Certainly, ever since Marilyn Chambers got ravished on the snooker table by the gardener of her father’s estate in the 1980 pornographic classic Insatiable, the billiards room has been the locus of many sexual encounters, dalliances, and romps in film.  The scenes have ranged from the erotic or coquettish (e.g., Cinderella Liberty) to the brutal and vicious (e.g., Watchmen; Unholy Rollers).  Something about balls, sticks, long flat felted surfaces, and the 30-inch height of a pool table that lends itself to cinematic lechery.  I therefore present my Top 10 Bedroom Billiards Scenes (though, practically speaking, none of these occur in the bedroom) for your consumption, amusement, and critique. Enjoy!  #NSFW

10. Bedazzled. Director Harold Ramis chose in 2000 to remake the original 1967 Bedazzled by casting Brendan Fraser as Elliot Richards and pin-up goddess Elizabeth Hurley as the Devil in this film about a hopeless dweeb granted seven wishes to snare the girl of his dreams in exchange for his soul. In this early scene from the movie, the Devil seduces Elliot into having a conversation, but not before rendering him tongue-tied with her body-rocking dress and her break that pockets 15 balls in one shot.

9. Days of Our Lives. At some point in 1992, the daytime soap opera aired an episode, which included this scene, reuniting Carly Manning (Crystal Chappell) and Bo Brady (Peter Reckell), who engage in some truly McCheesy dancing to Joe Cocker’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On.” Of course, Carly didn’t leave a lot else on, as Bo picks her up and mounts her on the table, effortlessly rolling the cue ball into the corner pocket for maximum effect.

8. Scorned. Shannon Tweed, wife of KISS frontman Gene Simmons and the star of roughly 60 erotic thrillers, doesn’t have time to finish her billiards stroke before Andrew Stevens begins his with a little backdoor billiards in this scene from the ever-missable, softcore 1994 thriller. Amazingly, this film even spawned a sequel, albeit with no billiards scene.

7. Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure. One year after Scorned, Ms. Tweed is (literally) back on the billiards table in this 1995 straight-to-video softcore film. Dispensing with any pretension of being used to play pool, the billiards table in this scene is simply another setting for Ms. Tweed to disrobe, writhe, gyrate, moan, arch, and express her curious comfort with getting nailed on the baize.

6. And God Created Woman. Thirty-two years after Roger Vadim directed the French film Et Dieu Créa La Femme (And God Created Woman), he remade the film under the same name in 1988, this time casting the seductive Rebecca De Mornay as the vamp Robin Shea. In this billiards scene, where the “winner says do, and the loser does,” Shea memorializes her victory over James Tiernan (Frank Langella) with the command that he get down on his knees, remove her underwear, and perform oral sex on the table.

5. Alfie. In this scene from the 2004 film about a cockney womanizer learning the hard way about the dangers of his actions, Alfie (Jude Law) and Lonette (Nia Long) strut around a purple felt billiards table, playing “I Never,” and alternating among shots of pool, shots of 1800 tequila, and shots of Lonette’s cleavage. Jukebox tunes from Teddy Pendergrass (“Love T.K.O.”) and The Isley Brothers (“For the Love of You”) ensure Alfie will do more scoring tonight than just on the table.

4. Femme Fatale. In 2002, Brian De Palma cast supermodel Rebecca Romjin in this crime drama about an ex con-woman Laure/Lily trying to put her life back in order. The mediocre movie, now largely forgotten, did turn heads and raise the adrenaline with its seductive opening pool table scene. The scantily clad Romjin engages in a slow strip tease that shows no skin, but suggests everything. The sudden juxtaposition of sex and the ensuing violence is equally memorable.

3. Men in Hope (original title: Muzi v Nadeji). The film poster notwithstanding, this 2011 Czech film has nothing to do with billiards, except for this one lascivious scene in which the bodacious Sarlota (Vica Kerekes) enters the parlor, wearing a skin-tight, eye-poppingly-open, red mini-dress, and is introduced to Ondrej (Jirí Machácek). Along with Ondrej’s father, the trio begin to play three-cushion billiards. Sarlota’s cleavage distracts from the game, but that’s fiddlesticks compared to the delirium subsequently caused by Sarlota shimmying out of her pink underwear and using it as a hair tie, presumably so she can aim better.

