UNDERWEAR SCENES

We’ll keep this brief…

NOTTING HILL

Dressed only in Y-fronts, Rhys Ifans’ slobby flatmate Spike opens the door to a thong – sorry, throng – of paparazzi. He pulls some poses, then shuts the door and examines himself in the mirror. ‘Not bad… Well-chosen briefs, I’d say. Chicks love grey. Nice firm buttocks.’

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Superman’s not the only one who sports his pants on the outside, with Malcolm McDowell’s Alex DeLarge wearing his jockstrap loud and proud. It’s actually a cricket codpiece – amockingly applied sign of gentlemanly privilege, like the droogs’ bowler hats.

BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY

Men’s undergarments are often played for laughs, while women are sexualised. Hail this scene, then: ‘Now these are very silly little boots, Jones,’ purrs Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver. ‘And this is a very silly little dress. And these are… fuck me, absolutely enormous panties.’

CAPE FEAR

And you thought Max Cady’s Hawaiian shirts were loud... When Robert De Niro’s pyrotechnic psycho is arrested and stripsearched, he’s wearing the tightest, tiniest briefs of the fiercest red you ever will see. It’s almost enough to distract from the tats.

ALIEN

Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley making her last stand in teeny knickers divides opinion. Aliens director James Cameron said it ‘stepped over the line’. Weaver herself said, ‘After five days of blood, guts, fear, sweat and urine, do you think Ripley wouldn’t take off her clothes?’

DUNE

Who can forget the space pants worn by Sting’s Feyd Rautha in 1984’s Dune? Not the musician-actor’s wife. ‘[David Lynch] said, “You’re wearing these flying underpants,”’ recalled Sting in 2021, before grinning: ‘Trudie makes me wear them sometimes.’

MAGIC MIKE XXL

Tempting as it is to whoop it up for the guys’ red leather thong underwear in The Full Monty, it’s the American flag posing pouches modelled by Channing Tatum and pals in Magic Mike XXL that most make us holler. Red, white and phew.

PSYCHO

Sex sells, and Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane appeared in a state of undress on Psycho’s poster. ‘A bra and slip were very racy then and fairly verboten,’ recalled costume designer Rita Riggs. An off-the-rack bra was chosen to make Marion relatable for female viewers.

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

From Transsexual, Transylvania, Tim Curry’s sex-crazed mad scientist Dr Frank-N-Furter preaches ‘absolute pleasure’. And who doesn’t gasp in joy when he throws off his cape to reveal his spangly lingerie?

WAYNE’S WORLD

Mike Myers’ eponymous hero yanks up his tighty whities for the G-string look, then dons a lacy pink bra over his black T-shirt to sing, ‘Happy birthday, Mr. President’ to Tia Carrere’s Cassandra. Schwing.

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