5 Cougar Attacks In Otherwise Highbrow Movies

So here’s the dilemma facing the producers of flicks like The Reader: you’ve got some schlocky super-serious “film” about war crimes or whatever and you know it’s gonna get a gaggle of Golden Globe nominations (Reader just picked up four), but you want it to reach a wider audience. The solution? Write in a side plot where an older woman seduces a teenage boy! (Duh.)

It’s no secret that teenage dudes think about sex a lot, and although they usually beat meat to thoughts of some schoolyard crush, the ultimate fantasy is having an experienced older lady show you the ropes. So while having Kate Winslet take baths with a 15-year-old guy in Reader may be crucial to the movie’s plot (fuck if we know), the cinephiles here at Complex see it for what it is: a cynical (albeit welcomed) ruse to get dudes to watch boring movies. After the jump, check our list of high-minded films that used this lowbrow plot device…

TO DIE FOR

• In this fleetingly NSFW scene, ambitious weatherwoman Nicole Kidman seduces Joaquin Phoenix and later convinces him to kill her husband. A note of caution to those who would play with cougars'there’s no such thing as a free lunch, ya dig?

NOTES ON A SCANDAL

• Cate Blanchett is slightly mannish, but fuck it, we would’ve cut for it if she were our teacher, too.

THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR

• We have no idea how a movie about a self-absorbed children’s book author got made, but we imagine the phrase “and then this 18-year-old loses his virginity to Kim Basinger” had to be part of the pitch meeting.

IN THE BEDROOM

• We’d been fantasizing about getting with Marisa Tomei since My Cousin Vinny. Getting shot in the head by her abusive husband was definitely not part of the deal though.

AMERICAN PIE

• Not highbrow, you say? Fuck outta here. The next time one of these other films coins a phrase that’s assaulted the lexicon like “MILF,” it’ll be the first.

SPECIAL OG STATUS AWARD: HAROLD AND MAUDE

• The grandaddy (or would that be grandmama? ewwww) of them all gets a special listing because, let’s face it, nobody was fantasizing about Ruth Gordon (least not in 1971). Still, H & M was funny as shit and probably gave some producer the idea to pair a teenage dude with, you know, an attractive older woman.