Cringiest movie sex scenes – from J-Lo’s ‘turkey time’ romp to infamous pool session and a bizarre bonking puppet

SEX on screen is always a difficult thing to depict properly. 

We all know it’s a performance – but it takes a damn good director and top-level acting to make the intimacy seem genuine, and to make the scene blend seamlessly with the film.

Often, the best move is to just cut before any of the action actually starts, and let built-up tension do the work.

Because otherwise, you might end up with something wooden, unsexy, and downright toe-curling.

Legendary Bond actor Daniel Craig recently confessed that he’s not always done the best job on them.

Promoting his new film, Queer, he admitted: “I’ve shot some terrible f***ing love scenes in my career.

“They’re out there to see.”

While Craig might not be the proudest of his previous work in this area, his scenes are at least good enough to avoid being considered among the worst sex scenes of all time.

But J-Lo and Madonna aren’t so lucky. And Barry Keoghan makes the list too – for a scene he improvised.

From alien romps to bonking a puppet duck, these are the most cringe-inducing sex scenes ever to make the silver screen.

Howard the Duck

Howard the Duck is often cited as Star Wars and Indiana Jones director George Lucas’s all-time low. 

Featuring a humanoid duck tasked with saving Earth from an alien invasion, the 1986 film is best forgotten for many a reason.

But chief among them has to be the sex scene between Lea Thompson and Howard the Duck himself. 

It was never meant to be sexy – it is, after all, a duck and a human – and thanks to tasteful use of silhouetting, we’re spared from seeing too much of the action.

Yet the fact alone that this scene was thought up is enough to send most people running to a sick bucket.

Far Out Magazine have even called it “a crime against most people’s retinas” and “the most obscene sex scene in Hollywood history.”

“I’ve given up trying to assimilate. I’ve got to get back to my own kind!” says Howard at one point in the movie, before adding: “Although, I have developed a greater appreciation for the female version of the human anatomy. Aroooo!”

Appearing on Conan, Lea Thompson’s daughter, Zoey Deutch, spoke to the host about the scene.

She said: “There is a particular scene in the film in which my mother makes love to a duck, and I saw it.

“So, what’s the next step: I go to my father, and I go to my mother, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I know the duck’s name is Howard, dad your name is Howard—this is complicated.’

“I thought my mother was going to leave my dad for a duck. Eventually, [my parents] were like, ‘Oh this is for grown-ups. You weren’t supposed to watch that. It’s for adults.’ 

“So at school when people would ask me what my mother does for a living I would say, ‘She’s an actress… in adult films’.”

Eye-scrubbing soap at the ready, then.

Watchmen

Zack Snyder’s superhero film, based on the comic by Alan Moore, is one of only a few films in the genre to cross over into the land of eroticism. 

But given how the sex scene in this film went down, it’s a surprise it didn’t kill off displays of intimacy in superhero films forever. 

After a night of crime-busting together, Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) and Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) find themselves getting it on.

Scenes of getting out of spandex superhero costumes come across on screen as painful as it sounds

But the cringe-factor is ramped to the match by the song choice – Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

“Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord, that David played, and it pleased the Lord,” he sings, as Akerman unzips her chest piece.

Cue awkward, obviously choreographed sex, along with a cutaway to a symbolic firing of their ship’s thrusters, it’s no wonder this is often cited as one of the worst sex scenes of all time.

Showgirls

Actors drop their agents all the time – but sometimes, a film goes down so badly it leads to the agent dropping the actor.

And that’s exactly what happened to Elizabeth Berkely after the release of 1995’s camp classic Showgirls.

This nudity-packed film about the ladies of Las Vegas was jam-packed with moments of toe-curling cringe – from the pronunciation of Versace (Ver-sayce) to licking a fireman’s pole (not an innuendo.)

It received harsh criticism at the time, and tanked at the box office, but in the years since it’s gone down as a cult classic.

I was left out in the cold and I was a pariah in the industry I had worked so hard for

Elizabeth Berkley

Despite “every girl in Hollywood” fighting for the role, Berkeley’s career never quite recovered.

Speaking in 2020, she said: “There was so much cruelty around it.

“I was bullied. And I didn’t understand why I was being blamed. The job as an actor is to fulfil the vision of the director. And I did everything I was supposed to do. No one associated with the film spoke up on my behalf to protect me.”

