Live Nude Girls (1995): The Celluloid Dungeon

Live Nude Girls is a 1995 comedy-drama film, about a group of women who gather for a bachelorette party and mostly talk about sex.

The film starts with women as tween girls having a slumber party in a tent with a poster of David Cassidy, the dawning of their sexuality. In the present, the women mostly talk about their early experiences in the 70s, like reading page 26 of The Godfather, or sneaking peeks at their fathers’ copies of Playboy. Some of these are acted out in fantasy sequences. These women have a complex tangle of desire, vanity, anxiety and shame in their past and present sexual lives. 

Some of the talk in the second act gets a little kinky. Dana Delaney (Jill) and Kim Cattrall’s (Jamie) characters (with Charlie’s Angels hair) prep for a threesome with a guy described as a “Jewish Jim Morrison”. Delaney’s character talks about being spanked. 

Jamie: “You know there are some hairy men I find attractive. How about Sonny in The Godfather?”

Jill: “Oh, yes! Up against the door, page 27!”

Jamie: “No, 26!”

The kinkiest scene is Jill’s fantasy of being brought before a mob godfather and bare-hand spanked, with a good look at her butt (or more likely her body double’s). This scene includes the common motif in spanking fantasies of witnesses.

Jill: “There’s something about those gangsters that was such a turn-on. That was my biggest masturbation fantasy when I was in high school.”

Jamie: “Oof!”

Jill: “I pictured that den in The Godfather with all those men in it. I’ve cheated on the don’s son and the family finds out. So they bring me into the room and the don decides I must be punished. Sometimes he rubs an ice cube on my butt because it is so sore.”

Jill’s sister Rachel objects to telling everybody else. 

Jill: “That is why we are so messed up, because we are too ashamed to reveal ourselves. That’s why my fantasy is about being punished, because I’m ashamed. Don’t you get it? I mean, we’re women, so we’re supposed to be pure. We’re not supposed to have fantasies, because we’re supposed to be up on this pedestal.”

This is similar to the thesis of the book Female Perversions, in that female sexuality must engage in an elaborate game of misdirection to maintain female purity. “Rape” fantasies are just the most obvious form of this. 

Jill’s story makes Marcy flash back to her own childhood, when young Jill tried to get her to play a spanking game. Jill also finds her friend’s father’s hidden copy of Playboy which leads to a threatened spanking for Marcy from her father.

Later, Marcy talks about how her mother warned her as a child to stay away from ladies rooms at highway rest stops for fear of rapists. “Something about the idea of my very own rapist used to excite me.”

Her fantasy scene shows an adult Marcy, dressed like a Barbie doll, going to a highway rest stop and finding a handsome and studly biker. “I’ve been waiting for you, darling.”

Marcy: “I didn’t even know what a rapist was. He just kissed me and then asked if he could watch me pee.”

Not all of the fantasies are masochistic. Jill’s sister Rachel talks about her own fantasy.

Rachel: “I have a domination fantasy.”

Jamie: “Do tell.”

Rachel: “I make my cretin supervisor clean the bathroom.”

[Whiplash sound effect. Quick shot of man looking down toilet bowl with Rachel visible in the background]

Jill: “Rachel, that’s an intellectual fantasy, not a sexual one.”

Rachel: “Well…”

[Back in fantasy, man is cleaning the toilet. He wears a collar and a chain leash. Rachel, in a dominatrix outfit and cap, is holding the chain and a bullwhip.]

Rachel: “I guess.”

Interesting that this female dominant fantasy is not explored in the same way as the submissive fantasies.

For the most part, these women talk about their masochistic relationship to the institution of heterosexuality. For all the venting these women do about the men in their lives, they’re not really likely to change anything. The evening starts with Jamie deciding to call off her wedding, but then she talks to her fiance and changes her mind. Marcy flirts with lesbianism with the girlfriend of Georgina, who until recently identified as a lesbian but found herself having strong fantasies about a male co-worker. Jill, the most sexually adventurous, also seems to have the best long term relationship with her husband.

Dana Delaney (Jill) was in Exit to Eden (1994) the year previously, so this was not her first time with sex on screen or mild kink. Kim Cattrall (Jamie), best known as Samantha on Sex and the City, also has a history of sexy roles.