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SHOWGIRLS

(Paul Verhoeven 1995)

showgirls.gif (80296 bytes) I walk into the auditorium. It is filled only with men. Why are they here? To see a film or to see tits and bums? In fact, why am I here?

Is Showgirls just a Hollywood porn movie? Well, it definitely is a porn movie and all the cliches are here: lesbianism, S&M, and bad acting, although some of the acting is top quality, mainly provided by Kylie MacLachlan (Twin Peaks). The same goes for the story. I was cringing a lot of the time because it was so bad and predictable, but was then shocked to find I was actually enjoying myself.

It's Fame with tits. A girl, who starts from the bottom, hitches into Vegas and joins a seedy strip-club, but her ambitions are set on joining a high-class strip-show and basically she shags her way to the top. There are messages in the film about exploitation, but do these messages come accross to the people going to see the film?

The mixture of cheap soft porn and big budget Hollywood doesn't work, but it will probably do well on video - hired by lonely men with worn-out pause buttons on their remote-controls.

JOHN MARSHALL
19 February 1996

Showgirls (1995) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours: Elizabeth Berkley
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