By Peter Landau
It was the best of times, it was the breast of times. The year was 1995 and two of Hollywood's biggest hitters, director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, reunited after the blockbuster success of Basic Instinct (1992) to produce their masturbate-piece, Showgirls.
The movie was the vehicle that would forever drive out the sweetly innocent Saved By the Bell (Picture: ) image of teen star Elizabeth Berkley (Picture: - - - - ) and take her to a more adult destination of entertainment. And how it did! Playing the ultimate sick bitch, "Nomi Malone," Elizabeth roles into Las Vegas and proceeds to claw her way up the ladder of lusty ladies who perform topless at the high-end casino show "Goddess" at the fictional Stardust.
Gina Gershon (Picture: - - - - ) is the show's queen bee, "Cristal Connors," who gets buzzed by Elizabeth's honey, and who wouldn't after seeing her perform a very sticky lap dance on the casino's entertainment director "Zack Carey," played by Kyle MacLachlin.
Along the way, everyone gets naked. There are more tits per square inch of screen than an orgy at Plato's Retreat back in the heyday of swingerdom. Unlike the unfair critiques of the movie when it came out, which falsely claimed all the boobs were plastic fantastics, the vast majority of those mammary glands are completely soft and natural.
There is so much misinformation about Showgirls that Mr. Skin hole-heartedly endorses the new Showgirls V.I.P. Edition: Limited Edition Boxset, which might not exactly set the record straight, but it sure succeeds at setting viewer's members straight as a rod!
This V.I.P. Edition such a historically important release that the brain trust Skin Central deemed it necessary to highlight this seminal film with an extended review. Below is a detailed litany of why this boxset is a muff-own item.
Extras
This is truly a movie that keeps on giving. No matter how many times you've seen it there's always more, and now with this limited box set the showgirl's cups literally overflow.
"Pin the Pasties on the Showgirl" is a mature take on the classic kiddie game, with Elizabeth stretched out in all her naked glory in a glossy color poster. A blindfold and small plastic suction cups are provided, but there's nothing in the instructions that says exactly how to use the blindfold. It's recommended to be creative and follow the perverted muse.
Six photo cards with party games printed on the back are include to use with the pair of specially branded Showgirl shot glasses. Games are entitled "Champagne Room," "The ABCs of T&A," "Sip or Strip" and "Bad Tipper." While it's recommended to use non-alcoholic drinks, just watching the film a few times will insure an altered state of consciousness.
Another card includes a list of "Fun Facts" about the movie, such as that Verhoeven and Eszterhas would only make Showgirls if the studio agreed to releasing the production with an NC-17 rating. Not only is it perhaps the most expensive dirty movie ever made, at between $30 and $40 million, but it's groundbreaking in that Verhoeven is the first director to specify in his contract that he was free to deliver an NC-17 film to a major studio. Hopefully, it's a precedent that others will follow.
Deck of Showgirl playing cards can be used to play Blackjack and other Las Vegas-type games of chance. But after watching the movie the only card game you'll want to play is poker if you know what we mean.
Besides getting to own a beautifully transferred print of Showgirls, with all the sights and sounds in nut-draining color and moan-inducing audio, the single disc is jam-packed with jam-producing extras.
There's a commentary track by David Schmader, a journalist for the Seattle-based The Stranger, who has hosted Showgirls at various gay and lesbian film festivals. Sadly, he's a poor guide, as his take on the film is that is a colossal failure. It is not. Showgirls is truly as Verhoeven and Eszterhas intended, a mythic morality tale of American desires.
Schmader also thinks that the film is oddly asexual considering its every frame is filled with tits and ass. But then he's quoted in the commentary as saying he wants a version of the same movie but with a boy in the lead. He also outs himself as homosexual. It's an interesting conflict of interest. Would Mr. Skin find Boyfriends (1996) a turn-on?
The girls of Scores, the famous high-end titty bar, offer some commentary for the scene at the Cheetah club. They pop up again (and this time pop out of their tops) in a featurette called "Lap-Dance Tutorial," which offers some hands-on fun for the couples watching.
"A Showgirls Diary" let's viewers see the behind-the-scenes making of Showgirls, with storyboard-to-screen reenactments. Watch with shock and awe as Elizabeth rehearses for her hot licking-the-pole scene. If only there was a feature that allowed us to choose which pole she licks.
With a flick of the remote you can watch the whole movie with a trivia track that fills the screen with odd factoids throughout the two-hour-plus run of the film. As fascinating as the minutiae may be, the best way to view Showgirls is unadorned.
Skinfo
Verhoeven claims to have wanted to create a modern-day MGM musical with Showgirls. And unlike the commentary track, he finds nothing campy nor humorous about his misunderstood classic. If anything, this is really an action movie where all the fight scenes are topless and choreographed as dance numbers. Yes, it's got a beat and you can beat-off to it!
There is a lost scene from Eszterhas' original script in which Elizabeth is jailed and hit on by a big, black lesbian. She claws her attacker with her famous nails, raking them down her face until it's a bloody pulp.
It's no surprise Verhoeven hasn't cooperated with the production of this massive box set, as it reinvents his movie into an unintentional comedy. He has said that having his dream picture turn into a celebrated disaster is like watching a butterfly turn into a caterpillar. Verhoeven directed the PG edit of Showgirls that aired on VH-1 under the stage name of Jan Jansen. In it, all the exposed boobs were covered by CGI, which at times nearly obliterate the entire screen!
Quotes
While the critics back peddle on the box cover with adorning praise, when Showgirls was first released only trash filmmaker John Waters had anything positive to say. "The real last good trash was Showgirls," he said in a 2002 interview. "They pretend now that they tried to make it campy, which was totally not true. They were dead serious when they made that movie. That's why it's so good."
There's a quote from Siskel Ebert on the box that states, "[Showgirls] is All About Eve in a G-string." But when the movie came out Roger Ebert sang a different tune in the Chicago Sun-Times. "A waste of a perfectly good NC-17 rating," he wrote.
More flattering comments by clueless critics: "An overcoat movie for men who don't want to be seen going into a porno theater," said Rita Kempley of the Globe and Mail. Desson Thomson of the Washington Post is even more dismissive. "To take Showgirls that seriously (as either trash-art or appalling pornography) wouldn't be worth the exertion," he spews. "[The script] is as hoary as it is whore-y," writes Susan Wloszczyna about Eszterhas in USA Today, "whipping out every backstage clich?s he recycles his Flashdance plot into Trashdance."
But Eszterhas got $2 million dollars for his screenplay and it's worth every penny. Here are just a few nuggets:
"She misses us like that lump on my twat I had taken off last week."
-Cheetah hostess Henrietta Bazoom upon seeing Nomi in the "Goddess" show at the Stardust Casino.
"It must be weird, not having anybody come on you."
-Cheetah manager Al Torres, with Henrietta, after the "Goddess" show.
"I don't know how good you are, darlin', and I don't know what it is you're good at, but if it's at the Cheetah, it's not dancing, I know that much."
-Cristal Connors to Nomi when they first meet.
"I liked it when you came. I liked your eyes."
-Nomi referring to her happy-ending lap dance with Zack before riding him to a tidal wave orgasm in his pool.
"You can't touch me, but I can touch you. I'd really love to touch you."
-Nomi seduces the clients at the Cheetah strip bar.
"I'm erect. Why aren't you erect?"
-"Goddess" producer "Tony Moss" talking about Nomi's nipples during her topless audition.
It's a good question. Everybody who watches Showgirls has the same very physical response. They're erect. Stiff. Hard. You name it this movie delivers where it counts in your pants!
