Showgirls (1995) - Verhoeven's outrageous, ridiculous, hilarious Hollywood anomaly

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A nubile, long-legged blond figure adorns this dark poster for Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls

Nomi arrives in Las Vegas without her suitcase but with her head full of dreams. And luckily she soon befriends Molly, a seamstress who introduces her to the town's adult dance scene.

 

Showgirls is written by Joe Eszterhas (Flashdance (1983)) and directed by Dutch master filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (Wat Zien Ik (1971)), whose 11th feature it is. 

It is an anomaly in Hollywood history: The first and only wide release NC-17 rated movie, Showgirls is likely the big studio pic with most bare breasts, a giant budget and no major stars. It is a lustful, young-boyishly-enthused, strange work that could only come from Verhoeven.

Elizabeth Berkley (Meet Market (2004)) is wild and electric as Nomi, (and writhes almost convulsively in her sex scenes), but in the context of the fever dream-like film her ridiculed performance actually could hardly have been better. Gina Gershon (P.S. I Love You (2007)) camps it up as the show's star Cristal. Robert Davi (The Hot Chick (2002)) is ideal as a creep, and Kyle MacLachlan (Free Jimmy (2006)) is funny (and shows off his great ass) as a rich playboy.

The melodrama gets another gear here. The photography (by Jost Vacano (Supermarket (1974))) and execution is highly competent and vivid, and the result is an outrageous, ridiculous, hilarious bucket of juicy, rich entertainment, a good/bad reflection on the American performance culture. The dance acts are phenomenal, and once the news sensation of the nudity evaporates, Showgirls still has more and more laughable developments to offer. It may be exploitation, (as Quentin Tarantino has called it), but in any case Showgirls is delivered with a major twinkle in the eye. 

Related posts:

Paul Verhoeven: Hollow Man (2000) - Superb effects in Verhoeven's miss 

Top 10: Best cop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  
Basic Instinct (1992) or, Irresistable Desire!  

Top 10: Best erotic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

The Fourth Man/De Vierde Man (1983) - Verhoeven's amazing Dutch sex thriller nightmare

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 45 mil. $

Box office: 37.7 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.83 times its cost)

[Showgirls premiered 21 September (California) and runs 131 minutes. Eszterhas became the highest-paid screenwriter in movie history for Showgirls: He was reportedly given a 2 mil. $ advance based on an idea scribbled on a napkin at a meeting with Verhoeven, and then another 1.7 mil. $ once the film began production. Verhoeven was paid 2 mil. $ for directing; and Berkley was paid 100k $ for her performance in the film. Shooting took place from August - December 1994 in Los Angeles, California and in Nevada, including in Las Vegas. Distributor United Artists reportedly dispatched hundreds of employees to cinemas in the US to make sure no patrons snuck into showings and that the 17 age requirement was upheld. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release Seven, to an 8.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another weekend in the top 5 (#5) and grossed 20.3 mil. $ (53.8 % of the total gross). The film was banned in Ireland for blasphemy. Berkley was dropped by her agent following the film's release and was ignored by other agents. Although theatrically a huge flop, the film since became a cult favorite, accruing a reported 100 mil. $ through its video release. Roger Ebert gave it a 2/4 star review, translating to 2 notches under this one. Verhoeven returned with Starship Troopers (1997). Berkley returned in White Wolves II: Legend of the Wild (1996). Showgirls is rotten at 23 % with a 3.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Showgirls?

Dune (1984) - Lynch heads to space, with an (unsurprisingly) strange result

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You can't blame the posters for David Lynch's Dune for not promising a grand space adventure

QUICK REVIEW:

It is notoriously difficult to account for the plot of David Lynch's (Blue Velvet (1986)) huge science fiction debacle Dune, but here's a taste of it:

Dune takes place thousands of years out in the future and revolves around the interplanetary struggle for control over the spice 'melange' and huge sand-worms monsters, - SPOILER that turn out to be said spice!

Dune is a very strange film, just as one might expect a major SF adaptation (of Frank Herber's (Soul Catcher (1972)) 1965 novel), shot by Lynch in Mexico to be.
The film's very solemn form and the space travels in the film seem very inspired by the spectacularly successful Star Wars movies (1977; '80; '83), but Dune doesn't technically reach those films by a long-shot, and the warmth and humor from George Lucas' space universe is also nowhere to be found.
Dune brings a huge, curious star cast together: Brad Dourif (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)), José Ferrer (Lawrence of Arabia (1962)), Kyle McLachlan (Twin Peaks (1990-91)), Virginia Madsen (Sideways (2004)), Jürgen Prochnow (Das Boot (1981)), Patrick Stewart (X-Men 2 (2003)), Sting (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)), Max Von Sydow (The Exorcist (1973)), Sean Young (Blade Runner (1982)) and many more. 
It is at times dreamy and fascinating, and at other times boring and elongated. - Although the 137 minute theatrical cut that I have seen is, obviously, quite a bit shorter than the 3-hour cut that Lynch had hoped to release. He did not have final cut, - producers Dino de Laurentiis (Conan the Destroyer (1984)) and daughter Raffaella de Laurentiis (Conan the Barbarian (1982)) did, and they were aiming for a 2-hour film, which they had agreed upon with distributor Universal Pictures and achieved, almost, with huge difficulties.
Dune had a long development story, spanning more than a decade: Chilean auteur director Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain (1973)) was one of the directors who was highly involved with it, before the job finally went to Lynch. Jodorowsky's work on his unmade version of the film is chronicled in the recent, praised documentary Jodorowsky's Dune (2013).

