Saturday, 24 January 2015

BEST OF THE TOP TEN LISTS - The Top 10 Top X Shower Scenes in Cinema lists

I do way too many blogs to follow, so here's the posts best from them.

body double

The shower scene.  A horror film staple and, some claim, a reason to get an actress (or in some cases her body double) naked.  Whatever the reason or genre there are many lists of what people think are the bests of these scenes.  What are the Top 10 Top X Lists, and what do they tell us?




Silver Screen Shower Screens... something worth singing about.

DEFINITIONS

  • Shower Scenes is easy.  Scenes, set in a shower.
  • Cinema is easy, theatrically released movies.
  • Best is harder.  Is it the best film making or the sexiest?  Most lists have a scene at the top considered one of the greatest scenes in films and while may be considered "sexy" by some, many others are sexier.  I've just assumed we're all talking about quality of film making, although sexiness seems to bias the results.


A lot of the lists tend to mock of mock mock the use of shower scenes being only for titillation.  (Of course there are more than 10 Ways Film Nudity can be more than Gratuitous Titillation) but they have to, it seems, justify why their making a list of shower scenes, rather than say, people playing with animals scenes or close ups of flowers scenes.

\Shower

10.  Newsburner's Top 5 Movie Shower Scenes. Ed Rodfree.  20 Sept 2011.  Top 5 Countdown.
Blatantly steals from the Made Man list (below), with the text pieces for #5, 4, 3 being plagiarised completely or in part from the  superior list (from entries #10, 9, 4 respectively).   It have embedded video for each entry, whereas the original doesn't.  Increasingly bizarrely, in the comments section he states that he would have put Porky's at #3 but put prefers Beverly D'Angelo is National Lampoon's Vacation so put that in.  Of course, this makes the list seem completely arbitrary and random.  If he prefers Vacation, why not make Porky's #4 instead?

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9.  King2008y's - Youtube list.
Four scenes, seemingly stolen from the bottom of UGO's Best Shower Scenes.  The list is [1][2][3][4]

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8.  This Blog Rules' The 5 Greatest Shower Scenes in Cinematic History.  Watson.  7 Dec 2011.  Top 5 List.
The preamble swings between condemning shower scenes are cheap ways to show breasts and believing they are legitimate film making.  Although the list uses the words "cinematic" it acknowledges one of the entries was released Straight-to-DVD.  It mostly celebrates sexy shower scenes that show little nudity, with Porky's being the sole exception and the strange addition of Psycho (low on the list) on a list that doesn't seem to be about great film making.  Does embed videos for each entry.

Shower

7.  Watch Mojo's 10 Best Movie Shower Scenes.  Ongoing Poll.
Watch Mojo's Movie 10 Tens videos are usually pretty lame and rarely represent the 10 best.  This list of 12 possibilities for a future list you can vote up or down show why. Eight of the possible choices appear on none of the other 9 lists here.  Now I have nothing against a personal list being different and having unique entries on it, but for voting opinions you really want some popular choices.  [See also here.]

Shower

6.  Mr Skin's Top 5 Best Shower Scenes of All Time.  4 March 2008.  Video Top 5 Countdown.
A video countdown, which are always a pain in the butt.  It's all about sexiness and which female celebrity is naked, but it's Mr Skin.  You accept that going in.  [Also available here.]

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5.  UGO's The Best Shower Scenes Ever.  K. Thor Jensen.  27 July 2011.  Top 11 Countdown.
This one sort of breaks my rules.  It's not a solely cinema list (containing 3 computer games, an episode of a TV show and a made for DVD movie) but the title does say either way and the preamble only talks about cinema, so I'm counting it.

Shower

4.  B&Q's Poll of the Top Movie Shower Scenes.  Aug 2009.  Top 10 Poll.
A UK hardware chain did a poll basically to sell shower heads.  Good on them.  And it was a good enough marketing ploy to get reported by The Telegraph and blogged about on Boxwish.

Shower

3.  Ross vs Ross's Top Ten... Movie Shower Scenes.  Ross McGee.  Top 10 Countdown.
A fair list.  A few unusual entries in this "nice, hot, steamy, cinematic shower", like Bambi in an April shower and the addition of the television mini-series, It.  Embedded video of each of the light-to-no nudity entries.  [Reblogged on Metro with the words "Hot, sexy, steamy and wet" probably to increase search term hits.]

Shower

2.  Empire Magazine's The Top Ten Shower Scenes.  Ian Nathan.  Top 10 Countdown.  (Empire Magazine #216).
To explain his list and choices, Nathan goes for the trite "cinema was create to film naked women for young men to ogle at" shtick.  This continues for his descriptions of each entry, although quality, importance and humour really seem to be more important to the choices than any mere prurient interest on Nathan's part.  Contains safe images for most entries.

Shower

1.  Man Made's 10 Best Movie Shower Scenes.  Travis Petersen.  15 April 2010.  Top 10 List.
For a male orientated website with ads for articles with scantily clad women down the side, this is one of the least sexualised lists.  While it may contain some full frontal and sexy entries, it has some just based on quality and importance and faces gratuitous nudity head on, calling it what it is without snickering.  It also contains no sex screen shots of embedded videos.  It even identifies the Starship Troopers scenes as portraying the "desexualised" state of the soldiers, where most mentions have it as just "gratuitous".
Shower

COMPILED LIST
As determined by the the films positions on the 10 lists.  Each title links to videos of the shower scene.  All are shower scenes, obviously, so watch at your own risk.  Some will be NSFW.
9. (11)  Hollow Man (2000) & The Eye (2008).
8.  (13)  Carry On Abroad (1972).
7.  (14)  Naked Gun 33 1/3 (1994).
6.  (15)  National Lampoon's Vacation (1983).
5.  (17)  Carrie (1976).
4.  (24)  Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).
3.  (31)  Weird Science(1985).
2.  (34)  Porky's (1982). 

1.  (67)  Psycho  (1960)

Shower

SUMMARY
Psycho wins, obviously, appearing at the top of most of the lists.  It also appears in the top ten of many top movie scenes of all times, has been copied, remade, mimicked, remixed, discussed, homaged, named bandsparodied, analysedreimagined, and the filming dramatised.  Weird Science & Porky's weren't even close to Psycho, but were close to each other swapping many times on the list during construction.
~ DUG.

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