By Susan King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The fall 2007 movie season is bursting at the box office with prestige pictures featuring extreme nudity and violence.

First in theaters was Viggo Mortensen rolling around buck naked in a sauna during a bloody knife fight in David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises." The next release was Ang Lee's erotic love story, "Lust, Caution," which earned an NC-17 rating from the MPAA due to scenes featuring actors Tony Leung and Tang Wei engaged in prolonged and violent sex. Other notable nudes include Eva Mendes, who bears all onscreen for the first time in "We Own the Night," as does Emile Hirsch in Sean Penn's "Into the Wild."

The recent spate of racy films portends a new wave of prestige pictures with adult ratings. The mold was broken when the X classification was introduced nearly 40 years ago. At the time, several motion pictures from noted directors earned the film industry's most stigmatized rank. Several were nominated for Oscars, with one -- “Midnight Cowboy” -- even winning the Oscar for best picture.

Here’s a look at some of the most prestigious X-rated films of the last 40 years.