Depending on where you live and how powerful your air conditioner is, summer may not always feel like the sexiest season. But while us mortals are subject to sweating through shirts and sporting the fetching blotchiness of minor heatstroke, movie characters are free to explore the inherent sultriness of a summer setting. And they have! Since the advent of feature film, directors have equated the steamiest months of the year with simmering sexual tension. Sexy summer movies are a niche category that stretches across genres. In the list below, you’ll find sexy summer thrillers; sexy summer comedies; and of course, sexy summer romances to fire you up in the way nature and Hollywood intended. These are the 26 sexiest summer movies of all time.
When temperatures rise, anything can happen. Or at least, that’s how these films will make you feel. These movies range from the innocent to the explicit, but all of them share that heightened sense of freedom and occasional danger that summer can inspire. When you don’t fancy wasting away in the actual sun, you can crank up the AC and put on one of these 26 sexy flicks. I promise, you’ll still feel the heat.
1. Blue Crush
Fierce surfer girls with strong bodies battle the waves in this drama that will have you booking your beginner lesson ASAP.
2. American Pie 2
Sex is awkward and that's fine. And no one knows that truth better than the teens in American Pie. The first sequel sends the boys to a summer lake house to continue their crash course in sex and love.
3. Do The Right Thing
Racial tensions and the heat index both run high in Do The Right Thing's New York City. Rosie Perez's opening credits dance sequence to N.W.A.'s "Fight The Power" is sexy and iconic.
4. A Walk On The Moon
Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen have an illicit summertime affair in this dreamy romance.
5. To Catch A Thief
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly look fabulous and con wealthy vacationers in a Hitchcock classic.
6. Mamma Mia
Say what you will about Colin Firth's ability to carry a tune; I wouldn't mind him serenading me with Abba songs against a gorgeous island backdrop.
7. Y Tu Mama Tambien
Two old friends take a road trip with a woman with a secret, and none of them are ever the same.
8. Little Darlings
A rare '80s sex comedy where the women are in charge, Little Darlings is about two teenage girls who go to summer camp and make a bet about who can lose her V-card first.
9. The Seven Year Itch
Marilyn Monroe tests the limited willpower of a married man when she moves into the apartment above his.
10. Monsoon Wedding
A family comes together to celebrate a daughter's nuptials in this sumptuous dramedy — a breakout for director Mira Nair.
11. Body Heat
This modern noir features Kathleen Turner as a sinfully persuasive femme fatale.
12. The Man In The Moon
Reese Witherspoon makes her film debut in this coming-of-age drama about two Southern sisters who fall in love with the same boy.
13. Dirty Dancing
The ultimate summer fling. Baby Houseman avoids organized resort activities with her parents, opting instead to pachenga and make love to heartthrob dance instructor, Johnny Castle.
14. Swimming Pool
If you get this French thriller on DVD, you'll be treated to the un-rated cut that was clipped to avoid the dreaded NC-17 rating.
15. Blue Hawaii
They called him the King for a reason.
16. Rear Window
Another Hitchockian summer. Grace Kelly sparkles in a enviable wardrobe as the girlfriend of a photographer (Jimmy Stewart) who's confined to a wheelchair for the summer and becomes convinced that his neighbor is a murderer.
17. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Jason Segel follows his ex to Hawaii and figures out that rebound relationships aren't actually so bad.
18. Point Break
Forget the recent remake and stick to the original. '90s cover boys Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze star in a thriller about a group of thrill seeker criminals and the FBI agent who goes under deep cover to stop them.
19. The To-Do List
Aubrey Plaza stars in a sex-positive homage to the raunchy teen comedies of the past.
20. City Of God
By no means is City Of God a happy film, but it's a beautifully realized one. Its Rio is corrupt, but seductive.
21. Dazed & Confused
There's something mythic about the last day of school. It's only the first day of summer vacation, but it feels like the first day of the rest of your life.
22. Last Summer
Two boys in the modern rural South savor their last summer together before life and school take them in separate directions.
23. The Blue Lagoon
What else are a couple of beautiful teenagers trapped on a deserted island and dealing with their changing bodies supposed to do? Make friends with a volleyball?
Click here to watch.
24. My Summer Of Love
In her film debut, Emily Blunt plays a rich girl who befriends and falls for a woman from a working class family. Can their relationship survive their disparate backgrounds?
25. A Streetcar Named Desire
Stanley Kowalski is one of American literature's greatest villains, but man does Marlon Brando look good in (and out of) a dirty undershirt.
26. Before Sunrise
The first film in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy follows a pair of strangers during an impromptu all-nighter in Vienna. Pure hipster romance.
If these sexy summer movies sent you right into a cold shower, you're in good company.
Images: Lionsgate; Giphy (21)
