Showgirls

In 1995, you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the whispered, scandalous hype surrounding the first big-budget NC-17 release. The pairing of director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas—the duo that turned ice picks and lack of underwear into a billion-dollar industry with Basic Instinct (1992)—seemed like a license to print money. Instead, they printed a disaster. Showgirls didn't just flop; it cratered with such spectacular, neon-drenched intensity that it became the definitive "so bad it's good" punchline for an entire generation. But looking back at it now, through the lens of a cinema world that has become increasingly sanitized and corporate, there is something almost heroic about how aggressively weird this movie chooses to be.

I recently revisited this on a humid Tuesday evening while nursing a lukewarm diet soda that had lost its fizz twenty minutes prior, and honestly, the flat soda was the perfect pairing for the film’s unique brand of aggressive bitterness.

The Verhoeven Satire or Sincere Sleaze?

For years, the great debate has been whether Paul Verhoeven—the man who gave us the razor-sharp social satire of RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997)—was "in on the joke." When you watch Nomi Malone, played with a terrifying, vibrating intensity by Elizabeth Berkley, you have to wonder. Nomi isn't a protagonist so much as a human live wire. She doesn’t just walk into a room; she attacks it.

The film follows Nomi’s trajectory from a hitchhiker with a "secret" past to a marquee goddess in Las Vegas. It’s the classic American Dream story, but filtered through a Dutch director’s cynical fascination with our obsession with tits, teeth, and power. Verhoeven’s Vegas is a grotesque caricature—a place where the lights are too bright, the carpets are too loud, and everyone is perpetually screaming. Looking back, this movie is basically a live-action cartoon for adults who hate themselves, and there’s a strange, campy brilliance in that commitment to excess.

A Performance for the Ages (Literally)

We have to talk about Elizabeth Berkley. Coming off the sugary-sweet success of Saved by the Bell, she clearly wanted to burn Jessie Spano to the ground. She succeeded. Her performance as Nomi is one of the most physically demanding, high-octane pieces of acting I’ve ever seen, and yet it’s completely unmoored from reality. She eats a hamburger like she’s trying to punish the cow. She dances like she’s trying to dislocate her own hips.

Opposite her, Gina Gershon as the reigning queen Cristal Connors is the only person who seems to understand the assignment. Gershon is magnificent, purring her lines with a feline menace that suggests she knows exactly what kind of movie she’s in. When she tells Nomi she likes her "Ver-sayce" (Versace), the sheer condescension is a work of art. Then there’s Kyle MacLachlan, who looks like he took a wrong turn at Twin Peaks and decided to play a Vegas entertainment director as a hollowed-out mannequin. MacLachlan’s Zack Carey is the human equivalent of a shrugging emoji.

The DVD Afterlife and Cult Redemption

While the film was a theatrical pariah, the burgeoning DVD culture of the late 90s and early 2000s saved it from the scrapheap. It became one of MGM’s most profitable home video titles ever. People who were too embarrassed to see it in theaters bought the disc to watch in the privacy of their living rooms, discovering that while the drama was hollow, the entertainment value was off the charts.

The production value is undeniably high. Jost Vacano, the cinematographer who worked with Verhoeven on Das Boot, shoots the stage shows with a frantic, swirling energy that makes the Stardust look like a battleground. The choreography is ridiculous—a mix of high-end circus and aggressive aerobics—but it’s captured with a technical skill that many modern blockbusters lack. It’s a beautifully shot movie about ugly things, written by Joe Eszterhas with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The dialogue is legendary for its clunkiness. “It must be weird not having anybody like you,” Cristal tells Nomi, to which Nomi replies, “It’s weirder having everybody like you.” It’s the kind of exchange that sounds deep if you’ve just had three martinis and a concussion.

Why It Still Matters (Sort Of)

In our current era of "elevated" everything, Showgirls feels like a relic from a time when a studio would actually hand a director $45 million to make an NC-17 psychodrama about the cutthroat world of lap dancing. It represents a specific moment in the mid-90s when Hollywood was experimenting with the boundaries of "prestige trash." Is it a good drama? Not by any conventional metric. The character arcs are jagged, the emotional beats feel forced, and the third-act sub-plot involving a brutal assault is a jarring, tonal misfire that the film doesn't have the grace to handle properly.

Yet, you can’t look away. It’s an artifact of an era where practical effects and massive, physical sets still ruled the roost before the CGI revolution fully took hold. Every sequin on those costumes was hand-sewn, and every fall Nomi takes on those stairs was a real stunt. There’s an honesty to its artifice.

Ultimately, Showgirls is the ultimate "curiosity" of the 90s. It’s a film that fails as a serious drama but succeeds wildly as a piece of gonzo performance art. It’s loud, it’s offensive, and it’s occasionally boring, but it is never, ever ordinary. If you haven’t seen it, you owe it to your cinematic literacy to witness the infamous "pool scene" at least once—it’s a sequence that defies the laws of physics and human dignity simultaneously. It won't move you to tears, but it might leave you staring at the screen in a state of confused, glittering awe.