Showgirls

Is there any other film as spectacularly bad as Showgirls? I accept that there might be worse films: worse made, more boring, though probably not as badly acted. But I mean ridiculously, gloriously, over-the-top spectacularly bad. Watching it for the second time last night, at least ten years since I first saw it, I lost count of the amount of times I said to myself "I can't believe I forgot about the bit where they do the lesbian biker chick sex slave dance / the chimpanzees escape and run riot through the dressing room / her virtuous best friend is gang-raped by a long-haired, hairy-chested singing star and his rent-a-goons, intercut with dancing from the floor below". This is a film where people can say lines like "It must be weird not having people come on you", "I'm erect, why aren't you erect?", "I like breasts" and (in mournful, sincere tones) "I have a problem with pussy" with a straight face. And then of course there is the infamous swimming pool sex scene, which actually is just a pale imitation of the earlier lap dancing scene, which takes place at Cheetah's, the strip club run by the man in the skinny leopard print shirt who shouts BLOW JOB a lot but turns out to be all heart. And then there is the dancing. It's supposed to be the most incredible dancing in the world and is actually like some kind of porn-star version of Xanadu, all glitter and wigs and girl-on-girl dry-humping. And if you feel in need of some full-frontal nudity, search no more. You have never since so many lady bits in your life. And one male bottom, courtesy of Kyle MacLachlan's none-too-convincing super-toned body double. All wrapped up with some breathtakingly phony message about female empowerment and the perils of being seduced into corruption.

It's not just worth watching as a bad movie though. I genuinely believe Showgirls to be a unique cultural artefact that people will one day hold up as the last gasp of pre-9/11 degeneracy, before we started making films about climate change and mysterious threats that mysteriously symbolise those mysterious Muslim terrorists.

It's also a perfect moment of hubris, as Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoeven's egos explode like fireworks on screen and then the sparks fizzle out into the darkness. If you have never read Eszterhas's autobiography 'Hollywood Animal' you have a sorry gap in your knowledge of self-deluded arrogant arseholes. Like Showgirls, which Eszterhas wrote, it is unbelievably entertaining for any number of unintentional reasons. Eszterhas firmly believes himself to be a genius, and the evidence of said genius is all the incredible movies that he was penned: movies like Flashdance and Basic Instinct. Showgirls, a deeply moral and Christian film in his opinion, only failed because he didn't get the cast he originally wanted: Madonna and Drew Barrymore (watch it with *that* in mind.) And I suppose that Showgirls actually doesn't seem that over the top to a man whose business mail has been known to be delivered on notes folded up and inserted into a prostitute's vagina.

One day, somebody will make a movie of Joe Eszterhas's life and it will be the most absurd, mesmerising, mind-boggling film ever made. But until they do, there is always Showgirls.