Every so often a nude scene gets paired with a song that, for better or worse, ends up making it that much more memorable, and this week, we’re keeping the David Lynch love flowing in honor of the director’s untimely passing. To follow up our skin-depth look at Lost Highway’s musical nude scenes, we’re adding another great pairing care of Mr. Lynch from his 1990 romance Wild at Heart starring Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage.
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After his provocative use of the Roy Orbison song “In Dreams” and other mid-century artists in the 1987 film Blue Velvet, the director incorporated another big name in early rock into his next feature - the King himself, Elvis Presley. Lynch’s love of Elvis and rockabilly is well-documented, and it would not be the last time their names would be tied together - or Cage’s and Presley’s, for that matter - so it’s no surprise that both of them saw a lot of Elvis in the character of “Sailor” Ripley.
But what is surprising and impressive is how Lynch uses rockabilly in the film and is even able to weave it in with other genres. The best example of this is Laura and Nic’s sex montage forty minutes in.
Laura Dern Nude in Wild At Heart
Young lovers Sailor (Cage) and Lula (Dern) leave their hotel room and go dancing at a club where the speed metal band Powermad is playing their song “Slaughterhouse.” While everyone is thrashing about (someone even looks like he’s trying to do the worm?), a rando starts grinding on Lula and the two men fight, which oddly turns into Sailor singing Elvis’s song “Love You” with the band.
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Then back at the hotel, while the couple is banging away and we see Laura’s overexposed chesticles, the music once again shifts from “Slaughterhouse” to rockabilly, only this time it’s Elvis contemporary (and let’s face it, emulator) Gene Vincent singing “Be-Bop-a-Lula.”
00:40:00 Brief chest during sex with cage. The scene is overexposed so view is obscured. Nice moaning however! (30 secs)
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Sailor sure does bop Lula’s Bs handily in this scene, and while it may not be the best view of Laura’s naked body in the film, this pairing of music, breasts, and boinking is bound to drive anyone wild!
