Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. Incest in Movies Incest is something that makes most people cringe but pornographic movies like the Taboo film series of the 1980s deals with it openly. What people usually don't know is the fact that a lot of mainstream movies show it too. This is probably because, as with many other fetishes, the taboo nature of the act adds to the titillation. In the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Riff Raff (Richard O'Brien) and Magenta (Patricia Quinn) are revealed to be brother and sister who have a sexual relationship. The sequel to Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a musical called Shock Treatment. In this film, brother and sister Cosmo and Nation McKinley are clearly displayed as having a sexual relationship. The film even includes a bedroom scene between the two during the song 'Lullaby'. Guy Maddin's film Careful (1992) features one character, Johann, lusting after his mother and another character, Klara, who is attracted to her father (who lusts after his other daughter). In Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 film Volver, a man lusts after his stepdaughter, who is in fact the product of incest between her mother and her mother's father. In the 2003 Chilean film Sexo con Amor, a man has sex with his niece atop a washing machine. In the film Hannibal Rising (2007), a young Hannibal Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) falls in love with his aunt, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li) and enters into a mild incestuous relationship with her. Mother/son incest Babs Johnson says to her son in Pink Flamingos (1972), 'Let mama make a gift to you! A gift that only a mother can give, a gift so special it will curse this house for years, a gift of supreme motherhood'. Taking on and demolishing just about every known middle-class value, the film concerns itself with a competition for the filthiest person alive. The contestants: Divine, who lives in a trailer with her egg-fixated mama Edie, her sex-obsessed son Crackers, and his voyeuristic travelling companion Cotton, along with Raymond and Connie Marble. In the political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), the character Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) has an incestuous relationship with his mother (who had an incestuous affair with her father) while in his hypnotized state. One of the film's most notable scenes is one which involves the two of them sharing a passionate kiss. Their relationship is shown more explicitly in the 2004 remake. In the movie The Damned (1969), by Luchino Visconti, the deviant young character of Martin (played by Helmut Berger) besides having paedophilian tendencies, forces his mother Sophie (played by Ingrid Thulin) into having a sexual intercourse with him. Afterward, the mother falls into a catatonic state and is then pushed to commit suicide by her son. My Lover My Son (1970), by John Newland, in which the main character (played by Romy Schneider) falls in love with her son (played by Dennis Waterman, who was only 10 years younger). Murmur of the Heart (French: Le souffle au cœur) (1971) by Louis Malle that tells a coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old boy who is growing up in bourgeois surroundings in Dijon, France. The various adventures of the boy lead to an incestuous relationship with his mother. In Bernardo Bertolucci's film La Luna (aka Luna) (1979), Jill Clayburgh plays an opera singer on tour in Italy whose desperate attempts to wean her son off of drugs result in an incestuous relationship with the boy. The 1992 horror film Sleepwalkers, the energy vampires, Charles and his mother, Mary maintain an incestuous relationship. Although the reason remains unexplained, it may be the simple fact that they have lived so long with each other. The Australian film Bad Boy Bubby (1993) depicts an incestuous relationship between a mother and her adult son, who has never been outside his mother's house in his life. The French film La Petite Lili (2005) portrays a fictional case of incipient consensual mother-son incest between independent adults. In the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, Billy's mother, desperate to have a child, goes up into Billy's attic and has sex with him, resulting in her giving birth to her daughter and Billy's daughter/half-sister, Agnes. Savage Grace (2007), based on the true story of the dysfunctional, incestuous relationship between heiress Barbara Daly Baekeland and her son Antony. Italian 'Edipo Re' is another of Pasolini's many adaptations, with stunning Moroccan scenery and a hot-tempered post-Freudian Oedipus whose lust for his mother begins practically as soon as he's out of the womb. Again, Pasolini's presentation is without ornament, with present-day bookends to underline the story's currency --with regard not to patricide and incest, but the willful ignorance of those in power. Franco Citti's Oedipus, rather than a wise man misled by hubris, is a vengeful opportunist; as a youth, he cheats at discus and when he finally makes his way to Thebes after slaughtering his father in a fit of pique, he vanquishes the sphinx not with cunning, but with pure rage. In the Italian film My Father's Wife, (also in English) a woman frustrated with her husband's infidelity and her failing sexual life starts having sex with her stepson. Eventually, the woman is killed by her husband. Little Boy Blue (1997) features what at first appears to be a non-consensual incestuous relationship between a mother, Kate (Nastassja Kinski), and her son, Jimmy (Ryan Phillipe). Kate's psychotic husband Ray (John Savage) repeatedly forces Kate and teenaged Jimmy to have sex, often at gunpoint, while he watches. Ray, whom Jimmy believes to be his father, had been rendered impotent years earlier by a castrating