal, the topic of sex between a woman and a robot is discussed. This, of course, happens in a rather funny way, befitting the tone of the cult 1981 animation. However, if we wanted to know a sci-fi movie that takes the weave of man and machine seriously, the first thing that comes to mind is Demon Seed. The 1977 film shows a conflict typical of the genre – a computer gains consciousness and decides to oppose its creator. The thing is that its goal will not be domination and power over the world, but reproduction. After he gains control of the devices in the house, it is very easy for him to abduct the woman who is about to be impregnated by him. Yes, you read that right, impregnated. It is easy to be shocked when in perhaps the most famous scene of the film, against the will of a woman, an embryo of a creature combining the features of a human and a machine is implanted in her womb. Because no matter how irrational it sounds, one caution should be taken seriously. The future may belong to intelligent machines, and they may look for different ways to improve their species to one day put them above humans.
Jakub Piwoński