10 nude fights that burned into our retinas

Film history is full of more memorable physical confrontations, from the precisely choreographed fights of martial arts films to the more spontaneous hair-tearing. However, true determination, passion or desperation is not indicated by as many weapons or combat clothes as possible, but on the contrary, by being completely naked. The one who fights in such a way that he literally strips himself completely is signaling to the other that he is not interested in conventions and rules, he is simply obeying a primitive, ancient instinct and has nothing to lose.

Of course, as shocking as the sight of naked wrestlers can be, it can easily turn into a comedy, which is why you can find similar moments in comedies as well. We have selected from both categories for our list.

In Ken Russell’s film, two friends fall for each other rather than women in love. The story is about two couples who go on a joint honeymoon to Switzerland. The vacation takes a bizarre turn when Rupert (Alan Bates) and Gerald (Oliver Reed) have a polite conversation in an elegant fireplace-lit room about the therapeutic effect of taking out our frustrations by hitting something. That’s where the idea comes from to strip and wrestle each other.

A not-so-polite fight ensues, but the harder the fight gets, the more they both enjoy it. After Rupert and Gerald get tired, they lie side by side on the floor and carry on the conversation as if it were the most natural thing in the world for old buddies to fight naked sometimes. Most of the similar scenes on this list aren’t about homoeroticism, but Russell pulls off this one too.

In the film set during the Meiji period, the little girl Ocho is forced to watch her father being murdered. Twenty years later, she has become a skilled gambler, thief and swordsman, ready to avenge her father.

In addition to Lady Snowblood, Norifumi Suzuki’s erotic thriller also inspired Tarantino, as evidenced by the fight scene in Kill Bill taking place in the snow. The American director, on the other hand, did not write a scene for Uma Thurman in which she would have to stand naked with a sword against a dozen men. However, in the infamous closing scene of Sex and the Fury, we also get this: Reiko Ike, who plays Ocho, fights naked against members of the yakuza in a bathhouse.

There are quite a few unexpected moments in the movie about surfer bank robbers, but none of them are as surprising as when the FBI agent played by Keanu Reeves gets his ass kicked by a completely naked woman. The incident took place in the 53rd minute, Johnny Utah and his partner, Agent Pappas (Gary Busey), raid the house of a group of surfers. In this scene, the character played by Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis is shot in the leg, but even more memorable is the entrance of Julie Michaels. He’s in the shower when the raid begins, and he gives Johnny a hearty beating in the bathroom. He smashes his head into a mirror and even backstabs another FBI agent twice before Busey’s character knocks him out. And the best part of it all is that we can thank a female director, Kathryn Bigelow, for this frenzied scene.

Borat’s naked fight simply has to be seen to be believed. In one corner is Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen), the Kazakh journalist, and in the other, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), Borat’s hairy and burly producer. Their “creative difference of opinion” over their upcoming documentary culminates in a bare-knuckle fight. At first, they only wrestle on the hotel room bed, and Cohen, with death-defying courage, allows his co-star, who weighs at least 150 kilos, to sit on his face. The fight then continues in an elevator full of understandably horrified hotel guests, and then in a crowded conference room where some sort of business seminar is taking place.

The scene is so effective because Cohen and Davitian really give it their all. From the biography book Sacha Baron Cohen: From Cambridge to Kazakhstan, it is also revealed that Cohen’s masculinity had to be risked because “the obvious adrenaline rush to survive the squirming under the weight of the Davitian” caused embarrassing blood clots in the actor’s private parts …

David Cronenberg’s thriller and, of course, Viggo Mortensen’s prison-covered body gave us one of the best nude melee scenes in film history. While two criminals are trying to hold a secret meeting in a bath house, they are attacked by two Chechen assassins. The towels are quickly dropped and viewers are treated to an absolutely brutal naked action scene. The thugs are armed with knives, they stab Nikolaj, blood flows, the floor becomes slippery. Mortensen’s character doesn’t have to be afraid, he attacks back and even stabs one of the bad guys in the eye with his own knife. Selfishness is out of the question here, in fact, it’s authentic: when assassins ambush you in a sauna, you don’t have time to look for a strategically placed towel, because your life is at stake.