2. Red Shoe Diaries – “Double or Nothing.” Zalman King’s popular erotic Showtime drama series was formulaic with its lite-plot stories of sexual awakening that combined nudity, soft lens cinematography and mood music. In this 1992 episode, the super-sultry Paula Barbieri stars as a woman who is forced to survive by relying on her pool-playing skills…which naturally involves assuming all sorts of positions on a pool table.

1. The Last Picture Show. Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 Best Picture about the coming-of-age of a group of 1950s high schoolers is worth watching for countless reasons, but the billiards sex scene is certainly among the most unforgettable. Jacy Farrow (a 21-year-old Cybill Shepherd) lures Abilene (Clu Gallagher), her mom’s older lover, to an empty pool hall, where a brief attempt to play pool is replaced with Abilene having sex with Jacy on the table. The close-ups of Jacy’s hands reaching through the netting of the table’s pockets will stain your memory for some time.

Phew, I’m sweating.  Well, if you can still focus your attention, let me know what would be on your Top 10 list.  And, no, Two Nude Girls Playing Billiards doesn’t count.  Of course, with the forthcoming production of 50 Shades Darker (2017), which may include the highly-gossiped billiards scene (cf. “I am going to spank you, then fuck you over this billiard table.”), I may need to revisit my rankings in the near future.

Desperation hangs in the smoke-filled air of the Crabtree, the run-down Southern California pool hall that serves as the primary setting for director Rob Nilsson’s 1996 independent drama Chalk. The locale is dirty, dank, littered with beer bottles and empty peanut shells. Thanks to the visual style of cinematographer Mickey Freeman, the air looks and feels sickly. It is no wonder that Watson (Edwin Jones), the Crabtree proprietor and a former heroin addict, spits blood or sleeps in his clothes, or that his son Jones (Johnnie Reese) always seems to be sweating. With its dilapidated centerpiece of a pool table, the Crabtree is a place where Watson’s adopted son T.C. (Kelvin Han Yee) can rule the roost hustling pool, but otherwise is terrified to leave. Which of course is at the heart of Nilsson’s metaphor: the pool hustler lifestyle is something almost cancerous and inescapable.

As one pool hustler shares with T.C., “Pool players don’t make as much as volleyball players–even dart players. If you’re not in the top 10, forget about it.” The hustler (played by “The Road Man” Chris McDonald) goes on to lament that as a result of pool, he lost his house, his wife, everything he had.

It’s an interesting perspective. Within the canon of billiards movies, many of which belie a certain romanticism toward the pool hustler, there is none as bleak as Chalk in its outlook on billiards and as hopeless in its portrayal of the player. Characters do not flash wide smiles, or run fancy trick-shots, or talk smack in the hustler’s argot. They play impatiently, the prey desperately on high school kids, and they wait listlessly for action – for opponents who may never materialize.

The main story, which takes a while to emerge from the haze, involves Jones coercing his brother T.C. to play a high-stakes game of pool against a man named Dorian James (screenwriter Don Bajema), who is a ranked professional with some anger management issues stemming from his violent past. (James is so psychotic that one truly disturbing scene has him screaming at his girlfriend to sodomize him with his own cue stick. Arguably, this scene did little to build fans for the film among the larger billiards community. As Freddy “The Beard” Bentivegna wrote in his “Encyclopedia” of Pool Hustlers, “This is evidently how Hollywood thinks a pool hustler bonds with his cue stick before a big match. [This is a] ridiculously insulting movie.”) T.C. only accepts the $10,000 match when he learns Watson is dying and this could be a chance to prove himself to his adopted father. Only later is it revealed that Jones has convinced his father to bet his entire life savings on the game.

The actual match, which consumes the last 45 minutes of the movie, is the first to win seven games in 9-ball. A variety of different editing and filming styles are used, some clearly an homage to Martin Scorsese for The Color of Money, but none succeed in giving this endless scene much life. As the players trade games, the pool drags on. Even the near rape of T.C.’s girlfriend, and the near death of Watson, don’t puncture the droll of the match. Subbing in for Yee and Bajema respectively are real-world pool sharks Billy Aguero and Chris McDonald, but even the expert billiards playing cannot pump energy into the final third of the film, which deliberately moves at an unnecessarily slow pace.

