“The Room”
So yeah, picking on “The Room,” a film that’s become a cult favorite thanks to its sheer awfulness and incompetence at every single level (and, if it was only 10% less irredeemably shitty, would never have been heard of), might seem slightly unfair. And indeed, we were tempted not to include them, but then we watched them again, and decided we really had no option. Director/star Tommy Wiseau shoots and blocks every sex scene in exactly the same manner — like an excerpt from an early 1990s Lover’s Guide-type tape. Awful R&B soundtracks it, the guys all have the same moves, the girls pretty much just lay there, and Wiseau never saw a silk curtain that he couldn’t stick in front of his camera. And then it’s all topped by the extraordinary expressions of the guy in the second clip below, who 1) appears to be reacting before the act itself actually takes place, and 2) has the single most off-putting orgasm face in history. Ah, what would we do without “The Room”?
“Gigli”
As with “The Room,” laying into “Gigli” makes us feel bad; it’s a legendary disaster of a film that came close to ending the careers of its two leads, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (then still a real life couple; the former’s bounced back in a huge way thanks to his directing work, the latter… not so much), and did end the career of its writer-director, Martin Brest, who hasn’t worked since. But again, there is a reason for that, not least in its notorious and interminable sex scene. Affleck plays a junior mobster, who kidnaps the mentally-challenged younger brother (Justin Bartha) of a prosecutor in order to gain leverage for his boss, only to find that his employer has also hired a woman, Ricki (Lopez), to aid him with the task. About two-thirds of the way through, the pair sleep together, and it’s awful and offensive as an idea on its own. Why? You see, Lopez’s character is a lesbian, “turned” by Affleck’s dim-witted charms, and only a few moments after her girlfriend has attempted suicide, no less. And between Brest’s endless, sub-Tarantino dialogue, the complete lack of chemistry between the pair, and Lopez’s command “It’s turkey time, gobble gobble,” it’s hard to imagine how the execution could be any worse.
“The Man Who Fell To Earth”
Nicolas Roeg might have been responsible for arguably the best sex scene in screen history with “Don’t Look Now” (along with other memorable moments in “Performance” and “Walkabout,” among others), but the director couldn’t pull it off every time. His otherwise strong sci-fi “The Man Who Fell To Earth,” starring David Bowie at his most Tilda Swinton-ish, features a number of questionable romps between Bowie’s visitor from another world, Newton, and hotel employee Mary-Lou (“American Graffiti” star Candy Clark). It doesn’t help that Clark is miscast, and Roeg shoots her in a way that feels ickily exploitative, but it reaches its nadir as Newton reveals his alien form to her, complete with dissolves/intercuts to what appears to be a bukkake-like alien mating ritual. It’s a film from a different time, obviously, and one has to forgive it a certain amount, and for much of the film, it’s less of a problem. But there’s a limit, and we can’t imagine these scenes being particularly involving even at the time.