Related reviews:

David Lynch: Mulholland Drive (2001) or, A Woman Searching For Her Identity (guest review)
Blue Velvet (1986) or, The Strange World 

Sting ... this is what he looks like ... in David Lynch's Dune

Kyle McLachlan in David Lynch's Dune

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 30.9 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[But certainly a flop. How dismal the flop size was is not possible to ascertain without a world gross figure. I do see that 2.3 mil. people paid admission to it in France, which isn't bad, plus 675k Spaniards, and it made 2.3 AU$ in Australia. It was most likely a huge flop. It did get Oscar-nominated for Best Sound. In the US, it premiered #2 behind Beverly Hills Cop (1984).]

What do you think of Dune?
Anyone seen the 2000 mini-series with the same name?
And/or read the novels?
If so, how is/are it/they?

Blue Velvet (1986) or, The Strange World

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A strong, expressionistic German poster for David Lynch's Blue Velvet with the disturbed white picket fences, a dark and menacing scene, a voyeur and the soothing and mysterious blue surrounding it all

A college student finds a severed human ear in a field in his hometown, and is attracted by its mystery into an investigation with the help of a fellow student. This leads them into an unexpected underworld of sex and violence.

 

Blue Velvet is written and directed by Montanan master filmmaker David Lynch (Eraserhead (1977)), whose 4th feature it is.
It is an American masterpiece and one of Lynch's best films, - although he has made several truly great films. Despite its mystery, it is a fairly straight story, at least compared to other Lynch mystery films like the good Lost Highway (1997), the great Mulholland Drive (2001) and the enigmatic, disturbing last feature he has made, Inland Empire (2006).
Kyle McLachlan (Twin Peaks (1990-1991)) plays the curious, latent voyeur youth with great intensity, and Laura Dern (Wild at Heart (1990)) is sincere and troubling as his helper. Isabella Rossellini (Joy (2015)) came out of the shadows of her ancestral roots (her parents are film legends Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini) with her stunning, subordinate performance, and Dennis Hopper (Apocalypse Now (1979)) got a career comeback as the menacing, perverse Frank Booth. Hopper is said to have been Lynch's third choice for the part, (perhaps due to his reputation as being unstable, an addict and ... well, crazy), but he eventually got the part, and he has said that upon accepting it, he said; "I've got to play Frank! I am Frank!" (Which is pretty disturbing, if you've seen the film.)
Blue Velvet is like a tightly composed rabbit-hole with its tagline, 'It's a strange world', looming largely over it. It shows how the surface of even the seemingly most normal, idyllic and wholesome little town is in truth as fickle as blue velvet, because it is inhabited by people, and people everywhere have weird stuff crawling all around inside of them, just waiting for the tiny snap somewhere that will let that stuff come oozing out.
The first half of the film pulls you in completely with its unusual crime mystery and eroticism, and from then on the brilliance of the tale has you in its firm grip until long after the last shot has disappeared from the screen. The songs of Blue Velvet and its score by Angelo Badalamenti (Secretary (2002)) also stays with you and resonates the film's universe, whenever you hear them again thenceforth.

 

Related posts:

 

David Lynch: Top 10: Best films about filmmaking

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Inland Empire (2006) - Dern stands out in Lynch's nightmarish art film epic

Top 10: Best erotic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Dune (1984) - Lynch heads to space, with an (unsurprisingly) strange result

Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

The Elephant Man (1980) - Lynch's deeply moving second feature

Eraserhead (1977) - Lynch's extraordinary, unconquerably strange and surreal debut

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 6 mil. $
Box office: 8.5 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertain but likely a box office success (projected return of 3.33 times its cost)

[Blue Velvet premiered 20 August (Montréal World Film Festival) and runs 120 minutes. Lynch's script had been around for some years, before Dino De Laurentiis agreed to finance the film. Shooting took place from August - December 1985 in North Carolina. The film opened #13 to a 798k $ first weekend in 98 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #12 and in 188 theaters (different weeks), grossing 8.5 mil. $. Regrettably the foreign numbers have not been made public online, but chances are that the film did good business, perhaps as much as 20 mil. $ total. It was nominated for 1 Oscar, Best Director, lost to Oliver Stone for Platoon. It was also nominated for 2 Golden Globes, won 1/7 Independent Spirit award nominations, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 1/4 star review, translating to 6 notches under this one. Lynch returned with The French as Seen by... (1988, miniseries) and theatrically with Wild at Heart (1990). Machlachlan returned in The Hidden (1987); Rossellini in Oci Ciornie (1987); and Hopper in Hoosiers (1986). Blue Velvet is certified fresh at 95 % with a 8.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Blue Velvet?