Hollywood isn’t shy of the odd intimate scene. And when we think of the raunchiest movie or TV moments it’s likely lots of different scenes come to our minds. Therefore, as we all appear to be sex and love obsessed with the likes of Netflix’s Sex/Life and Love Island trending worldwide, we at FandomSpot set out to find the steamiest scenes ever in TV and movie history.
A while back, we surveyed our community members to find out which film and TV scenes left them feeling a little hot under the collar, and let’s just say the community picked some provocative, emotional and down-right raunchy scenes! But we weren’t content with the survey findings alone, we needed to get geeky. After discovering the top voted raunchiest scenes, we wondered how we could prove just how sexy these scenes were, so we recruited some more help.
We provided 100 people from the FandomSpot community with heart rate monitors and asked them to sit in a room by themselves while they watched the 50 scenes which were voted the “sexiest” – all to reveal which one actually got pulses racing the most.
We felt the two-week long study was the most accurate way to discover which scenes got viewers aroused after multiple scientific studies have proven a direct correlation between heart rates and arousal, with heart rates rising when individuals feel more sexually aroused*. Additional research from the American Heart Organization has found that when a person has strengthened emotions, such as feeling extraordinarily happy or sad, their pulse rises**.
TV and movie scenes of an adult nature are something that can often prove to be very divisive but here at FandomSpot, we believe it’s important for the media to show representation on all sorts of topics and themes. Therefore to ensure that the study was representative of all adults, candidates were selected from a range of backgrounds, locations, gender, sexual orientations and ages (ranging between 18 and 72).
To keep results credible, all participating individuals were asked to watch all clips alone in a seated position, so no external elements could affect their heart rates and they were also asked to provide medical details so we were able to register their normal resting heart rate, in order to accurately monitor any irregular increases or decreases.
Here are the top 10 hottest scenes in modern movie and TV history (and the average increase in heart rates):
1. Final sex scene in ‘Normal People’ – 38% 2. Pottery scene from ‘Ghost’ – 35% 3. The bed breaking scene from ‘Jessica Jones’ – 32% 4. Peach scene from ‘Call Me By Your Name’ – 29% 5. Alex and Piper first shower scene from ‘Orange Is The New Black’ – 27% 6. The post-fight rough sex scene in ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’– 27% 7. Dr. Izzie asking Dr. Karev to take his pants off before hooking up in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ – 25% 8. Jonathan Pine bearing his bottom while getting intimate with Jemima “Jed” Marshall in ‘The Night Manager’ – 25% 9. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist in ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ – 23% 10. Noah and Allie undressing each other before getting intimate for the second time in ‘The Notebook’ – 20%
The study also found that scenes that included ‘real sex’ with awkward interactions and/or honest conversations (think Marrianne’s bra getting stuck over her head in Normal People) heightened heart rates the most, with an average increase of at least 35% when watching these raw moments.
It was super fun to conduct this study that ultimately relates back to on-screen favorites and popular culture, which is what we’re all about.
As always, we want to hear from you, so let us know if you think we’ve missed any special scenes or personal favorites.
