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Saltburn's controversial bath water scene has been immortalised as a candle

It comes as Barry Keoghan reveals his 'hesitation' at filming that final nude scene

Saltburn's controversial bath water scene has been immortalised as a candle

By Danielle de Wolfe

05 January 2024

It may be a brand new year but that doesn't mean an end to the bizarre products born out of our favourite big screen performances.

Take Saltburn for example - a film which hooked both cinema-going audiences and Amazon Prime viewers alike when the controversial film dropped in December.

Not satisfied with leaving audiences jaws on the floor following Barry Keoghan's on-screen performance as Oxford University student Oliver Quick (nor his show-stopping Murder on the Dancefloor performance), the film has already spawned some rather bizarre merchandise.

Move over Gwyneth Paltrow and those notorious 'Smells Like My Vagina' Goop candles, for there's a new kid on the block - and it smells like used bathwater.

A film which also stars Jacob Elordi, Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike to name but a few, Saltburn has become something of a polarising force where critics and audiences are concerned.

Viewers will likely recall one of the film's most controversial scenes, in which Quick's aristocratic classmate can be seen, ahem, pleasuring himself in a bathtub, before the Irish actor enters and then slurps the used tub water.

A scene that spawned a thousand memes, now, it appears the essence of that memorable on-screen moment has been captured in candle form, courtesy of some unofficial merchandise that hit web stores earlier this week.

Named 'Jacob Elordi’s Bathwater' according to the Etsy seller's page, the eau-du-climax candle is currently to purchase for the low, low price of £25 - it has since been removed from Amazon.

A product that gained attention after going viral on TikTok, the product description reads: “There’s nothing quite like the smell of a quality candle, particularly when that smell is inspired by Jacob Elordi and what we imagine His Highness to smell like.”

Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, who also made the excellent Promising Young Woman and was one of the writers on Killing Eve, the film depicts a rather shocking summer on the Elordi family's estate.

However, Keoghan has since revealed his hesitancy when it came to the film's iconic final scene.

Soundtracked by Sophie Ellis-Bexter's iconic naughties pop anthem 'Murder on the Dancefloor' the full-frontal scene saw Keoghan undertake a celebratory dance through the Elordi family's manor house.

“I was like, ‘Let’s go again. Let’s go again.’ You kind of forget, because there’s such a comfortable environment created, and it gives you that license to go, ‘All right, this is about the story now,'” revealed the actor in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.

“It’s ownership. This is my place. It’s full confidence in, ‘I can do what I want in this manor. I can strip to my barest and waltz around because this is mine.’ Yeah… it was fun.”

Shooting the now-infamous dance scene a total of 11 times, Fennell added that while the seventh take of the dance was “technically perfect”, it lacked the “absolutely devilish joy” needed for the scene.

“Barry, to his credit, did it four more times until the one that you see, which has this total fucking evil joie de vivre that is impossible not to be on board with,” Fennell said.

It comes as Sophie Ellis-Bextor dancefloor banger re-entered the UK Top 40 following the scene, with the singer even re-creating the dance on her own social media channels (fully clothed we might add).