17 Blue Velvet (1986)
Actor who stripped down: Isabella Rossellini
Why they’re fully nude: Because Dennis Hopper says so.
If Salvador Dalí had directed a film noir, it would probably resemble something close to Blue Velvet, David Lynch’s critically acclaimed—but ultimately weird (it is David Lynch after all)—story of an amateur sleuth (Kyle MacLachlan) on the lookout for the owner of an abandoned ear he stumbled across in a field. With Laura Dern as his trusty sidekick, the duo strip away the Mayberry-like feel of their small town to uncover its seedy underbelly, a place where psychotic criminals and sexy chanteuses play sadomasochistic games.
Up until Blue Velvet, Isabella Rossellini was mostly known as a model and the progeny of famed director Roberto Rossellini and legendary actress Ingrid Bergman. But she challenged that perception in the role of Dorothy Vallens, a mysterious singer and sexual slave to drug-huffing psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has kidnapped her husband and child. Perhaps sensing that things won’t end well in this bizarre scenario, Vallens accepts her fate as a woman with nothing left to give—and so submits herself to Booth’s pain and torture. And even begs for more of it from MacLachlan. Let the nudity unfold!
