The 12 Best Sleazy Movies We've Ever Seen
Here are some examples of great sleazy movies.
They aren't guilty pleasures, they're just pleasures.
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Last House on the Left (1972)
Wes Craven's debut has a scuzzy unfinished quality that lend a documentary quality to its violence and cruelty, which makes it difficult to watch – but also hard to tear yourself away from. It has a car-crash voyeurism that makes you complicit in its nastiness.
A story of abduction, brutality and vengeance, scored by eerie hippie music, Last House on the Left is a time capsule of burned-out idealism but a harbinger of Craven's incredible horror career, which includes the classic Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream horror franchises.
And producer Sean S. Cunningham would go on to direct the first film in the Friday the 13th franchise, which will turn up soon on this list.
Freeway (1996)
Writer-director Matthew Bright's very '90s update on Little Red Riding Hood stars a very young Reese Witherspoon as Vanessa, an illiterate teenager living in Southern California with her sex worker mom (Amanda Plummer) and evil, predatory stepfather (Michael T. Weiss). Then things get worse.
When her mom is arrested, Vanessa tries to trek north to Grandma's house, but she's picked up by modern-day big bad wolf Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland.)
Everything about this movie feels wrong, and it's intoxicating. We love all the acting — Witherspoon is spectacular — as well as the surprise appearances of stars like Brooke Shields and stars-to-be like Bokeem Woodbine and Brittany Murphy.
Best of all, we saw this for free, via the Kanopy app.
And it's also on our list of '90s Comedies That Just Don't Care If You're Offended.
Body Double (1984)
The gold standard of sleazy '80s movie, this Brian De Palma neo-noir imagines a Hitchcock movie in the era of VHS adult home movies.
It stars Craig Wasson as a struggling actor named Jake Scully who gets a housesitting gig that includes a creepy side bonus — he gets to watch a neighbor seductively undress and dance around each night. (The movie assumes that this is totally cool, despite her apparent lack of awareness that he's watching.)
But then things get even weirder, as a home invader with a drill breaks into the woman's home, and Jake's search for answers links him up with adult actress Holly Body, played by a terrifically game Melanie Griffith. It's great sleazy fun that will keep you guessing.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
A movie that makes you want to take a shower afterwards, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a relentlessly sleazy movie that uses sleaze to its great advantage.
It's one of the most effective and captivating horror movies ever made thanks to its hardcore, disquieting atmosphere, oozing with sex and the constant threat of violence.
Filled with the sounds of animals and buzzing flies, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre makes clear from the start that it has no limits, even before we hear the first rev of Leatherface's chainsaw.
It's also on our list of the 11 Scariest Horror Movies of the '70s.
Natural Born Killers (1994)
Oliver Stone tried to have it both ways in this ultraviolent killer-couple movie that tries to high-mindedly denounce sleazy tabloid TV while also being quite sleazy itself.
We're meant to at least begrudgingly like — if not outright root for — serial killers Mickey and Mallory, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. (Stone is quoted saying in the 2016 book The Oliver Stone Experience that he cast the actors because he thought they could look trashy.) It's also fun to watch Robert Downey Jr. as a sanctimonious sleaze.
The film was based on a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that was so thoroughly changed that Tarantino has distanced himself from the film. (Not because it was a sleazy movie, mind you, but because Tarantino thinks the final film misunderstood his intentions.)
Kids (1995)
Kids, the directorial debut of Larry Clark and the screenwriting debut of Harmony Korine, was criticized at the time of its release for its blunt depiction of a hedonistic teen world filled with sex, drugs, and exploitation. The lead character, Telly (an excellent Leo Fitzpatrick) is an unrepentant 17-year-old predator who targets very young girls.
As Roger Ebert noted, the film "doesn't tell us what it means." But that's not what makes Kids sleazy — depicting behavior isn't endorsing it, and Kids can be read as an important message movie about kids' need for attention and guidance.
