Answering Your Most Pressing Questions: the Fifth

One of our favorite past times here at Frock Flicks HQ is to take a glance a the search terms that people use to land on our website. Not surprisingly, a lot of it is searching for a specific film, or actor, but quite a few searches are a good bit more bewildering, esoteric, or just downright weird. But we love a good challenge, and we’re helpers, so every so often we compile these search terms and take a stab at answering them as best we can. You can read the previous installments of this series here, here, here, and here.

medieval sex scenes

I love you people and your specific kinks! I was sure there must many medieval-set movies with good sex scenes, but after I polled friends, all I could come up with were bad examples! Here they are, in no particular order, along with some choice comments:

• Stealing Heaven (1988) – all KINDS of sexytimes between Abelard and Heloise.
• Tristan and Isolde (2006) – with Sophia Myles and James Franco, assuming you can handle how very much it feels like a high school production.
• Excalibur (1981) – “Sex in full armor with 80s-tastic cheese!”
• Braveheart (1995) – if be-mulleted Mel Gibson wets your whistle.
• Kingdom of Heaven (2009) – Orlando Bloom and Eva Green, but also “There is the scene in Kingdom of Heaven where the crusaders get absolutely f$&ked by Saladin.”
• Robin Hood (2010): “What about the scene in the 2010 version of Robin Hood where Marion helps him take off his chain mail so he can take a bath and kind of checks him out? They also kiss at one point, fully clothed of course, but might that help you?”
• The Little Hours (2017) – Italian nuns get up to no good in comedy gold.
• The Advocate (1993) – “Many scenes, and I’d bet no one here would object to a young Colin Firth“; but Sarah cautions, “You have to get the UK cut [under the title ‘Hour of the Pig’] because they cut out a ton of sexy times in the American version.”
• The Name of the Rose (1986) – Christian Slater and Valentina Vargas.
• The Pillars of the Earth (2010) – Sarah says, “I can’t remember if the sex scenes were any good, but Pillars of the Earth had several. And probably its sequel World Without End, even though I haven’t watched it. But it’s based on a Ken Follett novel so it’s probably humptastic.”
• Labyrinth (2012) – possibly, Sarah: “I *think* that Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth [which I covered on FF years ago] has sex scenes. If you can deal with the inanity of the plot…” / Me: “with the guy who looked like he smelled like foot??”

And finally Sarah points us to this Decider article: Hard Knights: The Horniest Medieval Sex Scenes on Streaming

 

www.dirty old ladys.com

We certainly are! Here’s some good posts in which we get salacious:

• Do you find a man who can’t turn his head because of his HUGE CRAVAT a fetish too? Then check out our roundup of hotties in Biiiig Regency Collars.
• Our podcasts frequently feature us expounding on the hotness of particular actors and/or scenes, like Adrien Brody and his towel in The Affair of the Necklace (2001) or Robert Downey Jr. and his feather in Restoration (1995).
• We featured hot, sexy, steaming close-up Tirelli porn not just once but twice!
• We aren’t ashamed to admit it when a sex scene or three is the best part of a movie, like In Secret (2013).
• We’re on record as being annoyed when the sex scenes get edited out, like Versailles (2015-18) did for American viewers.
• We’ve mocked weaksauce sex scenes for sucking.
• Hell, we even explained how to — and how NOT to — film sex scenes in period drama.
• AND we counted down our Top 10 Sex Scenes in frock flicks!

And, of course, many of our Man Candy Mondays and Woman Crush Wednesdays feature us salivating over various actors.

 

queen’s gambit eyeliner

Anya Taylor-Joy definitely had great eyeliner in 1960s-set The Queen’s Gambit (2020)! What you want, my friend, is a winged eyeliner stamp, which Trystan turned me on to. It will create the perfect winged end, and then you fill in the rest of the line. I’ve got this one by Phoera:

 

timothy dalton weird

Okay, so I find Timothy Dalton cheesy, does that count? But that’s probably a product of the era he was most famous looking cheesy to me now. Trystan quite liked him in Jane Eyre (1983) and Mary Queen of Scots (1971), I even thought he did admirably as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind sequel Scarlett (1994), and Trystan even managed to do a Man Candy Monday post about Dalton!

