Sexy summer DVDs

Even though the sun is already doing a good enough job, thank you, of raising your temperature this summer, your home theater could do with a little steam heat of its own. Here are some suggestions for sexy videos to help raise the mercury on a sultry summer night.

The Spanish import Bear Cub revolves mainly around a burly Madrid dentist who has to leave behind his ursine pursuits when he suddenly finds himself raising his young nephew, but this sweet comedy takes a few carnal detours as the DDS finds action at the bathhouse and under the right bridge. The director's cut features a few fairly explicit scenes that didn't make it to U.S. theaters.

If your taste in men runs more to the buff and hairless variety, Q. Allan Brocka's audacious sex comedy Eating Out hits video store shelves July 26. This collegiate mistaken-identity farce ratchets the naughty factor far higher than the average queer romantic comedy.

But hey, it's not all about dudes. The French coming-of-age drama Clara's Summer tells the story of two girls who head to summer camp only to find it to be a hotbed of sexual tension. But don't expect it to be Les Petites Darlings. Another sexy and acclaimed indie--keep an eye out for the unrated version--Girl Play follows the misadventures of two actresses who fall in love while rehearsing a play in which they play lesbian lovers.

Audiences in 1968 had never seen anything like the very steamy love scene between Susannah York and Coral Browne in Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George, and it's still pretty gasp-worthy all these decades later. (MGM releases another lesbian classic--Sandra Bernhard's concert film Without You I'm Nothing--on the same day, and her closing striptease remains as in-your-face as ever.)

Finally, there's a handful of not specifically queer films on DVD that are still capable of giving you the vapors. Mario Bava's psychedelic caper epic Danger: Diabolik remains one of the 1960s' most over-the-top campfests, but stars John Phillip Law and Marisa Mell are both outrageously beautiful. And if you've never quite gotten over your hankering for the archetypal '70s guy, may we suggest an evening curled up with Sam Elliott and Parker Stevenson, circa 1976, filling their Speedos in the dopey but delicious Lifeguard?

But when it comes to movies, sex isn't everything. Sometimes sublimation can be just as stimulating. Take Fred and Ginger--The Astaire and Rogers Collection: Volume One features four great movies in which the legendary duo replace the horizontal mambo with some of the screen's most breathtaking--and even erotic, in an art deco way--dancing. And if you like watching a gorgeous couple share dry martinis and even dryer one-liners, then you'll do no better than The Complete Thin Man Collection, featuring Nick, Nora, and Asta doing that voodoo that they do so well.