Bryn Pryor is an award-winning screenwriter and director whose credits include ‘Corruption,’ ‘Icon’ and ‘Cowboys & Engines.’ His latest documentary, ‘X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time,’ premiered on Showtime on February 6, 2015 at 11pm EST/PST.
When we started shooting our documentary, X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time, our goal was to prove that there are exceptions to the rule that all porn films are embarrassing, cheesy shlock. Okay, most of them are; but there are a few examples of real excellence. We narrowed it down to 32 for the final film, but of those, the below movies are my personal top five best adult movies ever:
Best Adult Movies Of All Time
Best Adult Movies: The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976)
Henry Paris’ adult masterpiece is, well, a masterpiece. It’s smart, funny, sexy, well-acted and well-written. Constance Money is fresh and gorgeous. Jamie Gillis was the best porn actor ever to grace the adult biz, and he was never better than he was in Misty Beethoven. If the aspiration of the time was to make a “real” movie with sex in it, no one has done it better, even 39 years later.
Related: Why Pornography Deserves Better Criticism
Best Adult Movies: Blonde Ambition (1981)
I had never seen this film until we started screening movies to profile for the doc, and it blew me away. It is genuinely hysterical. Patterned after the MGM musicals of the 30s, it’s the story of two girls working their way up the showbiz ladder in New York. The choreographed, Gone With the Wind, “burning of Atlanta” group sex scene is worth the price of admission on its own.
Best Adult Movies: Café Flesh (1982)
Rinse Dream’s surreal piece of performance-art porn really stands up years later. Firmly rooted in the visual language of the off-off-Broadway experimental theater scene, this movie is as original-feeling now as it must have been in ’82. More than just a XXX take on Cabaret, this movie is disturbing, fascinating, and undeniably hot.
Related: AVN Awards 2015: Exclusive Red Carpet Interviews (Video)
Best Adult Movies: Latex (1995)
This was the first adult movie to prove that adult content shot on video could actually be art. Awash in computer-generated backgrounds and effects, all of them actually well done, and driven by a captivating performance from the late Jon Dough, director Michael Ninn built an entire world, and we believed it.
Best Adult Movies: Upload (2007)
Okay, full disclosure; I directed this movie, but X-Rated producer Paul Fishbein insisted I include it, so I’m going to let him describe the movie and stroke my ego.
Paul says, “Next to Pirates, Upload was one of the biggest adult features ever made, and it shows. It’s a big story with a terrific script, great performances, and incredible sex scenes. It’s a throwback to the golden age, in that it really feels like you’re watching a movie, not a porn film.”
Obviously, this list is as subjective as the entire documentary. The fact is, any of the films we picked — and dozens we didn’t have time to include — could fill these five slots. Porn is considered a disposable genre, but behind the scenes, you’ll find there are people who are every bit as dedicated to their projects, their work, and their craft as in any other art form. The movies in our documentary prove it.
X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All-Time premieres February 6, 2015 at 11pm ET/PT on Showtime.
ALSO: 10 More of the Best X-Rated Scenes in Films
What do you believe should be considered as the best adult movies ever? Let us know in the comment section below.
The Best X Rated Scenes in Films
Watching an erotic scene on film between two (or three, or more) attractive Hollywood actors is always a jolly old time, but truly memorable sex scenes don’t come along very often.
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Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Ana (Ana López Mercado) makes a toast with the two charming teen chunks of raging hormones she’s teamed up with on a spontaneous road trip through Mexico: "Here’s to life and love and sex!" she declares, setting off on a journey to teach the flabbergasted boys all about precisely those subjects, with a special emphasis on the third. But a night that begins with a guzzling, raucous celebration ends in a steamy motel threesome – foursome, if you add the tequila — just before Ana’s tragic secret is revealed.