 

is it true that prince richard was not killed by margaret beaufort

Is this some Philippa Fucking Gregory question? Apparently Gregory, who for all her claims of historical accuracy LOVES to go with the totally-out-of-left-field theories, has Margaret Beaufort (mother of Henry VII) killing the princes in the tower in The White Princess — at least the book version, I didn’t make it through the TV adaptation long enough to find out. Okay, so no one knows 1) whether the princes in the tower were actually killed (I mean, they’re long dead by now, and it’s very LIKELY they were killed, but there’s no proof. They just disappeared), and 2) if they were killed, who did it. But MOST historians agree that IF they were killed, the person who most likely ordered it was Richard III, as he had the most to gain and direct control over the children. Not their grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, who yes was a strong woman but seems to have been pretty into her family. All of them. (Don’t know who/what the “princes in the tower” is? Google it.)

 

victorian sex picture

Alright, you gotta give me more. Are you looking for a photograph, painting, what? Should it be Victorian people having sex? Modern people in Victorian costumes having sex? I need more to work with! Probably the best I can come up with are films about 19th-century photographers or painters, like The Governess (1998), Desperate Romantics (2009), Woman Walks Ahead (2017), Dead Still (2020), or The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021). No doubt some of them get it on, and we can’t let this entire post be sex-related!

 

anne of thousand days inaccurate anne

Is there an accurate Anne Boleyn? We’ve certainly mused on that a great deal! We’ve analyzed a number of films/TV shows featuring her, and I’d suggest that the following have some interesting ideas to offer:

• Actually, professor Susan Bordo argues that Anne of the Thousand Days‘ Anne is one of the better portrayals.
• The 2003 TV production of The Other Boleyn Girl has a good performance by Jodhi May, although some of the historical details aren’t great, being based on a Philippa Fucking Gregory book.
• Anne Boleyn (2021) uses race and motherhood to bring a different lens to an overtold story.
• The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family (2021) has some costume mishaps, but provides interesting early childhood and familial context to Anne.
• Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972) is okay, but skip it in favor of the longer and thus more nuanced The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1971).
• Historian Lucy Worsley always brings a thoughtful interpretation, and while her documentary doesn’t spend enough time on Anne, it does make the point of Anne being trapped by Henry’s attention.

While these should be avoided, at least in terms of understanding Anne’s real character. Go ahead and watch them for snark, we do!

• Wolf Hall (2015). Okay, you need to watch it for some of the best costumes in terms of historical accuracy, but source-material author Hilary Mantel basically Brings It in terms of all the negative stereotypes about Anne.
• The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) goes in a similar direction with a bitchy mean girl Anne.
• David Starkey is annoying, and so is his 2001 documentary.

And the jury is out on these:

• There’s some redeeming qualities to Natalie Dormer‘s portrayal in The Tudors (2007-10), particularly in the second season.
• Helena Bonham Carter in Henry VIII (2003). I personally wouldn’t bother, but I don’t remember being outraged.

 

pride and prejudice movie with colin firth what hangs from the top of the mens trousers

NO NOT THAT. They said the TOP!

Ahem. It’s a watch fob! A fob — a ribbon or chain attached to your pocket watch, which went into a special small pocket in your trousers — made it easy to grab your watch, because instead of feeling around inside the pocket, you could pull on the fob. (Well, what we modernly call a fob. Apparently the “fob” used to be the pocket, and the chain or ribbon attached to the watch was called just that, “chain” or “ribbon.”)

 

ana sayfafilmlersex life in a convent sex life in a convent (1972)die klosterschüler

German Wikipedia tells me that Die Klosterschüler (1972), aka Sex Life in a Convent, is a softcore porn about nuns getting it on. Sadly, not period, so I can’t immediately go watch it for Snark Week.

 

“diapers,” 18th century, nobility

Oh god, WHAT is this about? I can only imagine they came across our site because of the term “diaper butt” being applied to 18th-century men’s breeches? Breeches in this era were very fitted in the leg, but men needed to be able to open their legs widely (stop that) in order to ride, so the way you accomplished that, tailoring-wise, was to make the seat of the pants very full. I’ve tried to remove that fullness from men’s pants of this era, and yep, they just don’t work.

It only really shows when you see a guy walking around in 18th-century breeches without a jacket/coat covering his butt, and I’m having a hard time thinking of an example from film or TV. I’d probably start skimming some well-costumed films that are likely to have some informal scenes, like Dangerous Liaisons (2022) or John Adams (2008), and hope for the best.

