Most controversial sex scenes ever – grave humping, animal sacrifice and Jesus romp

There’s been plenty of discourse recently that Hollywood is upping the ante when it comes to controversial sex scenes.

Take 2023’s Poor Things, starring Emma Stone as the resurrected Bella Baxter. Technically given the brain of an unborn child, Bella goes on a journey of self-discovery, even pleasuring herself with an apple at the breakfast table.

Another release from last year, Saltburn, saw Barry Keoghan act out slurping up his pal’s release from a bathtub after watching him masturbate in secret. That’s without mentioning the grave humping later on in the movie – when Felix dies, Oliver strips off and starts, erm, making love to his recently dug burial plot.

READ MORE: Nickelodeon boss was ‘pen pal’ with infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy

READ MORE: Click for more brilliant Daily Star showbiz stories

That whole thing was improvised by Keoghan, with director Emerald Fennell confessing: “I spoke to Barry in the morning, and I just said, ‘I don’t know, Barry. I think that he would… unzip. And Barry just said, ‘Yup.’”

Barry himself added: “She plants seeds, Emerald, you know what I mean?. She knows that they’re going to grow, these seeds, especially when she plants them with me. But it is a testament to Emerald and having that idea and me meeting it with, to be honest, no questions. I was totally on board for it.

“For me, it wasn’t about fecking the grave, it was more about I don’t know what to do with this obsession; it’s making me confused and making me unhuman in a way.” You might be surprised to know that the grave scene is far from the most controversial out there…

Squashed chicken

1972 black comedy Pink Flamingos, directed by John Waters, features unsimulated sex on screen. Worse, it features the slaughter of a real chicken, which is squashed between two romping partners in a gruesome display. The chickens are used as live sex toys in the bizarre film, which charts the characters’ attempts to become the ‘filthiest person alive’.

The director confronted the controversy from animal rights activists who found this a little too much to handle, fuming: “‘How could you kill a chicken for a movie?’ Well, I eat chicken, and I know the chicken didn’t land on my plate from a heart attack.

“We bought the chicken from a farmer who advertised freshly killed chicken. I think we made the chicken’s life better – it got to be in a movie, got f***ed, and then right after filming the next take, the cast ate the chicken.”

Dildo scene

In 1999 cult flick Requiem for a Dream, directed by Jennifer Lawrence’s ex Darren Aronofsky, it’s fair to say the sex gets a little out of hand for mainstream cinema. Following a group of drug addicts who become lost to their own delusions, it’s a grim watch.

One character is forced to turn to sex work to fuel her addiction, which leads to the most memorable scene in the entire film… the ‘a** to a**’ moment. Marion, played by Jennifer Connelly, is forced to entertain a gang of men by romping with another woman.

Assuming positions on all-fours, the pair both end up using a giant dildo between them in something that should probably stay relegated to XXX-rated sites… and not movie theatres.

Jesus romp

Martin Scorsese took things a step further with his 1988 flick The Last Temptation of Christ, which sees Jesus – played by Willem Dafoe – have sex with Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey).

Thankfully it’s only part of a dream sequence, brought on by Jesus being tempted by Satan, but it caused uproar with the Catholic church at the time. One group of fundamentalist viewers were in fact so disgusted by what was happening on-screen that they set fire to a Parisian cinema.

A makeshift molotov cocktail was ignited under a seat in the Saint Michel cinema, triggered by a vial of sulphuric acid. 13 people were injured in the terrorist attack, including four left with severe burns, and the cinema suffered damage. Scorsese himself received numerous death threats on the back of the project.

Devilish

1971 was a classic year for controversial sex on screen. Ken Russell’s The Devils is still heavily censored to this day, and that’s all because of one scene known as ‘the rape of Christ’. While it’s not quite that literal, the scene does see possessed nuns pleasuring themselves with crucifixes and Jesus effigies.

Eventually the scene was cut as it was most likely to get the film banned entirely, but it was later discovered, and the four-minute segment aired. Russell referred to it as “some of my finest work”.

He said: “It was one of the most mind-blowing sequences ever censored… it was always a truncated episode… in this sequence it’s as though they [the nuns] have been exploited to a point of total blasphemy of their religion and that’s what the authorities wanted and that’s what led to the destruction of the city.”

Genital mutilation

For more of the latest showbiz news from Daily Star, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.

It only gets grimmer from here on in. In true Lars von Trier style, 2009’s Antichrist, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsboug, features a scene where the female character cuts off her own clitoris using a pair of scissors.

The scene goes on to see Gainsbourg’s character crush Dafoe’s penis, which led to people passing out in cinemas while watching. While Dafoe offered to get naked for the movie, it was thought his massive manhood would be too distracting for audiences.

Dafoe explained: “Lars used a porn actor for those scenes. It was a good decision because, if it was me, then that’s all that people would talk about. Obviously Lars wants the characters to have genitals but it would become a distraction: ‘Oh, they really had sex!’ If he had asked me to do it, I don’t know what I would have said.”

Follow Daily Star on Threads here.

Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk