10 Sizzling Documentaries

If you think a story about a pair of 69-year-old prostitutes might be depressing, you haven’t met Mary and Louise Fokkens, chubby-cheeked identical twins who’ve been plying their trade in Amsterdam’s red-light district for more than 40 years. Like the film, they’re smart and sweet.

If the ’70s were the time for swinging, Plato’s Retreat, a straight Manhattan sex club, was the ultimate locale. Thanks to this film’s wistful and whimsical recounting of the long-defunct club, you can relive the place and the time in all its sweaty glory.

Adapted from Vito Russo’s book of the same name, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary effortlessly—and vividly—takes us through the history of Hollywood’s repressed and thwarted portrayal of homosexuality and, with a tinge of Tinsel Town, leaves us hopeful for a liberated future.

Although her body, face and, of course, those amazing bangs are what lifted a young orphan from Tennessee to legendary pin-up status, little else about Bettie Page was common knowledge, until this entertaining and poignant film, in which the reclusive Bettie tells her story.

“Candy came from out on the Island,” or so Lou Reed sang, and this tender film biography shows us how Candy Darling, trans pioneer and glam Warhol superstar, became a singular legend—if not the Hollywood star she had hoped to be—in the role she was born to play: herself.

Spanning three prostitution districts in three parts of the world (Thailand, Bangladesh and Mexico), Michael Glawogger’s film holds nothing but judgment back in its unblinking observations of the oldest profession.

While the “truth” option of this Alek Keshishian behind-the-scenes documentary might get lost in its mix of sexy, black-and-white, celebrity-laden life-on-the-tour scenes and slick color footage of the shows, the “dare” certainly isn’t. When pressed, it’s clear that Madonna will always choose the latter. It's always a lot more fun.

Twenty-six years after it was first released, Jennie Livingston’s poignant and daring dig into New York’s underground drag balls still strikes gold. As the royal houses Xtravaganza, LaBeija and Ninja strut and vogue for glory, they prove that glamour, beauty and, above all, dignity can rise from the most unlikely of places.

For master documentarian Frederick Wiseman's sexiest cinematic Petri dish to date, he focuses his ever-watchful eye on Crazy Horse, the legendary nude cabaret in Paris’s Rive Droite, a place where desire, art and business co-exist in mysterious ways.

While lesser filmmakers might just have made a movie about Deep Throat, the highest-grossing and most infamous porn film of all time, and called it a day, directors Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey go (dare we say) deeper by using its subject to explore the war over sex, censorship, and women’s bodies that rages on to this day.