Showgirls

Showgirls is a 1995 erotic drama film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas. Starring Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan and Gina Gershon, it centers on a "street-smart" drifter who ventures to Las Vegas and climbs the seedy hierarchy from stripper to showgirl.
Produced on a then-sizable budget around $45 million, significant controversy and hype surrounding the film's amounts of sex and nudity preceded its theatrical release. In the United States, the film was rated NC-17 for "nudity and erotic sexuality throughout, some graphic language, and sexual violence." "Showgirls" was the first (and to date only) NC-17-rated film to be given a wide release in mainstream theaters. Distributor United Artists dispatched several hundred staffers to theaters across North America playing "Showgirls" to ensure that patrons would not sneak into the theater from other films, and to make sure film-goers were over the age of 17. Audience restriction due to the NC-17 rating, coupled with poor reviews, resulted in the film becoming a box-office bomb, grossing just $37 million.
Despite a negative theatrical and critical consensus, "Showgirls" enjoyed success on the home video market, generating more than $100 million from video rentals, allowing the film to turn a profit and became one of MGM's top-20 all-time bestsellers. For its video premiere, Verhoeven prepared an R-rated cut for rental outlets that would not carry NC-17 films. This edited version runs 3 minutes shorter (128 minutes) and deletes some of the more graphic footage. "Showgirls" was a critical failure upon release, panned for its acting (particularly Berkley’s), characters, dance numbers, directing, plot, screenplay and sex scenes and is consistently ranked as one of the worst films ever made. Despite this, "Showgirls" has become regarded as a cult film and has been subject to critical re-evaluation, with some notable directors and critics considering it a serious satire worthy of praise.
An unofficial spin-off sequel entitled "", focused on the minor character Penny, played by Rena Riffel, was also written, produced, edited, and directed by Riffel. It was released at midnight film showings, art house theaters, film festivals, and charity nonprofit organizations, and was direct-to-video.
Plot.
Nomi Malone is a young drifter who hitchhikes to Las Vegas hoping to make it as a showgirl. After her driver robs her, Nomi meets Molly Abrams, a costume designer who becomes her roommate. Molly invites Nomi backstage at "Goddess", the Stardust Casino show where she works, to meet Cristal Connors, the diva star of the casino's topless dance revue. When Nomi tells Cristal she dances at Cheetah's Topless Club, Cristal derisively tells her that what she does is akin to prostitution. When Nomi is too upset to go to work that night, Molly takes her dancing at the Crave Club. Nomi is arrested after causing a fight involving James, a bouncer at the club. James bails Nomi out of jail, but she pays him little notice.
Cristal and her boyfriend, Zack Carey, the entertainment director at the Stardust, visit Cheetah's and request a lap dance from Nomi. Although the bisexual Cristal is attracted to Nomi, her request is based more on her desire to humiliate Nomi by proving she engages in sex work. Nomi reluctantly performs the lap dance after Cristal offers her $500. James happens to be at the strip club and witnesses the lap dance. He visits Nomi's trailer the next morning and tells Nomi that what she is doing is no different from prostitution. Nomi and James have a brief fling; the affair ends when James gives the dance routine he choreographed for Nomi to Penny, a former coworker of Nomi's whom he gets pregnant.
Cristal arranges for Nomi to audition for the chorus line of "Goddess". Tony Moss, the show's director, humiliates Nomi by asking her to put ice on her nipples to make them hard. Furious, Nomi abruptly leaves the audition after scattering ice everywhere in a fit. Despite her outburst, Nomi gets the job and quits Cheetah's. Cristal further humiliates Nomi by suggesting she make a "goodwill appearance" at a boat trade show, which turns out to be a thinly disguised form of prostitution.
Undeterred, Nomi sets out to get revenge against Cristal and claim her mantle. She seduces Zack, who secures an audition for her to be Cristal's understudy. Nomi wins the role, but when Cristal threatens legal action against the Stardust, the offer is rescinded. After Cristal taunts her, Nomi pushes her down a flight of stairs, breaking her hip, and replaces her as the show's lead. Although Nomi has finally secured the fame she sought, she alienates Molly, who realizes she pushed Cristal down the stairs.
Molly later relents and attends Nomi's opening-night celebration at a posh hotel, where she meets her idol, musician Andrew Carver. Carver lures Molly to a room, where he brutally beats her and leads his bodyguards in gang-raping her. Molly is hospitalized after the assault. Nomi wants to report the assault to the police, but Zack tells her the Stardust will bribe Molly with hush money to protect Carver, their star performer. Zack then confronts Nomi about her sordid past: Her real name is Polly, and she became a runaway and prostitute after her parents' murder-suicide. She has been arrested several times for drug possession, prostitution, and assault with a deadly weapon. Zack blackmails Nomi by vowing to keep her past quiet if she will not tell the police about the assault.