If you look up the term “beastly instinct” in the dictionary, instead of an article you will only see a photo of Tom Hardy, so it is no wonder that the British actor has several memorable naked fights. In Bronson, he plays Charles Bronson (not the actor), a real person who was once considered Britain’s most violent criminal. Michael Peterson, who goes by the stage name Bronson, spent a total of more than thirty-four years behind bars, thirty of them in solitary confinement. The figure played by the grizzled, bald and mustachioed Hardy is like a psychopathic version of Forrest Gump with anger issues.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s film culminates in an absolutely insane finale. When Bronson hears that the prison’s art studio is being closed, Bronson reacts by taking the art teacher hostage. As soon as he learns that the guards are at the door, he strips down, smears black paint all over his body, and goes into battle. Refn shows all of this in such a lavish slow motion that the sight of naked Hardy is guaranteed to burn into the viewer’s brain.

In Todd Phillips’ comedy comedy, the boundaries of good taste are pushed so many times that a naked fight might not blow the viewers’ fuse, but this scene still has its place here. According to the story, while the friends played by Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis are looking for their missing partner after a bachelor party gone wrong, they hear a knock from the trunk of their car. Assuming it’s their buddy, they pull over and open the trunk—and at that moment, Chinese thug Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) jumps out naked and immediately attacks.

He first jumps on Cooper’s character and beats him with a wrench, then punches Helms a few times and points the gun at Galifianakis before running away. The scene is also funny because Jeong is not a bodybuilder, to put it mildly, so it’s fun to see the featherweight man bouncing naked.

The most successful comedy of 2023 would definitely win an award in the most unexpected revelation category. On the one hand, because it is presented by Jennifer Lawrence, who for a long time was one of those actresses who did not like to take on nude roles, and not many people expected that she would make an exception in a slapstick comedy. On the other hand, the viewers were not only surprised by the fact that the actress’s skin can be seen for long seconds, but also that her nudity is a source of jokes. According to the story, Lawrence’s character interrupts a nude bath in order to chase away teenagers who intend to steal her clothes. Carrying out such a scene would be a brave undertaking for a male actor, and even more so for a Hollywood actress.

In a brutally tough Viking film, where else could the final big clash between the animalistically wild protagonists take place, if not in the crater of an active volcano, so that of course both parties are in Adam costumes.

The finale of The North, in which Alexander Skarsgård and Claes Bang, who plays his uncle, show everything, is unforgettable for that reason. Director Robert Eggers later revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that the complete nudity was just an illusion.

“We actually had to do it digitally because they were wearing thongs because no one wanted to have their genitals cut off. So we actually had to add some CGI genitalia for some shots so they didn’t look like a Ken doll. But it had to look real, so I’m sure we scanned Alex’s whole body.”

Alexander Skarsgård was so into naked fighting that he even rehearsed one in Brandon Cronenberg’s film. Filmed in Hungary and Croatia, the surreal sci-fi body horror is based on a rather sick basic idea. The setting is a fictitious Balkan country, Li Tolqa, where James, played by Skarsgård, and his wife are on vacation, and when he drunkenly runs over a local man, it turns out that according to the country’s laws, the victim’s eldest child has the right to kill the perpetrator. Fortunately, there is a loophole specifically for rich foreigners, James can choose to have a copy of him made – a clone that not only looks identical to him, but also inherits his consciousness and memories – and the victim’s offspring executes him .

This makes possible the climactic scene in which (SPOILER) the drugged James has to fight to the death with his own naked clone, but whether this actually happens or is just a hallucination of the man is up to the viewer.

James Cameron’s classic cannot be left out either. It’s true that we can’t talk about a real fight, just a beating, because the naked Terminator takes down the motorcycle bar he went to for clothes in seconds, but many people saw a nude scene in a movie for the first time, which had nothing to do with erotica.

via: Ranker / Letterboxd