Here are the five sexiest movies about the Amish. Yes, we know what you’re thinking: How can anyone narrow it down to just five? We did our best, and came up with the following.
Amish Affair (2024)
The newest movie on our list, and the only one to be “ripped from the headlines,” Amish Affair tracks the passionate barnyard trysts between Hannah (Mackenzie Cardwell) and hunky Amish leader Aaron (Ryan McPartlin) after he welcomes her into his home to help with his ailing (and inconvenient) wife.
Lines are crossed, questions are raised, and, as so often happens in these situations, rat poison is dispensed.
This Lifetime original received a mostly positive reception, though one YouTube user commented, “OMG! We Amish are so not like this! LOL.”
Deadly Blessing (1981)
We know, we know: Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing, as everyone remembers, isn’t technically about the Amish. It’s about the Hittites, a very Amish-like sect. (WesCraven.com notes that the film “is set in Amish Country, at a local farm, where a woman’s husband is mysteriously killed by his own tractor!”)
But the Hittite stuff feels like a fig leaf covering up the fact that the sect is intended as a stand-in for the Amish. This slasher film, which landed between the early mayhem of Craven classics like Last House on the Left and the commercial success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, relies heavily on the appeal of its scantily clad actresses (including Sharon Stone in an early role) as they deal with an evil incubus. (Though really, is there any other kind?)
There’s lots of Biblical imagery, including an icky scene with a snake in a bathtub. It combines titillation and terror, in classic slasher tradition, but with some religious extremism thrown in. We can understand why the Amish probably wouldn’t want to be connected with it, and its ickier aspects explain why it’s only fourth on this list.
Also: Stone grew up in a part of Pennsylvania not far from Amish country, which makes us like Deadly Blessing more.
The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968)
Though it’s set in the 1920s, you can really feel the ’60s swinging through The Night They Raided Minsky’s, one of many films that had fun with the changing sexual mores of the year that followed the Summer of Love. It was also one of the first films to pit the plain Amish against the constant temptations of the outside world.
A pure romp, the film follows Britt Eckland as Rachel Schpitendavel, a young Amish woman hoping to make it in New York City with dance numbers inspired by the Bible. Through a series of complicated events, she ends up performing her chaste numbers at a burlesque show. When her furious Amish father tries to drag her offstage, ripping her clothes, she accidentally invents a new kind of entertainment.
The people involved in The Night They Raided Minsky’s are A-list all the way, and include producer Norman Mailer, director William Friedkin (who would go on to direct The Exorcist), and actors Jason Robards, Elliott Gould and Denholm Elliott. The latter would go on to appear in two Indiana Jones films with a gentleman who stars in the next film on our list.
Witness (1985)
A basically perfect movie, Witness is rather chaste by the standards of sexy Amish movies. Of course it wasn’t the first film to juxtapose the plain lifestyle of the Amish with the sultriness of the big city, but it is the movie that did it with the most dignity and respect.
There’s a passionate, beautifully shot makeout scene between Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Philadelphia cop John Book (Harrison Ford) before the big fight with the English who come to invade Rachel’s idyllic community to get her son, Samuel (Lucas Haas) who has witnessed a murder. The scene is as effective as it is because of the restraint leading up to it: John and Rachel’s silent assignation is naturalistic, cathartic and entirely convincing.
Witness follows a lot of Hollywood tropes — the fish out of water, the mismatched lovers — and yet it works completely because everyone, from Ford to McGillis to director Peter Weir, commits and tries to give the Amish respect and dignity, instead of just treating them as comical foils.
But this isn’t a list of the best movies about the Amish — it’s a list of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Which brings us to No. 1 on our list.
Kingpin (1996)
For our money, Kingpin is one of the funniest Farrelly brothers films, and has a proud spot on our list of ’90s Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended.
It follows bowling burnout Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) as he attempts to exploit Amish bowling savant Ishmael Boorg (Randy Quaid). But he must compete with Claudia (Vanessa Angel) who uses her considerable wiles to both corrupt and liberate the naive Ishmael. Some of the most memorable scenes in Kingpin come when Claudia uses the aforementioned wiles to help her boys on the bowling circuit by distracting their opponents.
What makes Kingpin so satisfying is how all three main characters, despite their intense differences and flaws, ultimately uplift each other’s lives. As in many Farrelly brothers films, the tawdrier parts of life lead to wholesome outcomes.
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You may also like this list of 11 Shameless Movies That Glamorize the Devil, including Bedazzled, above.
Main image: Britt Eckland in The Night They Raided Minsky’s. United Artists.