Channing Tatum’s Naked Leech Scene Is the Best Part of ‘The Lost City’

There are a lot of reasons to stream The Lost City now that it’s available on Paramount+—dumb-fun humor, Daniel Radcliffe as a sociopathic billionaire, Sandra Bullock in a pink sparkly jumpsuit, just to name a few. But certainly, one rock-solid reason is the fact that you will see Channing Tatum‘s bare butt covered in fake leeches.

Now, before you kids get up in arms about Hollywood writers throwing in “useless” nudity scenes, you should know that the plot reason for Tatum stripping down to his birthday suit actually makes perfect sense, within the context of the movie. The action-comedy—which was directed by the Nee brothers, who also co-wrote the script with Oren Uziel and Dana Fox—follows the story of an archeologist-turned-romance-novelist named Loretta (Bullock) who finds herself kidnapped by a billionaire (Radcliffe) after he realizes her books are based on an actual lost city that could lead to riches. The only person who witnesses her capture is Alan (Tatum), the himbo male model who poses for the cover of all of Loretta’s books. He decides to rescue her.

Unsurprisingly, the rescue doesn’t exactly go as planned. In order to throw off the bad guys tracking them, Loretta and Alan opt to wade up a murky river for a few miles. When they get out of the water, Loretta notices something bulging and throbbing on Alan, and it is not, in fact, his penis—it’s disgusting, blood-sucking leeches. Like any rational person, Alan immediately screams, rips off his shirt, and demands that Loretta get them off of him.

It’s remarkably similar to the scene in 1951’s The African Queen, when Humphrey Bogart had leeches all over his back, and Katherine Hepburn helped to pick them off with salt. But because it was 1951, Bogart takes off his shirt only. He doesn’t even take off the trousers—merely rolls up his pant legs to get the leeches off his legs. To this day, I still shudder thinking about how many more leeches were undoubtedly clinging to Bogart’s thighs, leeches that went untreated, all for modesty’s sake. I mean, if you had a bunch of blood-sucking worms all over your body, you wouldn’t hesitate to take off all of your clothes, right?

Channing Tatum and The Lost City writers certainly seem to think so. In a stunning example of what Bogart should have done, Tatum has no qualms about stripping down to his boxers—and then down to nothing—in the name of getting rid of those creepy parasitic worms. And thank god he does, because, as it turns out, there are a lot of leeches on his butt.

The thing is, even though it’s covered in disgusting fake leeches, it’s still a very nice butt, connected to very nice thighs. Bullock dutifully picks off the creatures, commenting that it is not unlike picking anchovies off her pizza. Then Tatum turns around, so Bullock can inspect his front for leeches, and, though the audience doesn’t get to see that part, Bullock does a pretty good job painting a picture with her reaction.

“Uh, wow,” Bullock says, stumbling over her words. “You expect it to… and then suddenly there it is, and it is, uh… You’re just excited for a person. I’m excited for all people. People wonder, I mean, they wonder, right? But they don’t know. Until suddenly they do know, and then they know something that wasn’t known before.”

It’s ridiculous, yes, but a little sexy, right? There’s nothing like being forced to look at your apparently very well-endowed male model naked, while trapped in the jungle, to up the romantic tension. Even if his butt is covered in leeches.