war wound and violently commands Kate and Jimmy to provide these vicarious thrills. Jimmy's situation is further complicated by two children he has fathered with the woman he believes to be his mother. However, it is later revealed that Jimmy is not really related to Kate or Ray when Jimmy discovers that Ray kidnapped him when he was only an infant. In Spanking the Monkey (1994) Susan Aibelli (Alberta Watson), a married, lonely woman, suffers a leg injury at home just as her husband is about to leave on his job as a travelling salesman and her son, Raymond (Jeremy Davies), is about to leave for the summer on a medical internship. Her son is forced to stay at home to take care of her as his father is gone. He loses both the internship and his girlfriend. These troublesome events leave him emotionally confused as he and his mother are left alone together, and they develop an incestuous relationship. *An early version of Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday revealed that Jason and his mother regularly had sex with each other, with this revelation even having an accompanying flashback of them doing it. *In Japanese film 'Inugami', the main character eventually discovers that the older woman he's been sleeping was his mother, and that his father was his uncle. It doesn't end well. *The Black Christmas remake has a flashback sequence that reveals Mrs. Lenz, drunk one night and obssessed with having another child, went up to the attic where her son Billy was kept and raped him. She wound up giving birth to a daughter named Agnes nine months later. Love strange Love. A Man remembers the evening his mother loved him. Sitcom - This french film is a crack attack. The mom sleeps with her gay son to try to turn him straight, and the father turns into a giant rat and kills his family. Ma Mère (2004) - Based on George Bataille's posthumous and controversial novel: When his father dies, a young man is introduced by his attractive, amoral mother to a world of hedonism and depravity. Ken Park (2002) - focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. An incestuous relationship develops between the protagonist and his mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim. But they spend precious little time together and none of them seems to know much about one another's family lives. The perpetrator in the film "The Locusts" is a woman. Starring Kate Capshaw and Jeremy Davies, an incestuous relationship between the mother and son developes in the story. The Japanese film "Ma No Toki (1985)" features the beautiful Iwashita Shima as Mizuo Ryoko, who enters into a taboo relationship with her own son, Fukashi (Sakagami Shinobu). Fukashi had fled his affluent family in Tokyo to live in a small coastal town in the far North, living a carefree life as clerk at a fish market at the harbor. Fukashi's estranged mother, after months of searching finally tracks him down and tries to reconnect with him. As the story unfolds in flashback about the dark details of Fukashi and his mother's past. A couple years earlier Fukashi had been studying for the entrance exams for the prestigious Todai (Tokyo University), however in typical youthful rebellion, Fukashi had strayed from his studies (getting involved with a youth biker gang) and developing apathetic outlook on life. His mother Ryoko (the wife of an elite businessman) is devasted by his changing attitude. She is already suffering stress as her relationship with Fukashi's father has cooled and they have become distant. The two wounded and needy souls soon find themselves entering into a taboo relationship. Despite their precautions, they are soon caught after one of their many sexual encounters and Ryoko ends her relationship with Fukashi. Ashamed and hurt, Fukashi flees Tokyo in the hopes of reevaluating his life. Falling in love with another girl, Fukashi hopes to begin a new life but with the return of his mother, can he? In A Gift from Heaven (1994) the mother has poor influence on her daughter, and when she begins spending time with Charlie, her obsessive love for her son (which has already spilled over into incest) threatens to push her over the brink. In 'Incendies', a French-Canadian film about twin siblings travelling to Lebanon to find their brother and father in obedience to their late mother's will, the twins discover that they are the product of incest between their mother and a son she had in 1970, who raped her aged 18 when she was in prison for murder of a Christian far-right militant. They then give the two envelopes their mother has prepared (labelled "to the father" and "to the son" in French) to the same man after finding him in their own country under an assumed identity. Sibling incest Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The treacherous newspaper columnist J. J. Hunsecker (played by Burt Lancaster), has repressed incestuous feelings for his younger sister, Susan. Although not stated during the film, J. J.'s feelings are implied by several things. Such as him consistently touching Susan in borderline-inappropriate ways, keeping an 8×11 photograph of her (and only one of her) on his desk and (of course) his refusal to let Susan marry or even date other men. Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) An incestuous relationship is implied between the two siblings, Steven ('Stevie') and Ann Lake. But the possessive Steven, furious at Ann's daughter, Bunny, for stealing his sister's loving attention, kidnaps the child with intentions to kill her. Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), when Anne Boleyn is on trial for treason by adultery, her own brother (among many others) is accused of being her lover. This theme is also used in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), where Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman), in pure desperation to be with child, asks her own brother George (Jim Sturgess) to have sex with her. At first, George agrees for the sake of Anne's safety, but as they prepare, they both realize they cannot go through with it. They are both later charged with incest, and although innocent, they are both sentenced to death. Incest is also a main plot device in the movie Caligula (1979), in which the title character (Malcolm McDowell) has sexual relations with his sisters. In Excalibur (1981) Mordred is Arthur's illegitimate son born by his half-sister Morgause. In Cat People (1982), Paul Gallier (Malcolm McDowell) wants to sleep with his sister Irena (Nastassja Kinski) in order not to transform into a panther in order to live up to his family's werecat heritage. Scarface (1983), Gina Montana, claims that her older brother, Tony, has incestuous feelings for her after he kills her husband, Manny. However, whether Tony actually had these desires is left up to the viewer. In the film adaptation of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), John (Rob Lowe) feels intense sexual desire for his sister, Franny (Jodie Foster). Franny succumbs and, after spending an entire day having sex, they move on a strictly platonic relationship. In the film adaptation of Flowers in the Attic (1987), Cathy shares a close bond with her older brother, Chris, that is hinted to be incestuous, but not shown, while they are imprisoned in the attic with their siblings. In the Channel 4 film Close My Eyes (1991), a brother and sister (Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves) embark on a passionate but incestuous love affair. In this film there are a few sexual scenes between the siblings. The Cement Garden (1993), after the death of their mother, the siblings Jack and Julie begin an incestuous relationship. In The Crow (1994), Top Dollar, the main antagonist, and his half sister, Myca, are also lovers which is revealed in the scene when Top Dollar holds a meeting with his associates where they discuss new plans for their Devil's Night criminal activities. In Angels & Insects (1996), the hero discovers that his wife has been participating in an incestuous affair with her brother which began when they were young, and that all of his children are in fact not his own, but rather the product of the incestuous union. The film The House of Yes (1997), based on the play by Wendy McLeod, is about the ongoing consensual incestuous relationship of a pair of fraternal twins (played by Josh Hamilton and Parker Posey). The film Kickboxing Academy (1997) features real life brothers and sisters Christopher Khayman Lee and Chyler Leigh who kissed each other on the set with a french kiss. Christopher Lee was 18 years old at the time while his sister was 14 years old at the time. The Devil's Advocate (1997) features two scenes where Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) fantasizes about having sex with Christabella (Connie Nielsen), who is revealed to be his half-sister towards the climax. Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) stars Julien (Ewen Bremner) and his disturbing life and family. Toward the end of the film it is revealed that his sister Pearl (Chloë Sevigny) is pregnant as a result of an incestuous act between the two of them. In Ridley Scott's film, Gladiator (2000), the new Emperor Commodus is in love with his sister Lucilla, though she does not return his affections in that way. In L.I.E (2001) a boy's friend has an incestuous relationship with his sister during a time when they are all discovering their sexuality. In the 2003 film The Dreamers, fraternal twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green) have an incestuous relationship. The 2004 motion picture Eurotrip includes a scene in which inebriated siblings Jamie and Jenny French kiss. This is then used as a plot device to reveal the (now sober) siblings' revulsion at their behavior. In the 2006 film The Hamiltons, Wendell and his twin sister, Darlene, have an incestuous relationship and share it openly. La Coupure (2006) (French-Canadian) is a film about a brother and his sister in love since their adolescent years and their struggle to end their incestuous relationship. The comedy Blades of Glory (2007) features a pair of brother-sister figure skaters who are revealed to be lovers. They were played by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, who are married in real life. In Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) harbors romantic feelings for his twin sister, princess Nuala (Anna Walton). It is unclear whether she returns the sentiment, or ever returned those feelings in the past. As commented by Goss in an interview, "There is an incestuous relationship that's not maybe overly obvious to everybody, but some people hopefully will pick up on the fact, certainly from my direction towards her." Sindrome (2004) is a Spanish erotic thriller that features an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister. Ana (Adriana Davidova) shares a drug problem and an incestuous bed with her brother Alex (William Miller). But even she shuns the obsessed Victor (Javier Albala), who has a brain tumor and has taken to stalking her. Victor abducts Ana, chains her up by the neck and abuses her for several days until he breaks down her defenses. Pola X (2000) is a French/German/Swiss co-production that takes its inspiration from Herman Melville's Pierre, or, the Ambiguities. Pierre (Dépardieu) lives with his mother in Normandy, not far from the banks of the Seine River where Victor Hugo's daughter drowned with her lover. The good-looking mother and son are happy, healthy, and wealthy, and they love each other deeply. Pierre is romantically attached to the beautiful and delicate Lucie (Delphine Chuillot) and visits her every morning with the motorcycle he has inherited from his father. one night a stranger girl tells