What's uncomfortable about the film, in retrospect, is its leering camerawork with young subjects. One could argue that its cinematography, while sleazy, serves the film by making viewers into bystanders who do nothing to intervene and save the kids onscreen.
It's a fascinating, well-done film, notable for being the debut film of the great actresses Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson. It also has one of the best soundtracks of the '90s.
Lost Highway (1997)
This David Lynch epic — released in a down cycle in his career between the success of Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive — tells a story of jealousy-driven murder from the perspective of the killer or killers, Fred and Pete, played by Bill Paxton and Balthazar Getty.
It's all very intoxicatingly confusing — a recent episode of the outstanding You Must Remember This Podcast noted that Lynch was inspired in part by the O.J. Simpson case — and it's hard to put your finger on what's so sleazy about it.
But sleazy hallmarks abound: Fred plays saxophone, the official woodwind of sleazy erotic thrillers; Robert Blake is a central figure; it's all driven by the death of an adult movie producer.
Anyway, we love it. A sleazy movie that uses sleaze exquisitely.
Saw (2004)
Saw is one of those movies cited by people who say they hate horror movies, but the original, at least, is a very well-crafted thriller that relies on twists and solid performances more than shock value. There's something very sleazy about watching people suffer for entertainment, but Saw's unapologetic sleaziness makes its a very compelling watch.
And before you say "Really? Saw is good?," let's please remember that is stars very legit actors Danny Glover (above) and Cary Elwes, and premiered at the prestigious Sundance film festival. Not bad for a sleazy movie.
It has spawned nine sequels, including the recent Saw X.
Wild Things (1998)
Wild Things stars Neve Campbell and Denise Richards — who were 23 and 26 at the time, respectively — as two high schoolers who take part in a very twisty, very diabolical con. There's so, so, so much wrong with Wild Things — the dicey portrayal of high school girls, the narrative device of young women lying about assault, the murders — but it's willingness to ignore guardrails of good taste makes it a masterpiece of Gen X noir, pulling from the best elements of widely panned films like Showgirls.
Campbell and Richards (above) are magnificent, as are Bill Murray as a delightfully sleazy lawyer, Matt Dillon as a morally corrupt guidance counselor, and Kevin Spacey as a mysterious cop.
Bacon is also an executive producer of the film, and shows something in a shower scene that you didn't generally see in 1990s movies. In retrospect it seems like a great example of equal-opportunity gratuitous skin, and good for him. It makes it a slightly less sleazy movie.
Hostel (2005
Hostel is kind of like Saw for people who thought Saw was too soft. Director Eli Roth is a student of horror and exploitation flicks, and enlists all of their best tricks while introducing several horrible ones of his own.
What makes Hostel so good is the way it combines very dark social commentary with the nightmarish spectacles to make us rethink the way the world works.
The Laughing Woman aka Femina Ridens (1969)
One of the weirdest, wildest, and most gorgeous-looking sleazy movies we've ever seen, this very 1969 Italian film will be a good wakeup call for anyone who thinks 50 Shades of Grey kicked off that whole scene.
The film is about a woman (Dagmar Lassander, above) who goes undercover in the lair of a possible serial killer who delights in degrading his victims.
It's all so sleazy you can't believe you're watching it, but then there's a twist! It's actually... a romance? The film is very worth watching for set design that evokes the sleek, chic futurism of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, which came out two years later.
Friday the 13th (1980)
After the success of John Carpenter's relatively tasteful slasher film Halloween in 1978, studios sought to cash in with a slew of teen slasher movies — and Friday the 13th was one of the most grimly effective.
The setup is simple and appealed to hormone-addled kids in drive-ins: A mystery killer (not wearing a hockey mask in this one) piles up sun-kissed camp-counselor bodies, dispatched in creative ways.
It was the beginning of a sleazy formula that would serve the Friday the 13th franchise — and many others — very well. The film made more than 100 times its budget at the box office.
Liked Our List of the Best Sleazy Movies We've Ever Seen?
You might also like our list of Big Stars Who Started Out in Horror Movies.
Main image: Denise Richards in Wild Things.
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