Every now and then while browsing through the video store I work at I find a movie that looks so god damn awful that it must be watched. A few days ago I found what turned out to be the Holy Grail of barely seen terrible films: Showgirls 2: Penny From Heaven. While it may not be the worst film I've ever seen it is pretty close to the top of the list. It is also 145 mintutes worth of truly mesmerizing bat shit craziness.
the only film i can even begin to liken this to would be freeway 2: confessions of a trickbaby. it's an unsure psychedelic ride into maggot infested sewers with stilted dialogue and a dinner that consists of a whole tomato and plain hot dogs that will haunt me forever. is it a worthy sucessor to showgirls? yes, in the same way freeway 2 for freeway.
showgirls 2 full movie 15
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While Rena Riffel struggled to find fame in Hollywood, Showgirls rose in infamy. All the way back to 1997, Peaches Christ, a San Francisco drag queen, started showing Showgirls as an annual part of her midnight mass series. Eventually, the midnight mass screenings would include staged recreations of the film highlights, and also a lap dance free for all from a bunch of volunteers in a variety of costumes (you have to buy a large popcorn). They now occur at the Castro Theater, one of the classic movie houses.
Eszterhas and Verhoeven interviewed over 200 Las Vegas strippers and incorporated parts of their stories into the screenplay to show the amount of exploitation of strippers in Vegas.[13] Eszterhas took out a full-page advertisement in Variety in which he dubbed the film a morality tale and denounced the advertising of the film as "misguided", also writing, "The movie shows that dancers in Vegas are often victimized, humiliated, used, verbally and physically raped by the men who are at the power centers of that world."[13]
While the film's theatrical run was underwhelming and did not recoup its budget, it went on to gross over $100 million in the home-video and rentals markets,[30][10] and as of 2014, the film is still one of MGM's highest-selling movies.[31][30]
In the United States, Showgirls is shown at midnight movies alongside such films as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It is heralded as one of the best "bad movies", a camp classic in the vein of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Although the film was not successful when first released theatrically, it generated more than $100 million from video rentals[10][30] and became one of MGM's top 20 all-time bestsellers.[11] Verhoeven accepted the film's unexpected cult status, saying "Maybe this kind of ritualistic cult popularity isn't what I intended, but it's like a resurrection after the crucifixion."[34] Eszterhas, however, maintains that the humor was intentional: "What Paul [Verhoeven] and I had in mind was something darkly funny. We went through the script line by line, and we were really laughing at some of it. I defy people to tell me that a line like, 'How does it feel not to have anybody coming on you anymore' isn't meant to be funny."[15]
The rights to show the film on television were eventually purchased by the VH1 network. Because of the film's frequent nudity, though, a censored version was created with black bras and panties digitally rendered to hide all exposed breasts and genitalia. Also, several scenes were removed entirely, shortening the movie by at least 45 minutes. Berkley refused to redub her lines because MGM refused to pay her fee of $250,[citation needed] so a noticeably different actress's voice can be heard on the soundtrack.[40]
The film was mentioned a few times on hit network TV shows in the late 1990s, with a mix of affection and sarcasm. On NBC's NewsRadio, a running joke where billionaire WNYX owner Jimmy James has a running list of potential wives made a reference to "Showgirls" when James is asked by station manager Dave Nelson about the wives' list. James then says it's one number shorter than previously noted because "You know that nice girl who was on Saved by the Bell? She went and made a dirty movie!" In a Season 11 episode of The Simpsons, Homer and Marge go out on a date night to see the film, with Marge remarking later she liked the relationship between "Showgirl and her costume designer."
Critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum and Jim Hoberman, as well as filmmakers Jim Jarmusch,[42] Adam McKay[43] and Jacques Rivette, have gone on the record defending Showgirls as a serious satire. In a 1998 interview, Rivette called it "one of the great American films of the last few years", though "very unpleasant: it's about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that's Verhoeven's philosophy".[44] Quentin Tarantino has stated that he enjoyed Showgirls, referring to it in 1996 as the "only ... other time in the last twenty years [that] a major studio made a full-on, gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie", comparing it to Mandingo.[45]
Showgirls has been compared to the 1950 film All About Eve as a remake, update, or rip-off of that film.[46][47] For Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Showgirls has to be one of the most vitriolic allegories about Hollywood and selling out ever made".[42] "Verhoeven may be the bravest and most assured satirist in Hollywood, insofar as he succeeds in making big genre movies no one knows whether to take seriously or not", Michael Atkinson has written.[48]
Showgirls was released on DVD for the first time on April 25, 2000. In 2004, MGM released the "V.I.P. Edition" on DVD in a special boxed set containing two shot glasses, movie cards with drinking games on the back, a deck of playing cards, and a nude poster of Berkley with a pair of suction-cup pasties so viewers can play "pin the pasties on the showgirl". In 2007, MGM re-released the V.I.P. Edition DVD without the physical extras, as the "Fully Exposed Edition".[53]
The show closely mimics the film's plot and often directly incorporates dialog. As the title suggests, it is a musical. Highly satirical while staying true to the source's campy nature, the original off-Broadway production starred April Kidwell as Nomi, whose performance has been critically lauded. Andy Webster of The New York Times stated: "The coltish April Kidwell, as Nomi, is a wonder. Amid an exhausting onslaught of often obvious ribaldry, she is tireless, fearless, and performing circles around Elizabeth Berkley's portrayal in the movie. Her vibrant physicality and knowing humor are a potent riposte to the story's rabid misogyny."[55]
As to what motivated her to make a sequel, that goes back 10 years when she heard there were a lot of midnight screenings of Verhoeven's sleazefest in various US cities and she was invited to host Q&A sessions at these cinemas. There, to her surprise, she discovered the movie had developed a sizable cult following, particularly among gay men, as audiences laughed merrily and quoted lines of dialogue written by Joe Eszterhas.
The enterprising filmmaker raised a small amount of money via crowd-funding site Kickstarter and started shooting two years ago, enlisting several actors from the first movie: Glenn Plummer, Greg Travis and Dewey Weber. Taking on the directing role wasn't difficult, she found, after directing, writing and starring in the 2009 crime comedy/fantasy Trasharella. It took a year to complete the film with the help of two investors, and she edited it herself.
Currently Rena is directing, writing and starring in Astrid's Self Portrait, which she describes as an improvised, avant-garde mystery which breaks a lot of rules, about a jaded film critic who sets out to make her own movie. And she promises there'll be yet another sequel to Showgirls for which she's written the screenplay, which veers into the horror/thriller genre.
Parents need to know that this film was adults-only for a reason. As Showgirls gradually enters into the nudie-show environment, topless dancing and sex (often in combo, a la prostitution) become frequent and stop just short of hardcore pornography. Violence includes a brutal gang rape of a sympathetic female character and a man is also beaten viciously. Practically every nasty word there is comes out at one point or another. Characters are stereotyped. A "milder" R-rated cut is available, but this is a review of the more widely available NC-17 movie.
Between stripper-hookers, promoter-pimps, hateful choreographers, and creepy gay chorus boys, there's nobody to root for -- but everybody worked hard on the dancing, obviously. Critics were near-universal in their hatred -- a merciful Roger Ebert judged Showgirls bad but never boring, and some call it a "cult" film. It still failed to bring real usefulness to the NC-17 rating other than to make everyone take notice of a movie best forgotten. And quickly.
While slated through July, co-creator Flynn says he already has his eye on future possibilities for guilty- pleasure theatrical remount. While nothing could ever live up to a movie where Berkley is naked for one-sixth the entire running time, he says he and Clarke just may have stumbled upon a new muse.
This tale of the lives of Las Vegas strippers, set to the plots of 42nd Street and All About Eve, may have also been partially responsible for the rating's decline, as it was basically an X-rated movie that went through the ratings process (which actually isn't required for an X rating; anyone wanting to make an X-rated movie can gladly release it as such on their own). That said, when compared to the explicitness of today's cable television series, even the unrated version of this movie would barely qualify for an R rating today. 2ff7e9595c
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