Drama

Film review of Showgirls (1995) the erotic drama starring Elizabeth Berkley as Nomi, a drifter pursuing her dream to be a top dancer in musical reviews in Las Vegas. Directed by Paul Verhoeven.

Synopsis

Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) hitchhikes to Las Vegas determined to become a top dancer in the sexually-charged musical reviews that feature in theatres across ‘sin city’. Naive but full of drive and an obvious talent for dancing, she battles to gain entry to the hierarchical nature of this world and the attentions of the predatory, sex-hungry men who run it.

Review, by @Reelreviewer

Back in the day, producer/director/showman Cecil B. DeMille – who knew a thing or two about making blockbuster movie hits – opined his core cinematic strategy: “Hit sex hard.”

Although cinema was more conservative in its output when he said that, his maxim above meant that he peppered his films with enough titillating flashes of possible nudity to secure plenty of bums on seats.

It’s a maxim that his modern-day peer, the Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, may have caught wind of at some point in his career. His films, from his early days in the Netherlands, through his first foray into US cinema Flesh & Blood (1985), to the movies that established him as a bankable pair of sweaty hands (Total Recall, 1990 and Basic Instinct, 1992), all contain a full-throttle, unbridled treatment of sex that is at the same time jarring and also (unintentionally?) comedic.

Take one of the many sex scenes in Showgirls, Verhoeven’s semi-porny take on All About Eve (1950), with Berkley as the Anne Baxter character and Gina Gershon as a modern-day, topless Bette Davis. When Berkley and annoyingly floppy-haired co-star Kyle MacLachlan get at it in a hot tub, they are like the mindlessly rutting animals you see in any mating scene in a David Attenborough programme. Nothing is stimulating about it (if that was the intention), it is just bad ‘shunting and grunting’ from a random skin flick.

Showgirls comes across as Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Esterhaz (the Basic Instinct scribe) have watched too much porn. Interestingly, Esterhaz has said he wrote this script after a messy divorce from his first wife. So is Showgirls just a worryingly at-a-distance revenge porn by proxy?

He pocketed around $3.7m for his scribbling that contains these classic lines:

• You fuck ’em without fucking.
• I have no problem with pussy. Never have, never gonna.
• I like having nice tits.
• It must be weird not having anybody cum on ya (from Robert Davi, this almost approaches fatherly advice for Showgirls).
• And the pièce de résistance – She looks better than a 10-inch dick, and you know it!

Before the cameras rolled, leading star Berkley (from TV’s teen comedy hit Saved By the Bell) was briefed that it would involve a lot of full-frontal nudity. To her credit (and abundant self-confidence), she does (and dances) with a certain amount of professionalism during what must have been a challenging experience for someone in their first leading role in a motion picture.

The only decent and unaffected character in the story is Nomi’s friend and roommate Molly (Gina Ravera). Naturally, because this is a male-led film about sex and the desire for females, she is made to pay for the sin of being beautiful and kind during the film’s notorious, horrific gang rape.

The fallout of this scene highlights – although this is not necessary at this point – the film’s shallow, dubious morality. Nomi seeks revenge in fabulously OTT style and then abandons the city, her career and Molly by running off again. The last thing we see is her face plastered over a billboard advertising the show she was desperate to headline, mocking Las Vegas as a town too small to contain her.

For Berkeley’s gumption, Ravera’s soulful and sweet performance and Allan Cameron’s incredible production design of the neon paradise of the Vegas bars, clubs and backstage areas, I give the movie a generous two stars out of five.

See the trailer on the Vinegar Syndrome Youtube page.

Cast & credits

Director: Paul Verhoeven. 2hrs 8mins/128mins (original, 18 release). Carolco Pictures/Chargeurs/United Artists/Vegas Productions. (18).

Producers: Charles Evans, Alan Marshall.
Writer: Joe Esterhaz.
Camera: Jost Vacano.
Music: David. A. Stewart.
Sets: Allan Cameron.

Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan, Gina Gershon, Glen Plummer, Robert Davi, Alan Rachins, Gina Ravera, Lin Tucci, Greg Travis, Al Ruscio, Patrick Bristow, William Shockley.