The Most Classic Shower Scenes in Movie History

Image via Complex Original

The fact that there is no more iconic shower scene than the one in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is indisputable. If you haven’t seen it, SPOILER ALERT. In a move unprecedented in old Hollywood, Hitchcock set up the thriller with superstar Janet Leigh as his lead actress, only to kill her off not even a third into the movie. The set up is this: Marion Crane, on the run after stealing thousands of dollars to set up a life with her fiancé, takes a wrong turn into the Bates Motel, where its owner, Norman Bates, invites her to stay for the night. However, as she turns in for her evening shower, a woman with a butcher knife stabs her through the curtains. Although at first it’s believed that the killer is Norman’s overprotective mom, the end reveals Norman to be the twisted psycho who dresses up as his deceased mother.

Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) opens the film breaking the fourth wall, letting the audience in on how he’s going to play hooky for the day. Just before he turns the shower head on, he utters the line that never fails to get you to rethink your 9-to-5: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” What follows is Bueller, donning a shampoo mohawk, singing (excellently, TBH) Wayne Newton’s “Danke Shoen.”

This has got to be one of the cutest, if not creepiest, scenes in movie history. Buddy the Elf, just after setting up the department store for Santa, follows a sweet voice singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside” into the employee bathroom. With a skewed concept of social etiquette—he was, after all, raised by a family of happy-go-lucky elves—Buddy begins to duet with the showering woman, who, like any normal human being, freaks the hell out. But after the awkwardness subsides, Buddy and the voice, Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), carry on like he probably didn’t traumatize her from ever using a public bathroom again.

Ah, the shower scene that launched the ship of a generation #Bechloe. But let’s rewind Pitch Perfect for all you rubes who haven’t hopped on. Desperate for new recruits to her disgraced a cappella group, Chloe (Brittany Snow), group co-leader, tracks an angelic voice singing David Guetta’s “Titanium” into a shower stall. Lacking in personal boundaries, Chloe slides open the curtain to discover whose it is, only to reveal a naked Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick). Chloe, who doesn’t care that they’re both standing in the nude, makes Beca harmonize with her, and admits that the song is her “lady jam.” (Yeah, it is what you think it is.)—thus, creating Chloe, a.k.a. #Bechloe, the potential relation(ship) so obsessed over by fans of the first film that writer Kay Cannon and director Elizabeth Banks teased its existence to no end in the sequel.

This is as close to a shower orgy as you can get without it being NC-17. As there is literally no motivation for the scene at all, you just watch a bunch of gorgeous alien fighters chit-chatting in all their glory while running water pours over their ripped bodies like an erotic sci-fi novel come to life. Oh, and if this scene leaves you dumbfounded, here’s a reminder about the plot: a crew of the most promising, physically capable citizens (including Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards) in future Earth, now a space-faring Federation, ship off into outer space to fight a threatening bug species. The nudity, the love scenes, the bromance—that’s all extra.

If you were that kid who didn’t wash off after gym class, gross. Just kidding—we don’t blame you. It did make it look like the worst possible idea ever. After watching the classic horror movie, which is about a demon who dresses as a child-killing clown, stepping into a public shower could never be the same. You’d always imagine yourself ending up all alone in the stall, nude and defenseless, with the psychotic Pennywise taunting your manhood while slowly edging his way out of the drain.

In Weird Science, two pubescent nerds build a smokin’ hot robot, Lisa (Kelly LeBrock), out of scratch (because they’re too insecure to talk to actual women) with a super computer. Indebted to them, Lisa invites the boys into the shower with her, where she’ll do whatever they want. But just when they’re about to engage, the boys completely blow it—so to speak.

Don’t the drop the soap. This age-old prison saying couldn’t be truer here. Det. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) finds himself showering in jail, next to a giant beefcake who’s got his eyes on Frank’s prize. To catch his attention, said beefcake lets his soap slip right by Frank’s feet, forcing him to pick it up. The prisoners clear the showers, knowing what’s about to go down. But just as Frank is about to pick it up, the camera pans down to reveal...Frank’s steel chastity belt. Dude may be an idiot, but somehow it always works out in his favor.

Psycho’s shower scene is common knowledge by now, so it has lost shock value. But you needn’t worry, because Dressed to Kill is by the far the most disturbing iconic scene on the list. Brian De Palma opens his erotic crime thriller with a demented dream sequence of a sexually frustrated housewife (Angie Dickinson) in the shower as she gazes lustfully at her husband in the distance—until she’s grabbed from behind by an attacker. At first she welcomes the intrusion, but as soon as it turns violent, the scene cuts, and the audience is left with an image of an unsatisfied Kate having just had sex with her distant husband. Only a few minutes into the movie and De Palma already has your mind warped.

The most gratuitous scene on the list, this one exists purely for the sake of fulfilling the fantasies of bros everywhere. It is, after all, the O.G. dudes-losing-their-virginity movie. In this particular scene, a trio of bros get caught spying on a bunch of bathing girls in the locker room through a row of carefully drilled peepholes. While it isn’t the classiest entry on this list, the film did set the standard for raunchy teen comedies.