Sex in the Cinema

This is a landmark episode. Best friend of the pod and long-awaited guest John Garcia joins Torie to unpack one of the most reviled installments of the 90s erotic thriller canon, BODY OF EVIDENCE (1993). It just might be the best bad movie you’ve ever seen.   Starring the one, the only, the icon - Madonna - as a femme fatale firing on all cylinders, and Torie’s boyfriend, Willem Dafoe, as her moro...

Returning guests Cecilia Conti and Josh Reinhold join Torie to eviscerate the cultural climate’s pathetic answer to a feminist take on an erotic thriller, THE HOUSEMAID (2025). Starring everyone's favorite MAGA-loving bimbo, Sydney Sweeney, the phenomenally talented Amanda Seyfried, and a lesser-Hemsworth-coded hunk named Brendan Sklenar (who Josh looooves), this film undoubtedly caters to the tru...

If there’s one film that set tongues (literally) wagging this year, it’s the latest adaptation of Emily Brontë’s masterpiece of gothic fiction, WUTHERING HEIGHTS.  Directed by one of cinema’s most de rigueur darlings, Emerald Fennell, WUTHERING HEIGHTS showcases Fennell’s trademark maximalism, bold subversiveness, and canny eye for visual magic tricks. The formula should have been a perfect match...

This is the final boarding call! The SITC submarine is departing port for one more journey 20,000 leagues under the sea. This time, the tentacular, mighty Poseidon of masculinity, King Triton, wields his whale dick, effectively blasting us with oozing gallons of salty sea.  Creator of the Hyperreal Film Journal and critic, Ziah Grace, joins Torie below deck to dissect Robert Eggers’s ferociously h...

Come back aboard the SITC submarine for the next descent into the trenches of taboo, where sexy sea creatures seamlessly seduce bone-headed humans. Captain Torie is joined again by film critic and First Mate, Ziah Grace, for a delightful submersion into one of the best, boldest, and most ingenious takes on The Little Mermaid to ever grace the silver screen: the Polish, punk-rock, Eastern Bloc feve...

Hop on the SITC Submarine because we’re plummeting into the watery, murky depths of interspecies sex. This deep blue beyond is where fish and fowl Neptune and chill. For this first journey beneath the waves, Torie is joined by Ziah Grace, Austin Chronicle “Best of Austin”  2025 nominee for Best Film Critic and misanthropic beach boy, to soak in Guillermo del Toro’s 2018 Best Picture Oscar winner,...

We’ve arrived at the bitter end. Torie and returning special guests Chelsey Morin and Thien-Y Hoang make their final trip to the 50 shades of garbage dump searching for anything of substance in the final installment of this trash film trilogy. Alas, 50 SHADES FREED proves the third time is not the charm.    Sulky sub Anastasia Steele and Dom daddy Christian Grey tie the knot (figuratively, not lit...

SPOILER WARNING: This episode contains spoilers through the season finale of Heated Rivalry. With the conclusion of Season 1, all us HR fans are sitting and processing our thoughts and feelings about the sleekly operatic, often playful, heart-throbbing, and ingeniously sincere story we just witnessed. Think pieces are bounteous across the editorial planes and the feelings are REAL. Torie and Billy...

*Note to the listeners*- For the most pleasurable listening experience, lube up with our January 2024 episode covering Sarah Drew’s A Cowboy Christmas Romance before you tune in. — We’re returning to the 50 Shades of garbage dump soon, but in light of this festive season, SITC all-star guest star, Cecilia Conti, joins Torie to incinerate the most recent(ish) installment of sugar & spice from L...

SPOILER WARNING: This episode contains spoilers through episode 4 of HEATED RIVALRY   Reference Links: The Rite of Spring: Joffrey Ballet 1987 Rite of Spring (1 of 3) Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun: L'Apres-midi d'un Faune Ballet performed by the Joffrey Ballet

Torie and special guests Chelsey Morin and Thien-Y Hoang return to the 50 Shades of Grey garbage dump for the second installment in this stinking landfill of a film franchise, 50 SHADES DARKER. Don't bother to bring a shovel. After being broken up for 2.5 seconds, newly deflowered Anastasia Steele and hunky millionaire Dom Christian Grey rekindle their love and get into a full-on relationship. As...

Welcome back, cinephiles and perverts, and welcome to Season Two of Sex in the Cinema!!! To kick off Season Two, Torie is joined by Angelenos and expert hate-watchers Chelsey Morin and Thien-Y Hoang to demolish the cultural phenomenon that was the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy. From its humble beginnings in a Twilight fanfiction forum, to the published printed page, all the way to the silver screen, t...