Now, if this is some kind of diaper-wearing 18th-century nobility fetish, I got NOTHING. First of all, people didn’t wear “underwear” in the 18th century. Men pulled their very long shirts between their legs before putting on pants, and women wore knee-length or longer shifts. Babies would wear diapers, so maybe I need to be listing 18th-century stuff that has a lot of babies in it? Except they’re probably going to be swaddled, so I don’t know that you’re going to get many steamy diaper shots. Babies are had in Poldark (2015-19), for example, but are they really much on screen? No idea.

 

why did tony curtis wear shorts in movies

WHY DO YOU ASK ME THESE EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS?

 

nice butts

Okay, THIS I can help you with, provided you’re looking for nice examples from frock flicks! We literally have a “nice butts” tag, which features:

I’m SURE there are butts in Harlots (2017-19), Maison Close (2010), and Fanny Hill (2007), and everyone loves the naked pond frolicking scene from A Room With a View (1985), which has butts AND dangly bits!

 

why cleavage has shown in magnificent century

Magnificent Century (2011-14) is a series about the 16th-century Ottoman sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent (1520-66) and his court. The costumes are sexed-up versions of 16th-century Turkish fashions, for sure, and there’s your reason: because modern audiences like sex and will pay for it.

Trystan goes into a lot of the related issues in part II of her “Movies Playing Fast and Loose With History” series, “Why Does It Happen?,” in which she talks about issues like audience expectations, budgetary limitations, and artistic vision. I’m pretty sure the answer is this case is audience expectations: they’re trying to sell the 16th-century Ottoman court as HOT and SEXY and MODERNLY RELEVANT.

 

toilet habits of 1930s london

WHY, PEOPLE?? IT’S THE 1930S! INDOOR PLUMBING EXISTS! Okay, except for many, many poor people who still have shared latrines out in the yard. Unless you mean toilet like “toilette,” as in putting on makeup, styling hair, etc. Here’s a lovely blog post entitled, “Commit No Nuisance: a walk through the history of London’s public toilets,” created by Goldsmiths London university students. And there are many, many books written about the history of bathrooms and personal hygiene, including:

• Bathroom by Barbara Penner
• Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity by Virginia Smith
• If These Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley
• Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene by Sharra Louise Vostral

There’s also several documentaries about the history of the home by Worsley and Amanda Vickery that should touch on related topics, including one whole episode of Worlsey’s If Walls Could Talk doc that focuses entirely on the bathroom:

Other fun related searches include:

• chamber pot pooping victorian era porn
• did people walk around with dirty faces 1800’s

 

antique pictures from the 1800th century

This is a blog about historical films and TV series, not futuristic sci-fi. Next!

 

did henry really write the letters tospanish princess

Here’s a rule: if you learned about it from Philippa Fucking Gregory, it probably isn’t true. As I wrote/yelled in my “Top 5 Ways The Spanish Princess Gets the History Wrong” post, royal marriages — including that between Prince Arthur of England, older brother to the future Henry VIII, and Catherine of Aragon — were carefully planned diplomatic processes:

“A royal child would have been RAISED FROM BIRTH to know that their marriage would be planned for them, a matter of statecraft and politics, and NOT THEIR OWN DECISION… when Arthur died, the idea of Catherine marrying the future Henry VIII was SUGGESTED and NEGOTIATED BY THEIR PARENTS. Isabella and Ferdinand almost immediately suggested the marriage after learning of Arthur’s death. Papal dispensations were arranged BY THEIR PARENTS.”

Yes, Arthur and Catherine wrote letters to each other. According to biographer Amy Licence,

“The young pair wrote to each other enthusiastically, even passionately. Some of the terms of endearment may have been fairly formulaic, taken from the Latin texts taught to Arthur by his tutor… but they were sincerely meant” (Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII’s True Wife).

Whether or not they were sincerely meant, I can guarantee you that they were looked over (if not dictated by) tutors, ambassadors, and the king and queen before they were sent. There’s no way a younger brother could have just wandered down to the post office to slip some secretly written letters into the mail; THERE WAS NO POSTAL SYSTEM, so ambassadors would have arranged for the transport of said letters. They’d have noticed if something random had been slipped in. Also, Arthur’s younger brother Henry, the future Henry VIII, was TEN YEARS OLD when Arthur and Catherine married. I doubt an 8-9 year old was busy plotting how to fuck with his older brother’s fiancée.

