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Martin Scorsese’s Casino wasn’t the only Las Vegas movie of 1995, there was also Showgirls – now on rerelease for its 30th anniversary – whose pure bizarreness has over three decades achieved its own identity, like Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent in Mary Poppins. It is the softcore erotic drama from screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven that has made a slow ascent from critical flop to kitsch cult favourite and now to a supposed tongue-out-of-cheek classic melodrama. Maybe it’s the last great mainstream exploitation picture, a film which owns and flaunts its crassness; a bi-curious catfight version of All About Eve or Pretty Woman.
Elizabeth Berkley plays Nomi, a mysterious, beautiful, super-sexy drifter who arrives in Vegas, hoping to make it dancing in one of the hotel shows. She is befriended by Molly (Gina Ravera), a good-natured pal whose help gets Nomi a start in a low-grade strip joint called Cheetah’s. Nomi soon upgrades to the supposedly classier Stardust where she is dazzled by the gorgeousness of leading lady Cristal Connors, played by Gina Gershon with an entirely ridiculous way of addressing everyone as “darlin’” in a Texas accent. Nomi has a sexual frisson with the club’s owner Zack, played by Kyle MacLachlan (whose presence helps give the film a mild and accidental Lynchian flavour) and also with Cristal herself, whose understudy she aspires to be. Throughout it all, Nomi shows she is a survivor with a streak of ruthlessness.
The question has to be asked. Why? Why? Why the strange, clenched, maniacal acting and directing, which Verhoeven never actually demonstrated before or ever again, and which really doesn’t resemble any other 90s erotic thriller. It looks more like an erotic horror with the horror removed. Berkley’s baffling performance, abruptly switching back and forth between sultry pouting and pop-eyed badass defiance, is that of a Stepford sexbot; though it has to be said it is managed, like the rest of the film, with a fanatically focused consistency and Berkley’s onscreen appearance is impressive, even awe-inspiring in her trance-like beauty.
Everything is deeply strange: the angular, jolting choreography, the persistent, repeated and pedantic revelation of naked breasts, and the grotesque treatment of ageing stripper Mama Bazoom, played by Lin Tucci, who is portrayed with absolute misogyny, though arguably no more so than anyone or anything else. Then there is the rape scene, which is not really redeemed by the rape-revenge scene.
There is one tiny touch which gives Showgirls a kind of human dimension: poor out-of-towner Nomi buys herself a fancy gown and mispronounces the word “Versace” as “Ver-sayss” and is mocked by the sneery Vegas insiders (although Zack rather gallantly glosses over it). That whole moment seems to come from another film entirely. Are we rushing to clothe the naked emperor by contriving emollient or contrarian explanations for all this? Perhaps. (The hip young cinephiles in Mia Hansen-Løve’s 2014 film Eden are shown debating whether the awfulness of Showgirls is deliberate.) It remains weirdly innocent in its absurdity.
