Away From The Hype: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. A thing is either enjoyable or it’s not, there shouldn’t have to be any qualifiers when you talk about it. For example, I’m a big fan of Magic Mike XXL, which as a hetero man perhaps I should be less vocal about but f*ck that, I will proclaim my love for that movie from the rooftops for all to hear. It is a pleasure for me and I refuse to feel guilty about it.

This brings us to Showgirls, a regular on guilty pleasure lists or features about movies that are so bad they’re good. And also lists of movies that are bad, but it is definitely a movie that upon release was mauled by critics and the public alike to the point that it sank Elizabeth Berkley’s fledgling post-Saved By The Bell career.

It was one of those flops that the press loves because it’s an excuse to shit on famous people and also they could show pictures of scantily-clad actresses in their pages whenever they mentioned it. It became a late-night talk show joke, a bargain bin video, and a byword for flop.

In recent years, however, feeling has changed. The movie has gained a cult following and has begun to be looked at with a more analytical eye. I have already written about Paul Verhoven’s ability to thread satire within genre work with Starship Troopers and he also did the same with Robocop, an action movie that was loved by law enforcement while skewering the militarization of the police in the 1980s. Perhaps, Pauly V was doing the same with Showgirls? 

My first inkling that the tide was turning was when my local cinema – Cinema Nova – put the movie on, not as a midnight feature but as a celebration. This wasn’t some ironic “come watch a piece of trash” event, which that cinema does host once a month when they show The Room. No, they were showing the movie for the legions of fans who missed out on it the first time it was in theaters because they were too young or scared away by the bad press. 

I didn’t manage to catch a screening but I did put it on my list as a movie to watch fresh for the first time and see how it fares away from the hype. 

Showgirls

There is a line of dialogue about halfway through this movie that completely cemented the main issue I have with the whole thing. Our heroine, Nomi, goes to an expo and basically finds out that she’s not there just to dance, she’s actually supposed to sleep with clients. The sleazy guy setting this up introduces a potential john as “Mr Okida from Bangkok.” Now, Okida is a Japanese name and the actor playing Okida is Jim Ishida, a Japanese man. Bangkok is in Thailand. 

This is either one of two things: intentional or incompetent. Perhaps it’s a way to show the sleazy guy’s ignorance to just put two Asian countries together or maybe screenwriter Joe Eszterhas just didn’t give enough of a shit to check where Japanese people come from. And that could apply to the whole movie as this movie is really bad, but perhaps the overacting, absurd dialogue, weird plot threads, misplaced swings at satire, and un-sexy sex scenes are intentional and not incompetence. 

Paul Verhoven did come out and say that he coached Elizabeth Berkley to overact and overreact throughout the movie in the hopes that the reveal of her inglorious past would make it all make sense. It did not. Learning that Nomi was a prostitute and drug addict comes too late in the movie to save her portrayal and really her acting isn’t what sinks the whole thing anyway. 

Poor Elizabeth Berkeley was singled out for punishment for this movie’s huge failure. Paul Verhoven would direct the massive hit Starship Troopers only two years later, and the rest of the cast continue to get solid work. And here’s the thing, Berkeley could have given a Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will be Blood level performance in this thing but when you’re in a movie that has the line “It must be weird, not having anybody cum on you.” delivered by a violent pimp character as a sort of soulful goodbye, there is no amount of acting that is going to save it. 

Unless you’re Gina Gershon that is. The only person in the whole movie who acts as though she’s read the script and understood exactly the piece of shit she’s getting paid for. She is pitch-perfect as the villain of the piece. Sexy, ridiculous, scenery-chewing. She’s having the time of her life just savoring dialogue like “I like nice tits. I always have.” like it’s caviar. 

I did find myself wondering while watching this movie if it would have made more sense being set in Hollywood as the proposed sequel was intended to. The power struggle in Vegas seems so low stakes because while the movie portrayed the battle to be the star of a hotel stage show as being akin to being cast as the new James Bond, it never really rang true that there would be so much spectacle around the lead of Goddess, a topless show in the ballroom of a hotel. 

Hollywood would at least provide all viewers with an industry they understand and help the satire land better with recognizable targets rather than just “this one city in America really sucks”. A message the filmmakers provide with a very late-in-the-game graphic rape scene followed by a cartoonish revenge scene. 

The addition of the rape plotline, which occurs about twenty minutes before the credits, forces me again to look at the intentional/incompetent question. Was it a choice to add this scene as a way to say, yes it’s all lights, drugs, and glamor in Vegas until it isn’t? Or was it just bad writing? Paul Verhoven stated that Molly was the character chosen to get raped because she was the only innocent, which would make the message that Vegas is bad for good people land all the better. 

So in this case it feels both intentional and shit. Using rape as a shorthand for anything is always a mistake. And seemingly creating a character with a personality that makes her rape more brutal is even worse. It’s hard to reckon with the so bad it’s good argument knowing that watching this movie includes graphic sexual assault to prove some kind of point that was already pretty stark throughout the movie anyway. 

Conclusion

I am still reckoning with whether the choices in this movie were made on purpose or through incompetence. For every moment that feels intentionally camp or bad, there are a dozen others that feel like genuine choices that just completely miss the mark. Everyone besides Gershon and a few smaller roles, seems to forget how to act from scene to scene creating something that wants to be serious but comes across as silly, or wants to be silly but comes across as serious. 

There are weird subplots like the guy Nomi meets in a club who wants to put on his own show but fails then gets a different showgirl pregnant. I’m not sure if he’s a cautionary tale, a moral guide, or just something that should have been cut, but I do know at one point an actor was asked to say the line “I have a problem with pussy. I always have, and I’m always gonna.” in a serious scene where he’s trying to make peace with someone. 

There is also a subplot about Nomi putting ice on her nipples and not wanting to do it and that being a recurring thing. Yeah, this movie might be bad by accident. Is it so bad it’s good? Some of it. Some just doesn’t work like the rape/revenge sequence that comes out of nowhere, but Berkeley and Gershon are amazing in their scenes together. Had the movie given us more of that and less of dudes with pussy problems and their own dance shows, it would still be pretty bad, but it’d be the more enjoyable kind of bad. 

How about you? Do you think Showgirls is the good kind of bad or just the bad kind of bad? Let us knowing the comments below!

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