Though the movie has trouble breathing beneath the weight of the Hollywood conventions it tries to avoid, it is refreshing to know its origin. In 1992, Nilsson, who had gained acclaim for his 1979 award-winning film Northern Lights, moved into a transient hotel San Francisco, motivated by a search for his missing brother. There he helped found the Tenderloin Action Group, a free acting workshop for homeless and inner city residents. Within the group, Nilsson discovered a number of promising performers and wrote Chalk with the help of Bajema, his longtime collaborator, around the talents of many of these nonprofessional actors.   In fact, aside from Bajema and Edwin Jones (who plays Watson), the rest of the cast are nonprofessionals.

Chalk is available to buy on DVD from Rob Nilsson’s website Citizen Cinema.

Viewing Enrico Coletti’s 1997 Italian crime drama Il tocco – la sfida (also known as Rack Up or The Cuemaster) is akin to watching a billiards movie mashup, blending recognizable tropes and characters from other billiards movies into a film that, while hardly original, remains nonetheless entertaining, especially given its star, Franco Nero, and its emphasis on 5-pins, a popular form of carom billiards in Italy.

The movie begins with the rules of 5-pins shown on the screen, while a cue stick is assembled and the table is set up, including the standing of the pins. (Ten years later, the Mexican billiards movie Carambola used a similar opening technique to explain the game of three-cushion billiards.)

For those unfamiliar with 5-pins, the game is played with 3 balls and 5 pins. One’s cue ball must hit the opponent’s cue ball and the red object ball to knock over one-inch pins to score points, with white pins worth 2 points each and the red center pin worth 4 points, unless falling on its own, in which case it’s worth 10 points. (Five-pin billiards is closely related to goriziana, or nine-pin billiards, which was the focus of the 1983 Italian movie The Pool Hustlers.)

Franco Nero, the Golden Globe nominated actor (for Camelot), who has since become well-known for his marriage to actress Vanessa Redgrave and his portrayal of the evil general in Die Hard 2, stars as Jesus Barro, an immensely talented 5-pins player, who makes the decision to play in a high profile tournament in order to win enough money to rescue his friend Paco from debt and save Paco’s pool hall from the extortionary grip of local mobster Scalesi (the rather unconvincing Imanol Arias).

However, when Barro is asked to throw the game, pride interferes, and he beats the gangster’s stooge, Wan Yo aka “The Monk.” That foolish decision ultimately results in Paco dead and Barro with a broken hand, ruining his billiards career. (Hark the throwback to the thugs that broke “Fast” Eddie Felson’s thumbs in the 1961 billiards classic The Hustler. Of course, the scene was also recycled 6 years after Il tocco – la sfida in Poolhall Junkies.)

Unable to hold a cue stick, Barro hits the bottle until he observes the waitress from Paco’s pool hall, Andrea Sanchez (Ruth Gabriel, winner of the 1994 Goya Award, the main film award for Spain), make some difficult shots. Realizing she is a prodigy, Barro begins to tutor her in the art of both billiards and hustling, hoping she can win back the bar and revenge his reputation. The set-up is a pretty clear rip-off of Fast Eddie “mentoring” Vince in The Color of Money.

As Barro explains to Sanchez, there is “your classic sucker: he’s got money and wants everyone to know it. Usually loses a lot but pretends not to care. Self-restraint is their priority. They are the easiest to beat… [Pointing at a slovenly player] Never trust appearances. He look like a bum, but underestimate him and he will win your money, even your underwear… [Pointing at a menacing player] Now sharks never look you straight in the eye. They love money, not the game itself. They are bad losers and will probably start a fight. Avoid them.”

But, Barro is also aware that “nobody will bet on a woman,” so he convinces Sanchez to pull a Tootsie, cutting her hair (to look eerily like Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid) and changing her clothes to become a man, since “we are living in a male chauvinistic world of assholes.” Oddly, Sanchez’s voice doesn’t change, though no one seems to notice.

The charade is sufficient to get Sanchez entered into the 32-person Cuemaster (5-Pins) World Championship, in which the winner’s pot is 32 million pesetas (approximately $270,000 in 1997), though the real money is made on side bets (cf. The Color of Money).

Sanchez, who only started playing months ago, is there to compete against real-world 5-pins legends, such as Gustavo Enrique Torregiani, the Argentinian three-time world champion of Italian 5-pins; Vitale “The Terminator” Nocerino, the runner-up to the 1997 World Cup; the “Blue Streak” Giorgio Colombo; and Salvatore Mannone, the 1993 World Cup winner.

