This underappreciated and quite lovable ’80s silliness runs on the charm of Peter O’Toole’s lead performance as an eccentric professor looking to clone his dead wife… and on the goofy and oddly overwritten shower scene that happens at about 56 minutes in. Young Boris (Vincent Spano) and Barbara (the ever-smokin’ Virginia Madsen), who have been laying on the sexual tension for almost an hour of screen time, finally get it on after a day at the beach. It begins platonically enough with her taking a shower as he stands on the other side of the bathroom door and describes the first time he lost his virginity (he was 15, she was 27 and there were apparently how-to diagrams involved). She emerges from the shower and out of nowhere snatches his towel from his waist, which leads to a mutual soak (she takes two showers, you see) where they discuss the downfalls of being middle class (??) as they soap each other up. They eventually (finally!) kiss passionately and we cut to the bed, where the sociological philosophizing has been replaced by plans to get married as they pant and giggle and hump. Yeah, it’s a bit complicated.
Here’s a gig from the Early Days in Hollywood of Hilary Swank that she probably wishes would disappear from her resume. A half-assed and self-congratulatory would-be existential meta-musing about what it’s really like to live in one of the cruelest towns on the planet, Quiet Days in Hollywood claims that we’re all linked by who we bang, as a domino effect of who-sleeps-with-who creates a series of interlocking (and rather uninteresting) stories and (rather unlikable) characters. We begin and end with a young prostitute named Lolita (Swank), whose brief getting-clean scene comes at about an hour and 11 minutes in, where the future Oscar winner bounces into the shower, expertly covering her breasts with her arms. “It’s so cold!” she giggles as her silent shower mate (Peter Dobson) looks at her like she’s from outer space. You also get a bonus shower scene from ’90s indie movie goddess Natasha Gregson Wagner at about 39 minutes in after she enjoys a bit of afternoon delight with Swank’s future ex-husband, Chad Lowe. Oh, the trials and tribulations of those who dwell in the seedy underbelly of L.A.!
These direct-to-DVD Lost Boys sequels are ridiculous, with Corey Feldman embarrassing himself in brand new ways as he reprises his role as the (inexplicably) gravelly-voiced vampire killer, Edgar Frog… and yet they have something that compels you to watch them. The Tribe opens with genre veteran Tom Savini getting killed by a bunch of beach thugs, and we then flash-forward to a brother and sister recovering from a personal tragedy and looking to start over in Santa Carla, CA (the “murder capital of the world,” if you remember) — for the brother, “starting over” involves getting wet and clean with a vampire hottie. The shower scene starts off rather comically at about 22 minutes in, with our hero rather enthusiastically stripping and bounding into the shower once he catches sight of the bloodsucking beauty (Moneca DeLain) bathing herself; unfortunately, we cut to a four-minute scene of sis talking about death with a surfer dude before we get to jump in with them. The scene is your basic groping-and-kissing-under-the-spraying-nozzle kind of stuff, but it’s given some extra spice by being intercut with another guy at the party getting stabbed in the stomach multiple times — simply a practical joke, as the guy is a vampire and not really fazed by such nonsense, except for the fact that it grosses out his would-be sexual conquest (“I’m trying’ to get laid, man!” he whines as he tries to put his guts back into his stomach). Back in the shower, brother gets distracted by all the ruckus and excuses himself: “I’ve got to check on my sister.” Yeah, that’ll spoil the mood.
This gleefully sick little thriller stars Liam Neeson as a mortician who has the unique ability to communicate with the recently deceased and help them cross over to the other side… or maybe he’s just a warped serial killer who makes people think they’re dead for a few days before doing them in for real. Either way, his latest subject/victim is Anna (Christina Ricci), an unhappy schoolteacher who got in a nasty car accident after fleeing from a dinner date with her boyfriend (Justin Long) where she thought he was going to break up with her. The former Wednesday Addams is definitely all grown up, spending a good majority of her screen time laying on a gurney completely nude — which means there’s plenty of opportunities to see Christina naked besides the shower scene that happens at about 48 minutes in, a rather macabre set piece featuring her reaching into her chest and pulling out her still-beating heart as Long completely freaks out. Turns out he was just dreaming… or was he? After this and Drag Me to Hell, the Mac guy can now put an embargo on playing any more well-meaning yet hopelessly confused boyfriends of women in supernatural crisis.
The shower scene in this nasty little Australian thriller is unique in that no one involved remembers to actually turn the water on, though such an oversight is understandable what with all the psychological and physical torture going on. Stephen Moyer plays Andrew, an agoraphobic art dealer who’s taken hostage by Ron (Travis Fimmel) and Dale (Teresa Palmer) as they flee a murder scene; they take refuge in a country estate and promptly begin a series of mind games in which it soon becomes unclear who’s sicker: the captors or the captive. However, early on in the story (about 21 minutes in, to be precise), things are a little more cut and dried — Andrew, who’s handcuffed to the bathtub, is definitely the victim as complete cuckoo bird Dale taunts him about his missing wife as she prances around the bathroom naked as a jaybird. What, no clothes? She must be crazy! There’s eventually a lot more than meets the eye to this sly, sadistic tale, but in the (dry-ish) shower scene, what you see is what you get — and you see quite a bit from Ms. Palmer.
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Best Of Netflix: Obscure Shower Scenes, Volume 2