For decades, critic and film historian Arthur Knight wrote an annual roundup of “Sex in Cinema” for the November issue of Playboy, accompanied by a pictorial of freeze frames of that year’s disrobed. The two-hour clip and talking-head-fest Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies is the documentary equivalent of Knight’s work, a compilation of R-rated reveals. Note the subtitle. It really is a history lesson, and one thing is for sure, it will hold your attention. 

The overview begins in the 19th century and includes the silent era (shining a spotlight on the barely remembered model Audrey Munson) and moves on to the titillations of the pre-Code era. It shouldn’t be too surprising for those who’ve noticed Anne Baxter’s nearly see-through wardrobe in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) that the director would throw in plenty of flesh for his 1932 epic The Sign of the Cross. 

European films are acknowledged for helping to lower the inhibitions imposed in the mid-1930s by the Production Code and enforced by the Catholic Legion of Decency. A belt-loosening in the 1960s resulted in the nuanced The Pawnbroker (1965) and the sensual and cerebral Blow-Up (1966).

However, director Danny Wolf fervently focuses mostly on the low-budget indies of the 1970s and ‘80s—grindhouse/drive-in movies. With plenty of traffic-stopping moments, his survey becomes a mega-montage of the male gaze and a natural draw for Tarantino’s and Jackie Brown star Pam Grier’s fan base (the latter is interviewed here).

Although a few men drop trou, the screen time overwhelmingly slants not too surprising toward women. Malcolm McDowell, who bared all often, becomes the stand-in for the male actors who have gone full frontal. And when talking about sex in film, all roads eventually lead to his X-rated Caligula (1979).

The filmmakers present a fascinating mix of women partaking in the punditry, including Tatiana Siegel, editor of The Hollywood Reporter; director Martha Coolidge; actresses Kristanna Loken and the bemused Sean Young; and critic Amy Nicholson. The male commentators serve more as chronological narrators, like UCLA film lecturer Jonathan Kuntz and directors Joe Dante and Peter Bogdanovich. Jim McBride, a Skin executive producer and creator of the Mr. Skin website (“See Pics n’ Clips of the hottest Nude Celebs”), and Celebrity Sleuth publisher Barry Kemelhor have made careers cataloging the nude and famous. Even without their participation, the film supplies a check-off list—no firewalls or Google searches necessary. Perhaps it goes without saying: some observations are more highbrow then others. 

Even with the running time of 130 minutes, the documentary glosses over certain issues and has a few blind spots. The banter underplays the rise of sexualized violence in the 1980s, such as in Death Wish 3, 52 Pick-Up, and countless others. Actress Linda Blair is still rightfully angry, more than 35 years later, of how she was treated during the filming of Chained Heat (1983), a women-in-prison film. According to her, the final cut was raunchier than the script that she signed on to make.

Many of the commentators highlight 1978’s I Spit on Your Grave as a feminist manifesto ahead of its time, without acknowledging the specific criticisms leveled at it upon its release. In one of the harshest reviews he ever penned, Roger Ebert found the movie “so sick, reprehensible and contemptible” that he believed “There is no reason to see this movie except to be entertained by the sight of sadism and suffering.”

The issue of sexualized violence was taken on more directly in the irreverent documentary of Cannon Films, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014). Additionally, Maria Schneider’s comments in 2007 reflecting on her experience making the rape scene in Last Tango in Paris (1973) deserves far more screen time than it’s allotted here.

The ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America is also treated with kid gloves. Director Amy Heckerling defends the topless Phoebe Cates fantasy sequence in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) while still regretting having to cut male nudity out of a sex scene, filmed from a female’s point of view, to get that teen comedy an R rating. Joan Graves, the former chair of the MPAA’s rating board, proudly stands by the organization’s calls for certain films, such as the R-rated Boogie Nights (1997). But the film shies away from the myriad ratings battles over movies that were first slapped with an X rating and then the ill-fated, nebulous NC-17 rating. Nowhere is it mentioned how Harvey Weinstein publicized controversies to boost the box office take for The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, both released uncut in 1990.

For a closer look on how the MPAA has treated films with violence in comparison to those dealing with sexual content, especially depictions of GLBTQ relationships and female sexual gratification, Kirby Dick’s investigative This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) is much more provocative and probing than Skin. In it, director John Waters asks, what, in the age of the internet, is the MPAA actually protecting viewers from? (Notably, Graves did not participate in that film.) 

The most engaging—and contradictory—commentary comes from actresses who have disrobed on camera and faced or embraced the consequences. Diane Franklin, the outlier here, claims onscreen nudity is a choice; she gladly proclaims that after she went topless in The Last American Virgin (1982), she went from being an actress to “an artist.” On the other hand, Rena Riffel’s nude dance sequence in 1995’s Showgirls ”ruined” her personal life.

Sybil Danning and Young are pragmatic. In order to be cast in her breakout role in No Way Out (1987), Young admits she “had to do the nudity.” (I worked in a production office of an independent film company that made straight-to-video fare in the 1990s, and if a casting notice stated that nudity may be required or was optional, it actually wasn’t. Directors and producers expected the actress to at least appear topless. Nudity was a deal-breaker.) 

Skin acknowledges from the get-go that the film industry has been changing after the rise of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. So it’s fitting that the documentary concludes in the present day—and not only because moviegoing has taken a hit during the lockdown caused by the coronavirus. The film landscape may change and not resemble what it is was pre-pandemic, but it’s doubtful that in the future producers won’t contractually insist upon nudity, as was the case in Coolidge’s Valley Girl and Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show.

Noticeably though, the more daring and sometimes shocking productions have now moved elsewhere, free from an outside ratings board and self-regulated: they’ve found a home on streaming services and cable TV. As long as producers feel there is an audience for it, there will be always be a historical drama like Versailles and episodes of Euphoria where nudity helps keep eyeballs glued to the screen.