Unable to obtain justice for Molly without exposing her past, Nomi decides to take justice into her own hands. She gets Carver alone in his hotel room and beats him severely. Nomi then pays two hospital visits, one to Molly to let her know that Carver's actions did not go unpunished, and another to Cristal to apologize for injuring her. Cristal admits she pulled a similar stunt years ago. Because her lawyers secure her a large cash settlement, Cristal forgives Nomi, and they exchange a kiss. Nomi leaves Las Vegas and hitches a ride to Los Angeles, coincidentally with the same driver who stole her possessions when she arrived, whom she robs at knifepoint.
Music.
The soundtrack of the film featured songs especially composed for the film by artists such as David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Killing Joke and No Doubt. The "Showgirls soundtrack" was released on September 25, 1995.
Production.
Eszterhas came up with the idea for "Showgirls" while on vacation at his home in Maui, Hawaii. During lunch in Beverly Hills, Verhoeven told Eszterhas that he had always loved "big MGM musicals", and wanted to make one; Eszterhas suggested the setting of Las Vegas. Based on the idea he scribbled on a napkin, Eszterhas was advanced $2 million to write the script and picked up an additional $1.7 million when the studio produced it into a film. This, along with the scripts for both Verhoeven's previous film "Basic Instinct" (1992) and "Sliver" (1993, also an erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone), made Eszterhas the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood history. Verhoeven deferred 70% of his $6 million director's fee depending on if the film turned a profit.
"I wrote "Showgirls" at the single most turbulent moment of my life," said Eszterhas later. "The stuff I've done since then has more warmth, more humor, is more upbeat."
A long list of actresses was considered for the role of Nomi Malone, including Pamela Anderson, Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie, Vanessa Marcil, Jenny McCarthy, Denise Richards, and Charlize Theron, but they all turned it down before Elizabeth Berkley, following the cancellation of "Saved by the Bell", signed on to play the role. Madonna, Sharon Stone, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, and Finola Hughes (who allegedly turned down the script because she thought it was sexist) were considered for the part of Cristal Connors before Gina Gershon became available.
Kyle MacLachlan says Dylan McDermott was the first choice for the character of Zack Carey, but he declined and MacLachlan was then cast. MacLachlan recalled, "That was a decision that was sort of a tough one to make, but I was enchanted with Paul Verhoeven. Particularly "Robocop", which I loved ... It was Verhoeven and Eszterhas, and it seemed like it was going to be kind of dark and edgy and disturbing and real."
Eszterhas and Verhoeven interviewed over 200 Las Vegas strippers, and incorporated parts of their stories in the screenplay to show the amount of exploitation of strippers in Vegas. Eszterhas took out a full-page advertisement in "Variety" in which he dubbed the film a morality tale and denounced the advertising of the film as "misguided", also writing, "The movie shows that dancers in Vegas are often victimized, humiliated, used, verbally and physically raped by the men who are at the power centers of that world."
The film's stark poster was adapted from a photograph by Tono Stano. The photo had originally been featured on the cover of the 1994 book "The Body: Photographs of the Human Form".
Reception.
The film was a critical and commercial failure on initial release. In 1997, Eszterhas said:
Clearly we made mistakes. Clearly it was one of the biggest failures of our time. It failed commercially, critically, it failed on videotape, it failed internationally. . . . In retrospect, part of it was that Paul and I were coming off of "Basic", which defied the critics and was a huge success. Maybe there was a certain hubris involved: "We can do what we want to do, go as far out there as we want." That rape scene was a god-awful mistake. In retrospect, a terrible mistake. And musically it was eminently forgettable. And in casting mistakes were made.
MacLachlan recalled seeing the film for the first time at the premiere:
I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, "This is horrible. Horrible!" And it's a very slow, sinking feeling when you're watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you're like, "Oh, that's a really bad scene." But you say, "Well, that's okay, the next one'll be better." And you somehow try to convince yourself that it's going to get better… and it just gets worse. And I was like, "Wow. That was crazy." I mean, I really didn't see that coming. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, "satire" isn't the right word. But it's inadvertently funny. So it's found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 23% based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 3.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Vile, contemptible, garish, and misogynistic – and that might just be exactly "Showgirls" point." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 16 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert, following a relatively lukewarm review (2 stars out of 4), wrote that "Showgirls" received "some bad reviews, but it wasn't completely terrible".
Awards.
The film was the winner of a then-record seven 1995 Golden Raspberry Awards (from a record 13 nominations, a record that still stands) including Worst Picture, Worst Actress (Elizabeth Berkley), Worst Director (Paul Verhoeven), Worst Screenplay (Joe Eszterhas), Worst New Star (Elizabeth Berkley), Worst Screen Couple ("any combination of two people (or two body parts)") and Worst Original Song (David A. Stewart and Terry Hall for "Walk Into the Wind").
