Sex comedy
From 1953 to 1965, Hollywood released a number of sex comedies, some featuring stars such as Doris Day, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.
Hollywood released Animal House in 1978, which was followed by a long line of teen sex comedies in the early 1980s, e.g. Porky's, Bachelor Party and Risky Business.
Other countries with a significant sex comedy film production include Argentina, (comedia picaresca), Brazil (pornochanchada), Italy (commedia sexy all'italiana) and Mexico (sexicomedias).
[3] The "boy-meets-girl" plot that is distinctive of Western sexual comedy can be traced to Menander (343–291 BC), who differs from Aristophanes in focusing on the courtship and marital dilemmas of the middle classes rather than social and political satire.
[4] His successor Plautus, the Roman playwright whose comedies inspired the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, regularly based his plots on sexual situations.
[17] She claims that 1953 was a key year as the producers of the film The Moon Is Blue challenged the Motion Picture Production Code rules against using the word 'virgin', Hugh Hefner introduced Playboy magazine, and sexologist Alfred Kinsey drew attention to the way women were having sex before marriage.
Notable sex comedies in this period were Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce, Pillow Talk, The Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Lover Come Back.
[citation needed] Some may also consider the 1967 film, The Graduate, to be a sex comedy due to the story being about the main character, Benjamin Braddock, being seduced and starting an affair with his family friends' mother, Mrs. Robinson.
In 1978, National Lampoon's Animal House's success led to a string of raunchy gross-out and sex comedies in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s.
Another 80's teen comedy film that stars young actors and actresses that went onto bigger fame and is tamer on its handling of sex is Little Darlings.
The film's most famous scene (which also provides its namesake) involves one of the high schoolers, Jim (Jason Biggs), having intercourse with a fresh apple pie after being told by a friend that it is similar to "getting to third base."
[18] Another Judd Apatow related film, Superbad, shared many similar motifs from classic "teen" sex comedies of the past.
[citation needed] Percy was directed by Ralph Thomas and starred Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer, and Britt Ekland.
An innocent and shy young man (Bennett) whose penis is mutilated in an accident and has to be amputated wakes up after an operation to find out that it has been replaced by a womanizer's, which is very large.
[24] It has often been noted that historically, a defining characteristic of most British sex comedies – particularly in the period after the censorship rules were relaxed slightly at the turn of the 1970s – is that they were "neither sexy nor funny".
[26] British sex comedy films became mainstream with the release in 1976 of Carry On England, starring Judy Geeson, Patrick Mower, and Diane Langton, in which an experimental mixed-sex anti-aircraft battery in wartime is enjoying making love not war.
A spoof of Emmanuelle, the film revolves around the eponymous heroine (Suzanne Danielle) and her unsuccessful attempts to make love to her husband, Emile (Kenneth Williams), a French ambassador.
[clarification needed] Some French coming of age films contain many themes of the modern "sex comedy" genre, such as Murmur of the Heart.
It is characterized typically by both abundant female nudity and comedy, and by the minimal weight given to social criticism that was instead basic in the commedia all'italiana main genre.
In 1959 director Kon Ichikawa produced an adaptation of Junichirō Tanizaki's novel The Key titled Odd Obsession wherein a man whose powers are failing finds he can restore his vigor by spying on his daughter and her fiancé, so he hatches a scheme to involve his wife.
Yasuzo Masumura's 1964 film adaptation of Junichirō Tanizaki's novel Quicksand (Manji) took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the melodrama of a housewife falling in love with a younger woman.
Yoshimitsu Morita has directed a number of racey comedies including Something Like It (No You na Mono) (1981), Hot Stripper (Maru Hon Uwasa no Sutorippaa)(1982) and 24 Hour Playboy (Ai to Heisei no Iro Otoko) (1989).
Director Juzo Itami's films such as The Funeral, Tampopo and A Taxing Woman are comedies principally about non-sexual topics, but all have a side story that deals with sex, and features nudity.