him in broken French that she is his sister. Pierre is shocked, but he decides to believe her and make up for the mistake of his father. Later the two were literally shown engaging in mutual oral sex onscreen. Hungarian 'Delta' reflects on man's need to re-bond with his natural habitat, and meditates on the unseemly consequences of fraternal love that drifts into unacceptable territory. Felix Lajko stars as the unnamed protagonist, who hearkens back to his family's agrarian home after years away. Unkempt, unshaven and noticeably laconic, he makes contact with his sister (Orsi Toth of Johanna), his mother (Lili Monori) and his mother's recent husband, a brutish sociopath (Sandor Gaspar) - who uniformly toil away in a decrepit local pub. In time, the lead character and his sister move into their deceased father's abandoned property, set about constructing a house and a pier, and consummate an extremely intimate relationship as they begin to experience a more deep-seated and harmonious relationship with the natural world around them. Father/daughter incest A notable example of censorship in this area surfaces in Kings Row (1942). While the relationship is explicit in Henry Bellamann's best-selling 1940 novel of the same name, Joseph Breen, director of the Production Code Authority and his superior, Will H. Hays, first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America forbade clearly showing that Dr. Tower (Claude Rains) commits incest with his daughter Cassandra (Betty Field) in the film. In 1967, The Man Who Fell to Earth was released, which features a sex scene where an actress plays with the penis of Rip Torn's character, Nathan Bryce, and speaks into it like a microphone while stating, "you're not a thing like my father." Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) features father-daughter incest, resulting in the daughter giving birth to her own half-sister. In Stay As You Are (1978), a girl (Nastassja Kinski) falls in love with a man (Marcello Mastroianni) who may be her father. In the Mexican film Angel de Fuego, after his mother left her circus-born Alma starts an affair with her father, has sex with him and becomes impregnated by him. In Butterfly (Matt Cimber, 1982), a miner living in the Nevada desert, who has not seen his daughter for years, is confronted then seduced by his now sexy and troubling teenage child, while struggling against his own reluctance as well as the 1937 rural society. Based on a true story, the 1993 TV film Shattered Trust: The Shari Karney Story stars (Melissa Gilbert) playing the role as Shari Karney, an incest victim who was sexually abused by her father. In Forrest Gump (1994), it is heavily implied, though never outright stated, that the character Jenny Curran and her sisters (who are never seen) are sexually abused by their widowed father. Forrest Gump, who narrates throughout the film, observes that "he was a very lovin' man, always touchin' and huggin' Jenny and her sisters". Eventually, custody of Jenny is given to her grandmother. In the 1997 film U Turn, Grace (Jennifer Lopez) and Jake (Nick Nolte) are initially thought to be husband and wife. Towards the climax of the film however it is revealed that after the death of her mother, Grace married her father Jake and had been having sex with him. Wicked (1998), starring Julia Stiles and William R. Moses, features an incestuous father-daughter relationship. The 1999 film The Cider House Rules depicts a father-daughter incestuous relationship that results in the daughter's pregnancy. Tim Roth's 1999 film The War Zone explores the effect of father-daughter incest on a family. In Girl, Interrupted (2000), a recently released patient of the mental institution, Daisy Randone (Brittany Murphy), is well known to have had an incestuous relationship with her father, which eventually leads her to commit suicide. The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), Rose (Camilla Belle) is in love with her father, Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis), although he is unable to accept his romantic feelings for her. In The Quiet (2005), A young woman (Camilla Belle) discovers an incestuous relationship between her God-father (Martin Donovan) and his daughter (Elisha Cuthbert). In Madeinusa (2006), The Mayor of an indigenous community lusts after his 14 year old daughter and has off screen sex with her in the days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the days when his village believes God is dead and cannot see what is happening in the world. In Burning Palms (2010), One of the short stories features a woman who meets her fiance's 15 year old daughter. The father and daughter seem to have an incestuous relationship from the way they touch and talk to each other. It is not known whether or not they actually have committed incest. "A Thousand Acres" is disturbingly realistic in examining the long-term effect of a father's sexual misconduct on his adult daughters. Jason Robards plays the father; Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange appear as his abused children. In "The Sweet Hereafter,", director Atom Egoyan did research to make the sexual scenes between the teenage daughter Nicole (Sally Polley) and her father (Tom McCamus) seem plausible. Unlike the violent way incest often is portrayed on the screen, these scenes have an almost romantic glow. Julie Darling (1983) ia a Rare Canadian thriller about a murderous teenage girl in love with her father. There's an incest fantasy scene where she hears her dad and step-mom making love and sneaks down the hallway to watch them. Then she starts to imagine herself being fucked by her dad. The films are a form of sexual muckraking. They expose incest as evil-doing. We can be titillated by seeing these forbidden relationships on the screen and at the same time feel it's part of a kind of civic cleansing.