Fasten your seatbelts, cinephiles, because it’s SITC’s Season 1 Finale! Thanks to a few renegade, paintbrush-wielding perverts from New Hollywood’s anarchic yesteryear, you’re in for a full 411 on some of the most disturbing, disruptive, and innovative works of sketch-to-celluloid since Mickey Mouse first wet his wittle whistle in Steamboat Willie. As of this episode, your childhood nostalgia for...

Friend of the pod and glamor-trash gay man-about-town Billy Weston joins Torie and Maggie to unpack three of the sexiest, messiest, and most titillatingly trashy erotic thrillers of the 1990s.
 Jessie Spano trades textbooks for stripper poles to dance her way through a 24/7, nipple tweaking tantrum in Paul Verhoeven's infamous, eternally iconic TRASHterpiece, SHOWGIRLS (1995). Neve Campbell and De...

UPDATE, MAY 2025: This is a re-release of our premiere episode originally published on 8/9/23. As of May 2025, actor Michael Pitt was indicted for horrific sexual and physical abuse suffered by one or more partners. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.   -- Torie and Maggie dive into cinematic rarity of films bol...

SITC is back in the studio with this long-awaited episode covering the softcore juggernaut that is the Emmanuelle film franchise!  Expert Bryan Connolly joins Torie to dissect this smutty phenomenon which is SO expansive and SO diverse, it's basically an ecosystem. From Thailand to Africa, to Outer Space, Emmanuelle knows no bounds. In the original EMMANUELLE (1974) starring Sylvia Kristel, we wat...

Torie and Maggie go full-on Siskel and Ebert for this special episode reviewing Nicole Kidman's latest in a series of steamy, psychosexual cinematic narratives, BABYGIRL. Torie hated it and Maggie loved it but both ladies agree this flick with a feminist bent made a valuable contribution to the conversation around women, age and sexuality (aka debunking the myth that women become sexless empty ves...

Awards season is here is SITC is kicking off 2025 with our inaugural *AFTERGLOW AWARDS*!! With winners selected from the pool of every film covered on SITC to date, all winners of these prestigious awards have been carefully chosen by an esteemed panel of two (aka us). We also go into some long tangents around NOSFERATU, THE BRUTALIST, and movie theater hot dogs.   Check out the categories below a...

Happy Yule, cinephile freaks! This holiday season we're celebrating the Winter Solstice in this very special episode starring wonton, willful and wonderful witches! Self help goes lethally awry in Anna Biller's ingenious meta-Technicolor treasure THE LOVE WITCH (2016). Sexploitation is style over substance in the VIRGIN WITCH (1972). Cinematic art finds a new masterstroke in the haunting, enigmati...

Trigger Warning: Please be advised this episode includes explicit discussion of sexual abuse and assault. This is a really tough one so tune out and take care if you need to <3  For the penultimate episode of 2024, we're kicking off our mini director retrospective series. Our first entry delves into modern cinema's ultimate Master of Macabre, David Lynch.  Baby talk reaches a new level of unacc...

SITC is back with a new installment of Uncut and Unrated - extended "director's cuts" of some of our favorite episodes. FRATBOY F**KERY, our episode discussing a trio of "boys will be boys" blockbusters, returns to manspread its dick tentacles all over the airwaves. The original cut of this episode was released in April 2024 but the collective ethos of these misogynistic trash fires is now distinc...

SITC is back with the long-awaited second installment of our horror series just in time for Halloween. Hot or not? You decide.  Body horror brings on the heat thanks to Jeff Goldblum's insectile sex symbol Seth Brundle in David Cronenberg's classic remake of THE FLY (1986). Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland prove graphic sex can have narrative value in Nicolas Roeg's enigmatic meditation on gri...

Can AI offer humans genuine connection? Can AI be trusted? It is worth it to bang a bot?!? Tune in for SITC's most thought-provoking episode to date in which Torie and Maggie disagree A LOT. Oscar Isaac's misogynist tech bro gets served by the scariest sexbot of all time in Alex Garland's masterfully character-driven psychological mindf**k EX MACHINA (2014). A mustachioed Joaquin Phoenix turns up...

Returning special guest Cecilia Conti joins Torie and Maggie to discuss three eminent coming of age narratives with some solid silver screen sex.  Cringe comedy has integrity and dick poking gets literal in TURN ME ON, GODDAMMIT/FÅ MEG PÅ, FOR FAEN! (2011), a Norwegian hidden gem Torie incorrectly refers to as Swedish. Horney men run amok and Torie fails to distinguish Italian character names in B...

Quick note for our listeners. Apologies for minor technical issues, we recorded this "campfire episode" during a power outage on the first day of Mercury in Retrograde. Also, trigger warning for a brief mention of suicide in our coverage of the first film.  As we round out the summer, SITC is setting the scene on theme with three films featuring sex on the beach (coitus, not cocktails).  Torie and...