Best Decadence Movies & TV Shows

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feed his urge for violent action.

A New York stockbroker refuses to cooperate in a large securities fraud case involving corruption on Wall Street, corporate banking world and mob infiltration. Based on Jordan Belfort's autobiography.

A dramatic history of Puyi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

Hugo Barrett is a servant in the Chelsea home of indolent aristocrat Tony. All seems to go well until the playboy’s girlfriend Susan takes a dislike to the efficient employee. Then Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister Vera as a live-in maid, and matters take another turn for the worse…

A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, tracing the rise and fall of multiple characters in an era of unbridled decadence and depravity during Hollywood's transition from silent films and to sound films in the late 1920s.

Turning points in ancient Roman history and some of the Empire's greatest stories are brought to life in this drama documentary series.

Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles and an impish emcee sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force.

A drama about the local field office that investigates criminal cases affecting military personnel in The Big Easy, a city known for its music, entertainment and decadence.

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.

A documentary of the decline of America. Featuring footage (most exclusive to this film) from race riots to serial killers and much, much more.

The story of the famous and influential 1960s rock band and its lead singer and composer, Jim Morrison.

The escape of Bubber Reeves from prison affects the inhabitants of a small Southern town.

A doctor's research into the roots of evil turns him into a hideous depraved fiend.

During the 18th century, German noblewoman Sophia Frederica, who would later become Catherine the Great, travels to Moscow to marry the dimwitted Grand Duke Peter, the heir to the Russian throne. Their arranged marriage proves to be loveless, and Catherine takes many lovers, including the handsome Count Alexei, and bears a son. When the unstable Peter eventually ascends to the throne, Catherine plots to oust him from power.

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.

We arrive with New York heiress Lucy Savage fresh off the transatlantic steamer and ready for love and marriage in exotic climes. But when her husband Hugo does not receive her in the way she expected, she spins off into the surprising, diverse and degenerate world of Tangier in 1955.

An elderly ex-serviceman and widower looks to avenge his best friend's murder by doling out his own form of justice.

A waitress, a barman and an underwear designer try to rob a New York restaurant where two of them work.

An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.

Paris, 1933. The daughter of a respectable lower middle class couple, Violette Nozière, leads a disreputable double life. Far from being the innocent 18-year-old her parents mistake her for, she spends her nights with dissolute young men in the less salubrious areas of the city.

A retelling of France's iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette, from her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at 15 to her reign as queen at 19 and ultimately the fall of Versailles.

A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in search for his runaway teenage daughter who’s making porno films in the pits of Los Angeles.

Miriam promises her lovers the gift of eternal life, but John, her companion for centuries, suddenly discovers that he is getting old minute by minute, so he looks for Dr. Sarah Roberts, a researcher on the mechanisms of aging, and asks her for help.

When Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider from humble beginnings, marries into the Gucci family, her unbridled ambition begins to unravel the family legacy and triggers a reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately… murder.

Growing up in the sheltered confines of a 1920's English coal-mining community, free-spirited sisters Gudrun and Ursula explore erotic love with a wealthy playboy and a philosophical educator, with cataclysmic results for all four.

Into an era seething with war and revolution, a man comes with an incredible power to heal a nation...or destroy it. Based on the true story of one of the most powerful and mysterious figures in Russian history.

A psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.

A college freshman returns to Los Angeles for Christmas at his ex-girlfriend's request, but discovers that his former best friend has an out-of-control drug habit.

Hollywood, 1930s. Tod Hackett, a young painter who tries to make his way as an art director in the lurid world of film industry, gets infatuated with his neighbor Faye Greener, an aspiring actress who prefers the life that Homer Simpson, a lone accountant, can offer her.

Studio 54 was the epicenter of 70s hedonism - a place that not only redefined the nightclub, but also came to symbolize an entire era. Its co-owners, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, seemed to come out of nowhere to suddenly preside over a new kind of New York society. Now, 39 years after the velvet rope was first slung across the club's hallowed threshold, a feature documentary tells the real story behind the greatest club of all time.

Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle, becoming a witness to obsession and tragedy.

Octavius Caesar (later renamed Augustus Caesar, son of the murdered Julius Caesar), Marc Antony, and Lepidus form the triumvirate, the three rulers of the Roman Empire. Antony, though married to Fulvia, spends his time in Egypt, living a life of decadence and conducting an affair with Queen Cleopatra. In Antony's absence, Caesar and Lepidus worry about Pompey's increasing strength.

