Boob Shadow: 15 Movie Posters Where The MPAA Allowed Nipple Accents
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Bad Girl (1931)
"A man (James Dunn) and woman (Sally Eilers), skeptical about romance, nonetheless fall in love and are wed, but their lack of confidence in the opposite sex haunts their marriage."
I don't know where the saying originated that, as an actress, "you're more likely to win an Oscar if you have a nude scene" (or had one in the past), but our first example of a drawn and approved nipple represents an Oscar-winning oldie. Frank Borzage won a directing Oscar and Edwin J. Burke won Best Adapted Screenplay.
This film was released pre-enforcement of the Production Code -- which was drafted in 1930, but didn't go into into punishable effect until 1936 -- but we're sure the board would've had it in for this poster for having a "nipple point on right breast, and extra shading -- where the areola would be -- on the left breast." However, maybe there'd be a pass because obviously, she's a "bad girl." So she probably gets properly punished or something.
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The Sin of Nora Moran (1933)
"Nora Moran (Zita Johann), a young woman with a difficult and tragic past, is sentenced to die for a murder that she did not commit..."
Again, this is pre-enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, but despite being drawn (which was the style at the time), there is definite representation of the "curve of the under breast" that upset the MPAA concerning the Sin City poster. Also there's some anatomical shading and a slight elevation of the gown where her supposedly shameful nipple is. But, she is in a shame pose, and the title tells us that she's sinned. So maybe that makes it okay.
Side-boob side-note: this artwork was done by Alberto Vargas, a Peruvian-born pin-up artist who'd come to fame in the 1960s for drawing for Playboy Magazine.
Additional side-boob side-note: Stanley Kubrick references this poster stance and outfit in a scene for Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut. Kidman adopts this pose in a sheer nightie before she tells her husband (Tom Cruise) of her adulterous (read: sinful) fantasies.
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The Outlaw (1943)
"Western legends Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell), Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) and Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel) are pit against each other over disputes revolving around a horse, and the affections of a country vixen (Jane Russell)."
This poster was comissioned during the height of the production code ... but Howard Hughes could probably do whatever he wanted. Gone are the points on the nipples, but present are the shading of the areola... and a cocksure cowboy stance with two guns giving two thumbs up to the film's star, Jane Russell.
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One Million Years BC (1966)
"Caveman Tumak (John Richardson) finds a brief home among a group of gentle seacoast people, until he is banished from their cave. Missing him, one of their women, Loana (Raquel Welch) leaves with him, deciding to face the harsh prehistoric world -- with its monsters and volcanos -- as a couple."
The production code ran until 1968, but had gotten a lot less strict in the 60s. Coincidentally there were more photo posters being made in this period. And more cleavage. This iconic poster doesn't actually "show" anything. But the designer cleverly sculpted a shadow around Raquel Welch's left bosom, and provided circular light to imply the illusion that there is a nipple.
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Brute Corps (1971)
"A couple (Paul Carr and Jennifer Billingsley) comes across a strange Marine camp where soldiers perform training exercises. The girl gets tormented, and the guy goes after them."
The rise of exploitation cinema in the 70s meant there were an abundance of cleavage posters, but still very few were able to go where Dimension feared to tread with Sin City: A Dame to Kill For: areola shading and nipple presence. But this one did. Is that mud or a tattered shirt? Whatever it is, it is not concealing the drawn (which was the style at the time) "under-breast and nipple" point.
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Deathdream (1972)
"A young man (Richard Backus), who was killed in Vietnam, inexplicably returns home as a zombie."
That this movie -- which was one of the first films to directly address the Vietnam war and soldiers returning home -- had to sell tickets via emphasis on mother's nipples and father's gun, instead of zombie-bites and blood addiction, shows that the zombie genre was not the style of the time.
But we highly recommend checking out this early horror flick from the (future) director of Black Christmas, A Christmas Story and Porky's and the writer of Big Trouble of Little China. It smartly addresses both disassociation of place and drug addiction, problems that many veterans faced when coming home.
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Night Moves (1975)
"Former football player and present private detective Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case, as an aging Hollywood actress (Jennifer Warren) whose only major roles came thanks to being married to a studio mogul wants Moseby to find and return her stepdaughter (Melanie Griffith). Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection with the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light."
