20. Goldfinger (1964)
In the best of the James Bond pre-credit sequences, Sean Connery snogs an exotic dancer who has just climbed naked out of her bath, spots a sneaky assailant reflected in her eyes, and throws both assailant and an electric heater into the tub with the quip: “Shocking, positively shocking!”
19. The Silencers (1966)
Dean Martin turns on the smarm as Matt Helm, a secret agent who makes 007 look like a feminist. He starts his daydreaming about scantily clad models before his bed tips him into a massive bubble bath, where his secretary is waiting to soap him down. Only the king of cool could get away with this nonsense.
18. Pillow Talk (1959)
Cunning use of split-screen makes it look as though Doris Day and Rock Hudson are sharing a bathtub (although she has bubbles, he doesn’t) while they chat on the phone in this romantic comedy. Saucy framing makes it look as though they’re playing footsie. As for telephones in the bathroom – such decadence!
17. Seven Pounds (2008)
Why is Will Smith harassing a blind man? You’ll have to watch this ethically questionable emo melodrama to find out, although it’s worth it purely for the bonkers bathtub scene in which – SPOILER! – he tips box jellyfish into his bathwater so they’ll sting him to death and his organs can be donated.
16. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989)
Pedro Almodóvar tests boundaries in this hard-to-swallow story of an actor (Victoria Abril) falling in love with an obsessed stalker who holds her captive in her own apartment. But the film was also controversial for showing Abril pleasuring herself in the bathtub with a clockwork scuba-diver toy.
15. Splendour in the Grass (1961)
Frustrated by the restrictive morality of 1920s Kansas, Deanie (Natalie Wood) and her boyfriend split up. As she drowns her sorrows in a bubble-free bath, her mum observes: “There’s nothing like a good soak,” before foolishly asking her highly strung daughter: “Did he … spoil you?” Which triggers a splashy naked hysterical fit.
14. The Moderns (1988)
In a contender for sexiest bathtub scene, John Lone shaves Linda Fiorentino’s armpits while she’s having a wallow, in Alan Rudolph’s fun portrait of arty American expats hanging out in 1920s Paris à la Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. And indeed Kevin J O’Connor makes a smashing Hemingway, albeit not in the bathtub scene.
13. Birth (2004)
Jonathan Glazer’s second feature, a psychodrama with fairytale styling, caused a furore thanks to the scene in which a naked Nicole Kidman appears to be sharing a bathtub with a 10-year-old boy who claims to be the reincarnation of her dead husband. Glazer patiently explained that the two-in-a-tub effect was achieved by judicious editing and special “invisible” clothes. Phew.
12. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
“When you have to shoot, shoot – don’t talk!” Tuco (Eli Wallach) is ambushed in his bubble bath by a bounty hunter who makes the mistake of speechifying instead of delivering the coup de grace, allowing the wily bandit to fire the pistol he has been concealing beneath the suds. Goodbye, bounty hunter!
11. Performance (1970)
An East End gangster (James Fox) suffers an identity crisis after he holes up in the Notting Hill home of a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger), who shares his black and white tiled bathroom and semi-octagonal tub with two hipster chicks (Anita Pallenberg and Michèle Breton). You couldn’t really describe this as a three-in-a-tub romp since they’re all too stoned to romp properly.
10. Pretty Woman (1990)
Where would Hollywood be without bubble baths to preserve an actor’s modesty? Adorable sex worker Vivian (Julia Roberts) ablutes in the bathtub of a hotel suite while singing along to Prince on her Walkman earphones, which her wealthy client (Richard Gere) unaccountably finds disarming instead of annoying in this morally dubious romcom redeemed by its two stars.
9. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A dead psychopath is stalking Nancy and her classmates through their dreams in Wes Craven’s surreal slasher movie. And oh dear, she nods off in the bathtub. As you do. Before you know it, Freddy Krueger’s razor-fingered glove is slicing through the water like the shark from Jaws, and the tub has suddenly turned bottomless and she’s being dragged down …
8. Scarface (1983)
Tony Montana (Al Pacino), smoking a big cigar in a bubble-filled tub, says: “Pelican fly! C’mon, pelican!” to the flamingos on his TV screen (the big dope), and swears so much his wife says: “Can’t you stop saying fuck all the time?” It’s a long scene, so Al must have been quite wrinkly by the time they finished filming it.
7. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)
If you think Saltburn is shocking, get a load of Walerian Borowczyk’s shimmering take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic, as perverse as you’d expect from the director of La Bête. Udo Kier thrashes around in a bathtub full of chemicals before climbing out as a completely different actor who fornicates his houseguests to death. Fortunately his fiancee finds this a turn-on.
6. Laura (1944)
Otto Preminger’s classic noir stars Dana Andrews as a detective who falls in love with a murder victim. But the story is narrated by the dead woman’s mentor, Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), an effete newspaper columnist who types out his articles while marinating in the bathtub. “I don’t use a pen,” he says. “I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.” And dirty bathwater, presumably.
5. The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
The innkeeper’s daughter (Sharon Tate) is relaxing in a bubble bath when Count von Krolock drops in through the skylight to sink his fangs into her neck and whisk her away to his castle (which has lots of bathrooms) in Roman Polanski’s glorious Hammer pastiche. If only she’d taken a shower instead! (Vampires can’t abide running water, as everyone ought to know.)
4. Shivers (1975)
David Cronenberg’s first full-length feature is set in a luxury tower block where residents are turning into sex maniacs thanks to an infestation of parasites. The grisliest moment is when Betts (horror icon Barbara Steele) sips a glass of rosé in her bathtub while failing to notice a parasite crawling up through the plughole. What happens next is not for the faint-hearted.
3. What Lies Beneath (2000)
Michelle Pfeiffer plays an empty nester who suspects her neighbour is a murderer in Robert Zemeckis’s somewhat underrated thriller with supernatural elements and colour-coordinated knitwear. The climax is a deftly orchestrated sequence in which our heroine lies paralysed in the bathtub as it slowly fills with water. Can she move her big toe enough to dislodge the plug before she drowns?
2. Les Diaboliques (1955)
A headteacher’s wife conspires with his mistress to murder her abusive husband, but things don’t go to plan, culminating in one of cinema’s scariest bathtub moments. Henri-Georges Clouzot out-Hitchcocks Hitchcock with this creepy thriller based on a book by crime-writing duo Boileau-Narcejac, who also wrote the novel Hitchcock would later film as Vertigo.
1. The Big Lebowski (1998)
This bathtub scene has it all: Jeff Bridges smoking a blunt by candlelight, Song of the Whale on the cassette player, and a home invasion by German nihilists who smash up the furniture. “Hey, nice marmot!” says the Dude just before they throw their ferret into the tub with him. There’s some anxious splashing, but happily, Dude and ferret emerge unharmed.
