Our Staff Picks column takes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme and the "Staff Picks" section was the place to find out what films were worthy of one's time. Of course, our version of Staff Picks has a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out which films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week let's cover one of the absolute BEST subgenres: folk horror.
Folk horror is a subgenre of horror that uses folklore, superstition, paganism, and rural elements to make us shake in our boots. A lot of these films have tropes of outsiders who are naive or ignorant of the local rituals which end up being their demise. The subgenre originally had a uniquely British and Celtic feel due to most of the original films in this subgenre are British.
Since the 1970s, the folk horror genre went to sleep for a few decades only to be reignited in the 2010s and around the world. Let's look at some of the best folk horror films with skintastic nudity.
Blood on Satan's Claw
This 70s film is extremely important to the folk horror genre because it's the first film in which the term was used to describe its genre. This British film has it all: old folk horror is unearthed and the village's children become devil worshippers. Classic folk horror plot! Linda Hayden goes delightfully nude in a few scenes in this gripping film.
Midsommar
Ari Aster cemented himself as a modern horror master with his brightly colored daytime horror flick about a group of anthropology students who travel to visit a remote Nordic cult. Florence Pugh joins them as the girlfriend of one of the students, but the cult makes her feel more welcome than her neglectful boyfriend does. While she starts to find her place in the cult, her boyfriend gets seduced for a mating ritual by redheaded maven Isabelle Grill.
The Medium
This Thai film from 2021 is wildly underrated. A family is possessed by a hostile spirit in this visually stunning film which utilizes rural Thai folklore and visual aesthetics to tell a slow-burn story of demonic possession. Petite actress Narilya Gulmongkolpech takes off her blouse in one particularly compelling scene. Those melons aren't mediums - those are quite large!
You Won't Be Alone
This is a really unique take on a witch movie and it uses local Macedonian witch lore to tell its modern spin on witchcraft in which the witches long to feel what it is like to be human again. Because of that desire, the witches wind up becoming monsters in their attempts to manipulate humans to see if that will make them feel anything again. Noomi Rapace stars with Marija Opsenica and Arta Dobroshi who all go nude. They weren't alone in their nudity.
The Wicker Man
This 1970s British film is one of my favorite folk horror flicks. Police go to a remote island to investigate the story of a missing girl, but they find the villagers to be quite strange with a lot of ancient Celtic rituals. Britt Ekland stars as a seductive blonde who sings a song in the nude that is meant to cast some kind of spell. It sure does cast a spell! I am bewitched by her breasts!
Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man
00:53:21 This golden-tressed goddess croons a pretty tune, dancing around her apartment starkers. She bares quite a bit of Britt tit, but the buns? They ain't hers! (2 mins 50 secs)