Of all the remarkable events of this century perhaps the most fascinating has been the spontaneous growth, flowering and then decay of a handful of great cities. These cities were places where art, culture and political liberties co-mingled with corruption, brutality and decadence. Everything and just about anyone could be bought and sold. The immigrant would struggle beside the artist. Gamblers, thieves and prostitutes co-habited with soul-savers, the rich and the powerful. The exhilarating combination of the seamy with the sublime made these places a magnet for all the lost souls and refugees of the world. Pushing the limits of tolerance and freedom, they defined the social, political and sexual culture of the 20th century. Their names ring out: Paris of the '20s, Berlin of the '20s and '30s and Shanghai of the '30s.

Burned-out B-movie actress Maria, depressed and frustrated with her loveless marriage to an ambitious film director, Carter Lang, who would rather work on his career than on his relationship with her, numbs herself with drugs and sex with strangers. Only her friendship with a sensitive gay movie producer, B.Z., offers a semblance of solace. But even that relationship proves to be fleeting amidst the empty decadence of Hollywood.

London, England, November 5th, 1892, Guy Fawkes Night. The famous playwright Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas discreetly go to a luxury brothel where the owner, Alfred Taylor, has prepared a surprise for the renowned author: a private and very special performance of his play Salome, banned by the authorities, in which Taylor himself and the peculiar inhabitants of the exclusive establishment will participate.

Although Jo Jo Dancer has achieved success as a stand-up comedian, he hasn't found happiness. After receiving severe burns in a narcotics-related incident, Jo Jo remains in a coma, and, while in this state, he looks back on his life. Drifting off into memories of his troubled childhood, Jo Jo revisits his youth, recalling his eventual rise to fame and the decadence that followed. As he considers his existence, he must decide if he wants to go on living or not.

Based on the true story of Valerie Solanas who was a 1960s radical preaching hatred toward men in her "Scum" manifesto. She wrote a screenplay for a film that she wanted Andy Warhol to produce, but he continued to ignore her. So she shot him. This is Valerie's story.

A group of disillusioned American expatriate writers live a dissolute, hedonistic lifestyle in 1920's France and Spain.

A grim police detective embarks on a one-man crusade to track down a depraved sex maniac when a nightclub deejay receives a disturbing series of obscene phone calls. Finding himself getting far too close to the victim for comfort, the hard-boiled cop must track down the unbalanced pervert before he can carry out his sick threats...

A group of hobos begin melting into multicolored piles of goo after drinking sixty-year-old liquor. At the same time, the psychotic Vietnam War vet who rules the hobo camp snaps and begins killing at random. Two brothers set out to stop the liquor and the killer.

The film tells the story of documentary filmmaker Michael King (Shane Johnson), who doesn’t believe in God or the Devil. Following the sudden death of his wife, Michael decides to make his next film about the search for the existence of the supernatural, making himself the center of the experiment – allowing demonologists, necromancers, and various practitioners of the occult to try the deepest and darkest spells and rituals they can find on him – in the hopes that when they fail, he’ll once and for all have proof that religion, spiritualism, and the paranormal are nothing more than myth. But something does happen. An evil and horrifying force has taken over Michael King. And it will not let him go.

A young shut-in takes an imaginary road trip inside his apartment, based on mementos and memories of a European trek from years before.

The perversion behind imperial Rome, the epic story of Rome's mad Emporer. All the details of his cruel, bizarre reign are revealed right here: His unholy sexual passion for his sister, his marriage to Rome's most infamous prostitute, his fiendishly inventive means of disposing those who would oppose him, and more.

A millionaire past his prime and his young wife arrive in Kenya circa 1940 to find that the other affluent British expatriates are living large as the homefront gears up for war. They are busy swapping partners, doing drugs, and attending lavish parties and horse races. She begins a torrid affair with one of the bon vivants, and her husband finds out and confronts them. The husband and wife decide to break up peacefully, but the bon vivant is murdered and all the evidence points to the husband.

Set in a blazing land where the sun ceaselessly shines, this dramatic fantasy examines love’s darker aspects.

A heroin junkie works as a prostitute to support his habit and fund an abortion needed by the girlfriend of his lesbian wife. His seedy encounters with delusional and damaged clients, and dates with drag queens and hustlers are heavy on sex, drugs and decadence.

The story of John Wilmot, a.k.a. the Earl of Rochester, a 17th century poet who famously drank and debauched his way to an early grave, only to earn posthumous critical acclaim for his life's work.

Henry Tawes, a middle-aged sheriff in a rural Tennessee town, is usually the first man to criticize others for their bad behavior. Miserable in his marriage, Henry falls in love with teenage seductress Alma, who is the daughter of local criminal and moonshiner Carl McCain. Henry's moral character comes further into question when he is tempted to conceal Carl's crimes in order to prolong his relationship with Alma.