‘Showgirls’: From Box-Office Bomb To Camp Classic

What happens when the guy who directed Basic Instinct tries his hand at a modern-day backstage musical — albeit without the musical and with a lot of boobs? Well, you wind up with a film whose title has become the shorthand for atrociously bad, yet retroactively satisfying, cinema: Showgirls.

Twenty years after its release, Showgirls still stands as one of the worst movies ever made. It doesn’t have the cheesy yet glamorous charm of a movie such as Valley of the Dolls (despite being pretty much about the same subject), and it’s not quite amateurish as The Room. It exists somewhere in the middle, but still, at times, seems unbelievable. I mean, on paper, it makes sense, I guess: it’s a sort of All About Eve-inspired take on showbiz (really, aren’t all backstage movies essentially remakes of All About Eve?), a rags-to-riches (or a bitches-in-rags) morality tale, a hypersexual and hyperviolent examination of the dirty quest for fame set against the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas. And it features perhaps the most insane sex scene on film, simulated between Saved By the Bell‘s Jessie Spano and Twin Peaks‘ Dale Cooper, reaching some bizarre zenith of ’90s cultural capital.

Elizabeth Berkley, at that point most known for her ability to channel a caffeine pill freakout on the beloved teenage sitcom, was poised to make her big break as Nomi Malone, your regular small-town, white-trash Eve Harrington who hitchhikes to Vegas, gets a plum job working night as Cheetah’s, and has the dream of every enterprising young topless dancer: to usurp the role of the resident Margo Channing at the Stardust Casino’s dance revue (here known as Cristal Conners, played the scenery-chewing Gina Gershon). One convenient fall down a flight of stairs (those stilettos can be mighty deadly), and suddenly Cristal’s crown rests firmly on Nomi’s head — but her role as Vegas royalty is nearly snatched from her when a brutal musician-cum-rapist blackmails her into revealing her sordid past.

Honestly? The plot isn’t important. Instead, it’s the overzealous (and bad) acting from the double Razzie-winning Berkley, the hilariously stilted dialogue from Joe Eszterhas, and, of course, all of the tits.

Originally intended to as boundary-pushing as possible, Paul Verhoeven‘s exploitation flick was quickly slapped with an NC-17 rating — but it’s over-the-top nature (and, perhaps, the creative team’s secret self-awareness about the finished product) made it a shockingly effective commercial property. While it’s the only film with an NC-17 rating to receive a wide-release (I personally remember my “cool” aunt and uncle cheekily admitting to seeing it in theaters, much to my 12-year-old’s excitement; it was probably the mid-’90s equivalent of Deep Throat, a honest-to-goodness dirty movie that became a much-talked-about piece of the zeitgeist), its horrendous reviews and, well, adult rating saw it tank at the box office. But no one expected what should have been obvious: everyone was just waiting for it to come to video — it quadrupled its $20 million box office receipts in rentals alone.

Two decades later, Showgirls‘ remains a kitschy ’90s artifact that’s primed for parody — Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp‘s John Early and Difficult People‘s Cole Escola star in my personal favorite:

And there was a direct-to-video sequel following the minor character of Penny, played by Rena Riffel, called Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven (written, directed, produced by Riffel, naturally).

(That was real.)

Perhaps Showgirls most enduring legacy is its place in an philosophical debate. Is it art? It is trash? Is it somehow both? Plenty of critics have rushed to its defense in the decades since it hit theaters. Its stars have condemned it and stood up for it. Just this week, director Verhoeven came to its defense, writing in Rolling Stone that the film is purposefully over-the-top, so obviously a satire of a gaudy and dangerous world. He calls it “Felliniesque,” which is not far off (although the script is slightly more obtuse than, say, 8 1/2).

Box-office bombs come and go, but rarely is Hollywood’s most unfortunate trash as interesting to watch and discuss as Showgirls. That’s its appeal: it represents a collaboration between a lot of people who presumably knew better — maybe knowing better than all of us. I doubt many people expected a formulaic, vulgar movie in which half-naked women fight each other (in between rounds of flamboyant dance sequences) would have captured a collective imagination. (Those types of people never quite understand the delicate and multitudinal tastes of gay men, for instance.) Odds are, in twenty years, we’ll still be finding slices of Nomi Malone and the exploits of Showgirls popping in up the culture, moving higher and higher up the ladder of refined cultural taste.

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Photos: Everett Collection