Verhoeven gamely appeared in person at the Razzies ceremony to accept his award for Worst Director; "Showgirls" would later win an eighth Razzie Award for Worst Picture of the Last Decade in 2000. It was soon tied with "Battlefield Earth" for winning the most Razzies in a single year, a record broken when "I Know Who Killed Me" won eight trophies in 2008 and then again when "Jack and Jill" won 10 awards in 2012.
At the 1995 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film received three nominations: Worst Picture, Worst Actor for MacLachan, and Worst Actress for Berkley. Of the three, its only win was for Worst Picture.
Due to "Showgirls" poor reception, "Striptease", a 1996 film about nude dancers starring Demi Moore, was distanced from "Showgirls" in advertisements; "Striptease" nonetheless won the next year's Razzie Award for Worst Picture. Rena Riffel, who played Penny/Hope in "Showgirls", was also cast in "Striptease", as Tiffany Glass.
The term ""Showgirls"-bad" has been adopted by film critics and fans to refer to films considered guilty pleasures, or "so-bad-they're-good". To date, "Showgirls" is the highest-grossing NC-17 production, earning $20,350,754 at the North American box office.
"I met Paul Verhoeven and he was just so charismatic," remarked Toni Halliday, who contributed to the soundtrack. "He wowed me into this horrible film, selling it as some intellectual comment on the sex industry. I walked out after 45 minutes. The screen went dead every time that woman was on it."
While the film's theatrical run was underwhelming and did not recoup its budget, it went on to gross over $100 million in the home-video and rentals markets, and as of 2014, the film is still one of MGM's highest-selling movies.
Elizabeth Berkley was dropped by her agent Mike Menchel following the film's release. Other agents refused to take her telephone calls.
Cult status.
"Showgirls" has achieved cult status. According to writer Naomi Klein, ironic enjoyment of the film initially arose among those with the video before MGM capitalized on the idea. MGM noticed the video was performing well because "trendy twenty-somethings were throwing "Showgirls" irony parties, laughing sardonically at the implausibly poor screenplay and shrieking with horror at the aerobic sexual encounters".
In the United States, "Showgirls" is shown at midnight movies alongside such films as "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert". It is heralded as one of the best "bad movies", a camp classic in the vein of "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls". Although the film was not successful when first released theatrically, it generated more than $100 million from video rentals and became one of MGM's top 20 all-time bestsellers. Verhoeven accepted the film's unexpected cult status, saying "Maybe this kind of ritualistic cult popularity isn't what I intended, but it's like a resurrection after the crucifixion." Eszterhas, however, maintains that the humor was intentional: "What Paul [Verhoeven] and I had in mind was something darkly funny. We went through the script line by line, and we were really laughing at some of it. I defy people to tell me that a line like, 'How does it feel not to have anybody coming on you anymore' isn't meant to be funny."
In Ireland, the film was banned on November 8, 1995. The Irish Film Censor Board chair Sheamus Smith provided no explanation for the ban, but it had been speculated that the ban was owed to the film's rape scene, which was initially cut in the United Kingdom. In fact, Smith banned the film upon initial release because of the line, "I got bigger tits than the fuckin' Virgin Mary and I got a bigger mouth, too." Smith's objection was specifically to the diction: "fuckin' Virgin Mary." The film was passed uncut for its video release on October 23, 2017.
The rights to show the film on television were eventually purchased by the VH1 network. Because of the film's frequent nudity, though, a censored version was created with black bras and panties digitally rendered to hide all exposed breasts and genitalia. Also, several scenes were removed entirely. Berkley refused to redub her lines because MGM refused to pay her fee of $250, so a noticeably different actress' voice can be heard on the soundtrack.
As revealed on the DVD release, a sign showing the distance to Los Angeles in the last shot of the film hinted at a sequel in which Nomi takes on Hollywood. The film was ranked number 36 on "Entertainment Weekly"s 'The Top 50 Cult Movies' list.
Critical re-evaluation.
Critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum and Jim Hoberman, as well as filmmakers Jim Jarmusch and Jacques Rivette, have gone on the record defending "Showgirls" as a serious satire. In a 1998 interview, Rivette called it "one of the great American films of the last few years", though "very unpleasant: it's about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that's Verhoeven's philosophy". Quentin Tarantino has stated that he enjoyed "Showgirls", referring to it in 1996 as the "only ... other time in the last twenty years [that] a major studio made a full-on, gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie", comparing it to "Mandingo".
"Showgirls" has been compared to the 1950 film "All About Eve" as a remake, update, or rip-off of that film. For Jonathan Rosenbaum, ""Showgirls" has to be one of the most vitriolic allegories about Hollywood and selling out ever made". "Verhoeven may be the bravest and most assured satirist in Hollywood, insofar as he succeeds in making big genre movies no one knows whether to take seriously or not", Michael Atkinson has written.