“I was left out in the cold and I was a pariah in the industry I had worked so hard for.”

Out of everything the film offers, peak-cringe occurs with the pool sex scene – described by GQ magazine as “the most bonkers sex scene in the history of cinema.”

Gigli

Picture the scene: you’re in the bedroom with your significant other, perhaps having spent a special date night with each other.

The moment’s right, and you’re feeling intimate – but keen to keep the mood right, you’re making sure to choose your words carefully.

You might even look to the movies for inspiration. 

But if 2003’s Gigli comes to mind, then consider it time to call it a night.

Starring Jennifer Lopez as a lesbian assassin, she quickly forgets her fondness for her own sex and ends up in bed with Ben Affleck.

At the moment he begins a risque sex act, she exclaims the now infamous quote: “It’s turkey time! Gobble gobble.”

I don’t remember a whole bunch more about it, but I remember being on the set with him every day and loving it

Jennifer Lopez

While this film did mark the beginning of J-Lo and Affleck’s real-life romance, the awkward, wooden performance they gave in bed was painfully unsexy and downright weird.

Fortunately, she seems to have fond memories of the production. 

She later said: “They did a read-through of the whole thing and I remember kind of just walking in and I think he (Affleck) was outside, smoking a cigarette, and I saw him and we just talked, for, like, a minute and then I sat down and we did the read-through.

“I don’t remember a whole bunch more about it, but I remember being on the set with him every day and loving it.”

We can only hope their off-screen antics were an improvement on what audiences witnessed at the time.

Body of Evidence 

Many of cinema’s greatest actors have stripped off at some point, and sometimes pop stars have got in on the act, too.

But if 90s erotic thriller Body of Evidence is anything to go by, it’s a combination that should never be allowed to mix – at least, not in front of a paying audience.

Starring Willem Dafoe and Madonna, the film follows Rebecca Carlson, who’s accused of killing her coked-up wealthy boyfriend… by literally bonking him to death.

It’s only natural then that her defence attorney, Frank Dulaney, has to try out the potentially fatal activity himself.

What unfurls is an S&M packed escapade that left us with one of the cringiest sex scenes in history.

Straddling Dafoe, she pours molten wax and champagne over his body. And then licks it up.

The ridiculous premise of the film certainly doesn’t help things, but most people agree that the film would be better-off without this display of kinky lovemaking by candlelight.

Avatar

Visually stunning but forgettable is how Avatar went down in the decade since its release.

But while primarily an allegory for American colonialism, James Cameron’s imagination also gave us one of the most bizarre sex scenes in sci-fi cinematic history – if you can call it a sex scene.

When soldier-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and planet Pandora-native Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) fall for each other, they mark their bond in the way all good couples do, by getting intimate.

Except, for these two, “sex” meant connecting their hair to each other, and plugging themselves into nature itself.

I wanted to see what Oliver would do next. I wanted to see what the next level of obsession was

Barry Keoghan

On the one hand, it was supposed to be a tender display of intimacy, showing off the native population’s deep connection to the living world around them.

But on the other hand, those of us watching couldn’t help but feel like we were watching the couple doing it…alien style.

The scene had audiences around the world cringing in their seats, so much so that the moment was relegated to the extended cut the next year, and then was taken out all together. 

Saltburn

It was the posh-kid country house, orgy-filled flick of the year, a wicked black comedy best summed up as Brideshead with bonking.

Audiences were gripped the moment it came out – not least because it’s jam-packed with scenes that range from the bizarre to the downright revolting.

Among the cast are men-of-the-moment Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan, alongside Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant.

In one scene, Oliver drinks the water his friend Felix has just bathed in.

While viewers have been repulsed, it’s hard to deny that these scenes got the film talked about.

But when it comes to the most memorable moment – for either shock-value or cringe-value – one scene takes the crown and runs away with it.

This is the notorious “graveyard scene” – i.e., the moment Oliver humps the grave of friend Felix, buried six feet under.

Most shockingly of all, this scene was improvised, coming straight from the mind of Barry Keoghan himself.

He told Deadline: “I wanted to see what Oliver would do next. I wanted to see what the next level of obsession was. 

“And by that [I mean], I just wanted the camera to roll. Not to kind of preempt it or rehearse it and what happened, happened. 

“It was one take, and I think it was right. It moved the story forward.”