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A History of Violence (2005)
This is the second sex scene in the film, the first being much more tame, despite Edie’s titillating cheerleading outfit. When they go at it again, the wholesome family facade has been torn away. Edie, having learned that Tom is really a mobster in hiding, slaps him, and a fight ensues that quickly transforms into rough, screaming, combative sex. In his DVD commentary, Cronenberg notes, "It was a physically difficult scene to shoot and an emotionally very difficult scene to shoot. We wanted to suggest that she’s attracted and repelled by Joey, and she’s still looking for the Tom that’s in this creature." The passion, the pain, the pleasure and betrayal all comes through in the scene, which manages to be both disturbing and insanely erotic at the same time.
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Monster’s Ball (2001)
Prison guard Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) certainly didn’t expect to be sleeping with the wife of one of the men whose execution he presided over, but finds himself comforting Halle Berry’s living-a-nightmare character Leticia, the only way he knows how. "Make me feel good," Berry begs, searching for an ounce of happiness in the hell her life has become. She finds temporary comfort in Hank’s arms, as evidenced by a love scene that’s more urgent and passionately animalistic than any in recent memory.
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21 Grams (2003)
Make no mistake – 21 Grams is definitely one of those films that you see only once. The subject matter is crushing and overpowering: A man (Sean Penn) with a fatal heart condition is given the heart of a hit-and-run victim, whose devastated wife (Naomi Watts) turns to drugs and spirals into addiction. Penn and Watts’ characters eventually become fatally entwined with the driver in the hit-and-run (Benicio Del Toro), but in the midst of all that, a tortured, heartbroken union between Watts and Penn leads to a love scene that’s as emotionally charged and sexually tense as any film in memory. Watts’ astonishing beauty played no small part in this particular scene making the list.
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Sex and Lucía (2001)
Gorgeous Paz Vega, who you may remember as the sizzling housekeeper in Spanglish, sorta-kinda stalks novelist Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) and once they finally talk, he’s suddenly talked into letting her move in with him. Their fun comes at a terrible price, but their love scene convinces you that it’s well worth it.
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Little Children (2006)
Suburban outcasts indulge their instincts as emasculated, housebound husband Brad (Patrick Wilson) takes the artsy Sarah (Kate Winslet) in the laundry room on the dryer. The rocking of the machine helps, but it’s no comparison to the passionate thrusting between these two.
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Secretary (2002)
Anyone with a particular fondness for Maggie Gyllenhaal and S&M will be head over heels for this one, which features all kinds of spanking, demeaning and kinky antics performed on Miss G at the hands of James Spader. But it’s the bathtub scene, where Gyllenhall’s body glistens as Spader shampoos her hair, the voiceover where she explains how "for the first time in my life, I felt beautiful."
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Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Naomi Watts makes the list again as Betty, half the strangely desperate pair of would-be girl detectives, along with Rita (Laura Elena Harring), a silvery-blond wigged Hollywood amnesiac. After a traumatic afternoon, a goodnight kiss takes a passionate turn and Betty asks Rita, "Have you ever done this before?" – to which the afflicted Rita replies, "I don’t know. Have you?" Betty says, "I want to… with you," and with that, a heavenly all-girl love scene unfolds before the two descend into a typically Lynchian hell. Points deducted for the digital blurring of Harring’s unmentionables, but this is otherwise one of the hottest, most breathless scenes on celluloid.
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Team America: World Police (2004)
Trey Parker and Matt Stone had to make some massive cuts to Team America in order to secure an R-rating, but the infamous marionette sex scene is still far and away one of the most graphic sequences in movie history. The puppets do all sorts of things the MPAA would never, ever let humans do onscreen, but their lack of anatomic specifics allows for some rather alarming flexibility, both literally and figuratively.
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Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The highly controversial scene between Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in Ang Lee’s homoerotic drama marks the first full gay love scene between two major Hollywood actors of our generation. Sure, the Wyoming mountains tense moments in a sleeping bag leads to a scene mostly bathed in darkness, reliant upon shadows and sound to deliver the message. The film serves as a testament to the versatility and courage of both actors.
