REWATCH: Showgirls [1995]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Because Keith couldn't come to movie night, we decided to do a rewatch of one of our earlier and more famous films: "Showgirls" particularly since it is in the news right now as Elizabeth Brinkley, the lead actress, has publicly stopped ignoring the fact that she was in this bomb of a movie and decided to embrace its bad movie cult following.

The plot follows Nomi Malone, a hitchhiker who wants to go to Las Vegas to dance, and in spite of being an unrepentant jerk to everyone she meets she finds a roommate within hours after beating on her car and being really rude. Nomi reacts to everything with shouting and often violent responses and she's rarely nice to people she meets, yet somehow she manages to charm her way to the top. She starts off as a stripper but manages to get an audition for a topless show after meeting the star of the show, Cristal Connors, through her roommate and dry humping the entertainment director (played by Kyle MacLachlan) for Connors' amusement. I'm assuming this is how Vegas works. She ends up in the show and learns all the terrible things that come with showgirl fame like other rude girls, expectations to bone Japanese business men, injuring other people to get ahead, cocaine, and boning Kyle MacLachlan like a beached fish struggling for life. She learns nothing initially and pushes Cristal Connors down the stairs to become the star but when her roommate gets gang raped, she gets revenge and then, with her past as a prostitute revealed, she leaves Vegas with the sign at the end of the movie possibly implying that she's off to try her luck in Los Angeles instead. 

This movie is bananas. It's over two hours long and I think someone is topless 80% of the time. There are a million what-the-hell lines, melodramatic scenes, trashy outfits, sex scenes that make you never want to have sex again, and not a character to be found among this insane cast of caricatures. There is definitely an intended theme here about the high price of fame but everything about this movie feels so fake that there's no way to draw anything useful from it. There are also some smaller and less explored themes around the honesty of sex work (an aspiring choreographer tells Nomi that stripping is honest and the topless show is not because it is designed for people to pretend they aren't seeing the show for boobs) and a really strong Sapphic theme, the intention of which is unclear. The director, Paul Verhoevan, is too good for this movie.

Quotes:

(There are way, way too many to list so I will just write the first few that I know by heart.)

"Man, everybody got AIDS and shit!"

"It must be weird not having anybody cum on you."

"You like nice tits?"

"I like having nice tits."

"How do you like having them?"

"First you get used to the money; then you swallow."

"Where are you from?"

"Back east."

"Where back east?"

"DIFFERENT PLACES!"

"I'm erect. Why aren't you erect?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions."

"If this happens again, you're going to jump to your conclusion!"

Some GIFs to give you an idea of what you will get into if you watch this:

And some pictures we took.

Adam has the box set. It comes with "fun" party games like pin the pasties on the stripper. He also wants to remind you that he watched this movie with his grandmother.

"Showgirls" shot glasses to drink yourself into oblivion with.

 Sarah shows off cards with the games on them.

And Kay shows the right way to watch "Showgirls".