Words by Ali Sipahi.

The positive relationship between movies and sex is an extremely well established one: if you invite a new friend over to “watch a movie” there's a good chance sexing will happen and you may not even end up watching said movie. If you’re going to “see a movie” with somebody for a date it actually means you’re going to “hold hands and smooch in the dark, in the vicinity of many strangers”; if you’re going to “the drive in” it means you’re “getting fingered in the backseat of a Ford Telstar”.

Statistically speaking, when dating is involved, there’s a positive correlation between film watching and sex-having. It's essentially where the now-ubiquitous phrase 'Netflix & Chill' comes from.

But is there a negative relationship, too? There are plenty of films that are going to ruin your amorous vibes, whether you like it or not: I can recall watching Snowtown with my boyfriend and sleeping without touching that night. And have you seen Salo? It’s impossible to even look at your vagina for a week after that bloody film.

Yet I wonder if there is a way that you could use this negative relationship to your advantage: like when you have your hot new crush coming over, and you reach for any good movie that doesn’t involve lots of sexual violence/isn’t Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, is there a film you could put on if you weren’t in the mood? Like, you just want to watch a good film, but this body in your bed is getting all touchy on you and you keep missing important dialogue. You’re not in the mood because you had, I dunno, a pap smear earlier in the day and don’t feel comfortable telling this person who keeps grinding on your butt.

Let’s say, then, that you’re dating a bloke: you can’t just go assuming he won’t get randy after watching a particular movie – I’m sure there’s a sick fuck out there who could get his rocks off to Akira. But there is one thing that pretty much every dude out there can’t get into, and that’s getting hit in the balls, unless he’s a CBT kinda guy – and I don’t mean the evidence-based psychological intervention – in which case, you’ll learn something useful from this article, I guess. 

Men are pretty precious about their knackers, generally. This is something I’ve learned as the younger sister of a brother whom I used to kick in the balls a lot as a child, sorry about that, Adem. Anyway, my point is that the consensus is that it’s not okay to inflict teste-based pain on men – but what about if its vicarious? Dudes tend to have a relatively universal response to watching their gender-bretheren get hit in the balls – there’s wincing, sympathetic clutching of goods, whispered exclamations of dissent...

And without further adieu, here's a list that you could probably go ahead and call, 'Netflix & No Chill' (spoilers, obvs):

Casino Royale (2006)

This is a risky one, because Bond movies generally make pretty good background noise for fucking, and this is the one with Eva Green in it as Vesper Lynd (amazing) and also Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre (strangely hot). Oh, and that scene with Daniel Craig coming out of the water in those speedos? Ridiculous.

Le Chiffre could get it.

But it does have that infamous, brutal scene where Le Chiffre continually wails on Bond’s nethers with a dense piece of rope.

Also strangely arousing, but I don’t really want to talk about it.

So I say that this is a good one for when you could go either way: maybe you just need a little sweaty Daniel Craig/Mads Mikkelsen based convincing, or you can hold out until about halfway for this scene to come on, after which your partner will undoubtedly make the decision for you.

How you need to present it: “This is the one with Eva Green in it, remember?” It is hoped that the power of Vesper Lynd will block out painful memories of the rope scene.

Audition (1999)

Okay, so this one hinges on a slight technicality – there is no explicit genital based torture here. But the background to the torture itself (and camera angles) leave much room for imagination. Audition is an extremely good Japanese film about a widower who begins dating a younger (terrifying) woman whom he becomes obsessed with. The film eventually culminates in an extremely drawn out and creepy torture scene, where Asami tortures the widower Aoyama with piano wire and needles.

Show AND Tell.

Like I said, she doesn’t explicitly go for them, but given the fact that she’s on top of him, he’s paralyzed, there’s already been a bunch of weird sex stuff and the camera angle/outfit is so suggestive, you’re just left to imagine.

If this scene doesn’t scream genital torture, then I don’t know anything anymore.

How you need to present it: Just tell him it’s one of those weird Japanese films. It’s not your fault if he doesn’t know that some Japanese films have a terrifying, extremely unsexy sexual element to them.

Teeth (2007)

The basic premise of Teeth is that the main character Dawn, who has a condition called vagina dentata (teeth in her vagina) that retaliates against gross dudes who try to sexually assault/rape her. It’s bloody great, especially so if you’re a girl who digs horror movies but is tired of the pervasive anti-feminist content where women exist just to get raped and murdered.

That’s what you get, buddy.

How you need to present it: Look, it would be unethical to lie by omission and not tell your dude that this is a film about a vagina with teeth. But it’s a black comedy, so I guess you could just say it’s funny and he might be lulled into a false sense of security. Sorry.

Hard Candy (2005)

I’ll be real with you: this is gonna be a hard one to put forward. In Hard Candy, a young (and fucking magnificent) Ellen Page plays a 14-year- old girl who meets a paedophile (Patrick Wilson) online and lures him into an IRL space. From there, things pretty much go the opposite of anticipated.

This will probably go well.

The film features a castration scene that, thanks to Wilson’s great performance, is hard for all genders to stomach. But probably really especially hard for dudes. So, pretty much, this is not a sexy film in any way, and not an easy one to weave into a date.

How you gotta present it: I guess you gotta lie by omission, and just say it’s a psychological thriller. Lucky for you, though, it’s a sick movie.

Antichrist (2009)

Ah, Antichrist, the pièce de résistance of genital violence scenes. This film is fucked, and I have yet to meet a person that doesn’t feel queasy talking about it. In fact, I’ve never met anybody who has said something like “Man, how good was Antichrist?!” It’s always the same sense of ambivalence – like, it’s a good (?) movie (?) and Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe are fucking great. But man, the content of this film. Shivers. Basically, Gainsbourg and Dafoe play a married couple (characters named only He and She) who lose their child. So they go to a spooky cabin in the woods, because He thinks it will help her to reconcile what has happened (bad psychiatrist, bad). Here, they have lots of emotional sex that just gets more and more unhinged until She does something really horrible to His penis. All I can say is that it involves a big fuck off piece of wood and Willem Dafoe’s half chub. It’s unpleasant to say the least. Then there’s also a bit where clitoris and scissors meet. Those two things should never meet. This movie is scary, and I wouldn’t recommend watching it with anybody, ever. It’d actually be less traumatic to just have sex, and watch Snowtown with your future, unwanted children.

BAD THINGS ARE HAPPENING.