Well, here's some straight-up teen nudity! Perhaps it got a pass because it was drawn (which, you guessed it, was the style at the time) and starred an Oscar-winner (Gene Hackman) and a Production Code-dismissing director (Arthur Penn, Bonnie & Clyde).
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Alley Cat (1984)
"A beautiful young martial arts expert (Karin Mani) stops a vicious street gang from robbing her grandparents' house. The gang marks her for murder, but her grandparents are killed instead. The girl sets out to take her revenge on the gang."
One thing that changed in 1980s poster design was that a lot more photography was used for promotional posters. It was the style at the time. This poster is pretty direct ("this lady owns the night") and has front-and-center nipple (as promotional) placement. The 1980s as a decade were pretty direct and over-the-top. And from here forward the MPAA rulings have no fallback crux of letting drawn-boob skip safely by. All bets are off on what they'll deny.
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L.A. Confidential (1997)
"As corruption grows in 1950s LA, three policemen - one strait-laced (Guy Pearce), one brutal (Russell Crowe), and one sleazy (Kevin Spacey) - investigate a series of murders with their own brand of justice."
That L.A. Confidential came out 17 years ago with this poster that had very prominent "areola shading" of Kim Basinger's bosom, makes us wonder: is it really just the "under curve of [Eva Green's] breast" that upset the MPAA? Again, front and center.
Side-boob side-note: my parents let me hang this on my wall in 1997. As I noted elsewhere on CraveOnline, L.A. Confidential was a gateway film for me.
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Almost Famous (2000)
"A high-school boy (Patrick Fugit) is given the chance to write a story for Rolling Stone Magazine about an up-and-coming rock band as he accompanies it on their concert tour.
Well, not much to say here, except is this one panel of a triptych depicting sex, drugs and rock 'n roll?
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Nobel Son (2007)
"Barkley Michaelson (Bryan Greenberg) is in a deep life rut. He's struggling to finish his PhD thesis when his father, the learned Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman(, wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Barkley and his mother, Sarah (Mary Steenburgen), a renowned forensic psychiatrist, now have the ill-fortune of living with an egotistical man whose philandering ways have gotten less and less discrete. On the eve of his father receiving the Nobel, Barkley is kidnapped and the requested ransom is the $2,000,000 in Nobel prize money. Needless to say, Eli refuses to pay it."
We have no idea what this movie is. But the combination of the gun and (Eliza Dushku's) nipples would later morph into a poster for Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills.
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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2012)
"Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing for forty years by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a young computer hacker."
You knew that the MPAA was never going to allow an actual naked (and pierced) breast on a poster in theaters. So, just cover that pierced nipple with the release date! (But maintain just enough proper skin shadow behind the "2" so that we still know the star is naked. Whew.)
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Maniac (2013)
"As he helps a young artist (Nora Arenezeder) with her upcoming exhibition, the owner (Elijah Wood) of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface."
Alright so this is a mannequin, but this is a very clever design that uses enough shadow to make you think you're looking at a woman's nude body and not a mannequin. Also we're sure this was a hard one for the MPAA to let go.
Side-boob side-question: do any mannequins really have that high quality of belly button definition?
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Maniac (2013)
"I warned you not to go out tonight."
Finally! Some man nipple-shadow! You know why men have nipples? Because it's one of the first things to form in the fetus before the gender parts ... So, again, why is America so afraid of the nipple?
Side-boob shout-out to Art Machine for the two Maniac designs.
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Nurse 3D (2013)
"By day, Abby Russell (Paz de la Huerta) is a dedicated nurse, but by night, she lures cheating men to their brutal deaths and exposes them for who they really are."
This was an internet-only poster, so perhaps it doesn't count, but we're sure that the MPAA's fear of the naked body was assuaged by the fact that she's comfortably covered in blood.
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Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
"Weaving together two of Miller's classic stories with new tales, the town's most hard boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more notorious inhabitants."
This is the poster that the MPAA approved, which still features Eva Green's breast and nipple shadow, but reduced the point of emphasis on the point of her nipple and also reduced the size of her breasts (i.e. reduced the "curve of the under breast"). It's still pretty racy, so -- if this was approved -- what was everyone up in arms about, screaming censorship? Maybe this "censored poster" that was sent to press outlets in a press release (the approved poster wasn't) was just an effort for some extra publicity before the movie comes out (this Friday!) ... In fact Green even said as much to Vanity Fair.
Oh well, made you click. Which is the style of the time.