Credibility wanes significantly when Sanchez starts beating these champions, moving ever closer to the winner’s circle. The montage of incredible 5-pins shots, including a spectacular eight rail four-pointer, interwoven into the scene more than compensates until the quarterfinals when Barro advises Sanchez to throw the game. With her unconvincing and unimaginative miss, the movie hits its nadir, and has a hard time recovering, even when Barro’s rationale for having Sanchez exit (the little-known “Paragraph 32 of the championship rules”) is revealed, excusing “The Monk” from playing and enabling Sanchez instead to compete in the anticlimactic finals.

More interesting is the film’s ending – an overt reference to The Color of Money (or maybe Rocky III) in which Barro and “The Monk,” both now with clean consciences, can compete one more time to see who is the real best 5-pins player.

Since Il tocco – la sfida is not available to buy or stream, I am extremely grateful to Mr. Coletti for directly sending me a copy of the movie (in English, too!).

For most billiards players, the greatest health concerns stemming from the game are Repetitive Motion Injuries (RMI) in the hand and wrist area, which are caused by the sudden and repetitious application of force (using the cue stick) on the forearms, wrists and hand areas. But, for the players who haunt the post-apocalyptic outback of Hard Knuckle, a 1987 made-for-television Australian movie, the far greater concern is the “Knuckle Table,” on which a botched shot means the severing of the top third of one’s finger.

Within this cinematic dystopia, Lex Marinos directs Steve Bisley (mildly memorable for appearing as Jim Goose in Mad Max) as Harry, a nomad garbed in sand-beaten clothes, with silly pool ball earrings and a pet Chihuahua. Finally sober, he has returned to an unnamed town to reclaim his old motorbike and sidecar from Top Dog, the local pool champion who is oddly unintimidating given his stature and reputation in the watering hole where he resides.

Harry learns quickly that he can no longer simply challenge Top Dog to a billiards match. Rather, he has two options. His first option is find an agent, who will put up the minimum $2000 in stake-horse money only then to take 80% of the winnings. His second option is to challenge his opponent to a game on the Knuckle Table, which has a nondescript black domino perched atop it. Players must pocket their balls (all 17, marked with a mix of letters, symbols and numbers) without toppling the domino. If the domino falls, then the player must forfeit the top-third of his finger to a blood-crusted set of pincers, hinged to one end of the table. (This is why friends often ask one another, “Show me your hands!”) Fortunately, a player can resume playing, albeit with a distinctively smaller digit.

Opting to avoid the Knuckle Table, Harry recruits Eddie, a 13-year-old urchin, who may in fact be kin, to be his agent, but is still unable to play Top Dog until he works his way to the top. Though Harry beats his immediate opponent, Pedals, an acquaintance from better days, he is subsequently mugged, and his penury forces him to take his billiards-playing on the road to earn some money through hustling.

In one of the few enjoyable scenes, but one that is also a blatant rip-off from The Hustler, Harry pulls into some urban shanty, where he pretends to be hammered and make an “impossible” shot, thereby duping the regulars to bet their savings if he can repeat it, which, of course, he does.

But, Harry’s next attempt to hustle falls short when he pulls into a more upscale bar with near-topless go-go dancers and a white pool table bordered by glow lights. There, an opportunity to play is thwarted by the arrival of Top Dog, who has been shadowing Harry ever since his exodus from the pool hall. Top Dog, however, had also unwittingly insulted the bar proprietor, and for a brief moment, the only satisfactory resolution appears to be a de-fingering on the Knuckle Table.

Financial problems notwithstanding, Harry helps rescue Top Dog, an act of kindness which benefits him later in the movie when the two nemeses finally do have their billiards match, ironically on the Knuckle Table. That game, unfortunately, like so many other parts of this inane film, makes little actual sense, as Harry willingly sacrifices a digit to remove the domino from the table, and then purposefully scratches at the end, ceding the game to Top Dog.

Hard Knuckle seems to be aiming for a Mad Max meets The Hustler vibe. Instead, the post-apocalyptic setting never feels very uninviting or threatening. (Hell, Top Dog is heckled by a kid with a pea-shooter.) And, the billiards lack cinematic quality, suspense or realism. As one blogger noted, even the Knuckle Table, so prominently featured on the movie’s artwork, is only used twice in the film, and both times, the losing player seems to resume the game unaffected. Toward the end of the movie, Harry says, “Are we going to play pool or are we going to piss around?” Yeah, Hard Knuckle provides an answer…and it’s not about playing pool.

Hard Knuckle is only available to watch on VHS.