Before watching kink on the Internet, it was slim pickings when it came to finding bdsm in mainstream movies. You had to dig around to find a salacious film. Here are some oldies, but goodies that are worth checking out if you haven’t already.
Blue Velvet (1986) Sultry Isabella Rossellini stars in this David Lynch directed film. A young man finds a severed human ear in a field and soon after discovers a sinister underbelly to his seemingly idyllic suburban home town.
9 ½ Weeks (1986) Kim Basinger plays an art gallery assistant who becomes erotically involved with a man she barely knows. The impersonal affair becomes complicated. Also starring Mickey Rourke, back when he was hot.
Wild Orchid (1989) Carré Otis plays a lawyer that becomes obsessed with a self-made millionaire (Mickey Rourke) in Rio. Thus begins a series of erotic encounters. Otis and Rourke got hot and heavy in real life during the shooting of this film.
Tie me up! Tie me down! (1990) Orphan Ricky, just released from a psychiatric institution, begins to pursue his sole pathological obsession. He kidnaps porn actress Marina from the movie set she is working on. She hates Ricky at first, but becomes attracted to his intensity. Escaping from her abductor may not be her first priority.
Bitter Moon (1992) A Roman Polanski film starring Hugh Grant in something other than a ho-hum rom-com. British couple Nigel and Fiona, sailing to Istanbul, encounter Mimi, a beautiful French woman. Nigel becomes enchanted and then meets Mimi’s crippled American husband Oscar, who tells of his body and soul enslavement to Mimi over a number of visits to Nigel’s cabin. Polanski’s wife played the object of Oscar’s obsession.
Boxing Helena (1993) Directed by 19-year-old Jennifer Lynch and starring dad David’s Twin Peaks ingenue Sherilyn Fenn. A surgeon becomes obsessed with the seductive woman he once had an affair with. Refusing to accept that she has moved on, he amputates her limbs and holds her captive in his mansion.
Crash (1996) Pure David Lynch here. James Spader stars in this fetish film. His character is involved in a serious car accident which leads to his discovery of an underground sub-culture of crash victims who use accidents to activate a raw sexual energy. He tries to rejuvenate his sex life  by getting his wife involved. Weird and cool.
SICK: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997) Documentary about Flanagan, a writer and performance artist, who died at 43 of cystic fibrosis. The pain he began suffering early in life led to sadomasochistic practices, which he turned into performances.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) Stanley Kubrick’s last film starring a then married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. A New York City doctor follows a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery after his wife admits that she once almost cheated on him. What would he do if she really did cheat on him?
Secretary (2002) James Spader plays a demanding lawyer in this dom-sub film. A young woman, recently released from a mental hospital for self-harm, gets a job as a secretary, where the employer-employee relationship turns into a sexual, sadomasochistic one. This movie was nominated for mainstream awards.
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