Cine Trash

Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995)
by William Ham
illustration by Michael Corcoran

This is it, the ne plus ultra of modern celluloid putrefaction, the picture which no less an authority than John Waters has praised as proof that the golden age of filmic dung is alive and sick. To call Showgirls “bad” is like calling Ted Bundy “moody” – this massively-budgeted major studio misogyny-fest is like one huge, twisted, hostile Y chromosome made (copious) flesh, a truly dumbfounding experience that achieves the dubious distinction of making Las Vegas look worse than it actually is. Where to begin? I guess that what Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (who, believe it or not, once was responsible for some halfway decent scripts with strong female leads) had in “mind” was a modern update of the rise-to-the-top backstage melodramas of our black-and-white past, an inspirational tale of the indomitable spirit of a star-struck girl from the sticks in the big, bad world of showbiz. That notion flies through the window as soon as Elizabeth Berkley (in a performance that makes her Saved By The Bell work look like friggin’ Stanislavsky) pulls a switchblade on a truckdriver and screeches “Chill!” in the very first scene. She plays Nomi Malone, a girl with a mysterious identity (“No me,” get it? Gee, Joe, you really earned your two mil on that one) and big, er, aspirations, which she wastes no time showing off, working her way up from a sleazy small-time strip club to a sleazy big-time strip show faster than you can speed-dial Andrea Dworkin’s hot line. And maybe you’d care if Nomi wasn’t one of the most shrill, unsympathetic protagonists in cinema history, a fatal flaw shot through the entire film that makes it hard to enjoy even as camp – every shot, character, and line of dialogue is so grimly garish and harsh that there’s very little pleasure in the overwrought degradation of it all. (This film may have the lowest breast-to-eroticism ratio this side of a nudist-camp volleyball reel.) Yet there are one or two moments that almost begin to come close to redeeming this glossy em-bare-ass-ment. First and foremost is Gina Gershon, who, as the lead in the choreographed glitter-hump show, actually seems to be enjoying herself, giving an arch, lascivious spin to her every curled-lip moment on screen. Second is the swimming pool sex scene between Berkley and Kyle MacLachlan (Agent Cooper, how could you?), wherein our heroine goes through coital thrashings less sexy than somehow reminiscent of an electric eel on the mechanical bull at Gilley’s. (Orgasm or grand mal? You make the call!) That notwithstanding, whatever fun Showgirls provides as a sort of NC-17 MST3K home game is deeply tainted by the hostility that runs through the film like dry rot. (Note how the character that does the single most reprehensible act in a movie full of them looks just like Eszterhas.) Some call this the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls of the nineties, but I dunno – I can envision Russ Meyer shaking his head, saying, “Jesus, you guys are a little breast-obsessed, aren’t you?”