In "Slant Magazine"s four-out-of-four-star review, Eric Henderson rejects the "so-bad-it's-good" interpretation and lauds the film as "one of the most honest satires of recent years", stating that the film targets Hollywood's "morally bankrupt star-is-born tales." Henderson draws from a round-table discussion in "Film Quarterly" in which others argue its merits. Noël Burch attests that the film "takes mass culture seriously, as a site of both fascination and struggle" and uses melodrama as "an excellent vehicle for social criticism." In the same round-table, Chon Noriega suggests that the film has been misinterpreted and the satire overlooked because "the film lacks the usual coordinates and signposts for a critique of human vice and folly provided by sarcasm, irony, and caustic wit."
Home media.
Despite its poor critical reception, "Showgirls" is regarded as a cult classic and performed much better on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, becoming one of MGM's top-20 best-sellers, grossing over $100 million in US home media market alone.
On December 26, 1995, "Showgirls" was released on VHS in two versions: A director's R-rated version for rental outlets (including Blockbuster and Hollywood Video), and an NC-17-rated version. The NC-17 version was also released on LaserDisc that year.
"Showgirls" was released on DVD for the first time on April 25, 2000. Special features included only the original theatrical trailer and a special behind-the-scenes featurette. The NC-17 version was re-released on VHS the same day as part of the MGM Movie Time collection.
In 2004, MGM released the "V.I.P. Edition" on DVD in a special boxed set containing two shot glasses, movie cards with drinking games on the back, a deck of playing cards, and a nude poster of Berkley with a pair of suction-cup pasties so viewers can play "pin the pasties on the showgirl". The DVD itself includes several bonus features, including a "how-to" tutorial for giving a lap dance hosted by real strippers, and a special optional "trivia track" feature. When on, it adds humorous comments and factoids in the vein of VH1's "Pop Up Video" that relate to the scenes as they play out. It also includes "The Greatest Movie Ever Made: a commentary by David Schmader". In 2007, MGM re-released the V.I.P. Edition DVD without the physical extras.
On June 15, 2010, MGM released a 15th Anniversary "Sinsational Edition" in a two-disc dual-format Blu-ray/DVD edition. This edition contains most of the same bonus features as the V.I.P. Edition DVD, except the trivia text feature has been reformatted. The NC-17 edit of the film is used.
The trivia track on the 2010 edition contains some errors, such as a statement that some of the dancers featured in the film were recruited from the XFL cheerleaders, an impossibility as the XFL was not formed until 2001.
The film is classified R18+ in New Zealand and Australia for its violence, offensive language, and sex scenes; the Blu-ray lacks any special features despite featuring the same cover as the American "Sinsational Edition", while the DVD comes with a single theatrical trailer.
On September 22, 2020, "Showgirls" was made available for streaming on HBO Max, since Warner Bros. Home Entertainment currently distributed all MGM Home Entertainment catalog titles as of July 1, 2020.
Legacy.
Sequel.
In 2011, actress Rena Riffel wrote, directed, produced, and starred in an unofficial sequel/parody of the film. Titled "", Riffel reprises her role of naive newcomer Penny. The film essentially follows the plot of the original.
Musical adaptation.
In 2013, an off-off-Broadway parody called "Showgirls! The Musical" was mounted by Bob and Tobly McSmith of Medium Face Productions. Originating at the Krane Theater in New York City, the critical and audience response was overwhelmingly positive. It was moved to a 200-seat off-Broadway theater, XL Nightclub. The production continued to be successful; its original run was extended through July 15, 2013. Actress Rena Riffel reprised her role from the films as Penny for one month of the production.
The show closely mimics the plot of the film and often directly incorporates dialog from the film. As the title suggests, it is a musical. It is highly satirical while staying true to the campy nature of the film. It stars actress April Kidwell as Nomi. Her performance has been critically lauded. Andy Webster of "The New York Times" stated "The coltish April Kidwell, as Nomi, is a wonder. Amid an exhausting onslaught of often obvious ribaldry, she is tireless, fearless, and performing circles around Elizabeth Berkley's portrayal in the movie. Her vibrant physicality and knowing humor are a potent riposte to the story's rabid misogyny."
The musical takes several characters and condenses them for stage. The characters of Marty and Gaye have been combined to one character, simply called 'Gay'. The characters of Molly and James are both portrayed by actor Marcus Deison. MacLachlan's character of Zack is simply called Kyle MacLachlan. The show features sexually explicit language and nudity throughout. The tagline is "Singing. Dancing. Tits".
The original cast:
On June 11, 2013, a cast recording was released featuring eight tracks from the musical.