 

braveheart piece of cloth

Dear god. Kilts, maybe? Which really didn’t exist in the Braveheart era. According to historian Brenna Barks, the earliest possible era for kilts having existed was the 15th century, and Braveheart is set in the late 13th century. You can read more about it in Brenna’s guest post, “The Real Deal on Tartan, Kilts, and Outlander Costumes,” and listen to her join us in ranting during our Braveheart podcast.

 

do any of henry the eighth’s wives clothes exist

Now THIS is a question I love! I don’t believe so?  The only items I can think of are a hat belonging to Henry VIII:

And the recently rediscovered Bacton Altarcloth, which belonged to his/Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I:

There’s also Queen Elizabeth I’s effigy stays, which were made to be worn by her funeral effigy but were likely made from an existing pattern of the queen’s stays (read more from historian Sarah Bendall):

The issue is that clothing (and jewelry) in this era was so valuable that it was often taken apart and reused, or passed on to attendants and favorites, as the Bacton Altar Cloth likely was (probably passed on to Elizabeth’s Chief Gentlewoman of the Bedchamber). For example, Queen Anne of Denmark (James I’s wife and successor to Elizabeth) wore many of Elizabeth I’s clothes remade/restyled. If you want to do a deep dive on this, I’d suggest checking out these books:

• Tudor Fashion: Dress at Court 1485–1603 by Eleri Lynn
• Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII by Maria Hayward

If you’re feeling lazy, check out these podcast episodes interviewing Maria Hayward, who specializes in the dress of Tudor queens (among other topics):

• Clothing Tudor Queens (Not Just the Tudors podcast)
• The Wardrobe of the Tudor Queens (Talking Tudors podcast)

 

movies that involve tailoring

YASSSS!

You should probably also check out:

• A Stitch in Time (2018), in which modern historical costumers recreate historical fashions using period-accurate techniques.
• The Time in Between (2013), in which a 1930s Spanish seamstress makes beautiful clothes.
• The Dressmaker (2015), in which Kate Winslet plays a 1950s dressmaker who revolutionizes fashion in a small Australian town.
• Bright Star (2009), in which Regency poet Fanny Brawne makes her own inventive clothing.
• The House of Eliott (1991-94), in which 1930s English sisters start their own fashion house.

 

loincloth boys

Because Sarah punted last time and I live to serve:

 

does mrs. hughes have a chatelainehat

No, because I’m pretty sure such a thing never existed, but the Downton Abbey housekeeper does wear chatelaines AND hats, maybe sometimes at the same time? A chatelaine is a decorative belt hook or clasp, from which are suspended various chains holding keys and/or useful items like scissors, watches, thimbles, seals … and I have one that has an ear scoop (for scooping out your earwax, which you then used to wax your thread as you were sewing)! The term comes from the French, which meant the mistress of a chateau; she often needed to keep the many household keys handy.

You’ll note that Mrs. Hughes’s chatelaine is made up of a series of keys; she and other professional housekeepers needed to be ready to unlock things as needed, but also to keep the keys and therefore the locked contents safe.

Mrs. Hughes also sometimes wears hats, yes:

 

pear body shape back and white film era

This I love! We’ve gotten into historical body size on the blog before, but not so much focused on the early 20th century. Personally, I’d look at Margaret Dumont, who performed in many of the Marx Brothers’ films. She was 43 when the films began, so she’s not a slim little thing, although whether she’s more pear or apple shaped, I’m not sure. But she does give you a good idea of fashion options for fuller-figured ladies:

Okay, so we’re not actually about contemporary-to-their-era films, so I’d also recommend the following 1920s-30s-set films/TV series that include fuller-figured actresses:

 

noisey wank flicks

WRONG SITE, MOVE ALONG.

 

lydia bennet milf

REALLY? We do have a post about how she’s the real heroine of Pride and Prejudice, but I hereby swear to do a Woman Candy Wednesday all about Lydia Bennet. I just bumped Sigourney Weaver to January so I can fit it in NEXT WEEK. Get your smelling salts ready!

OHH right! There is a married, mother-of-one-child version of Lydia in Death Comes to Pemberley (2013)! I don’t know that Jenna Coleman qualifies as a MILF, however, but you do you.

 

Keep on doing your crazy searches, you silly kids!