CINEMA: VALLEY OF THE DULLS

What gets a movie the dread NC-17 rating these days? Normally the reasons children are forbidden to see films are explicit sex and spectacular spasms of violence. In the case of Showgirls, though, the list of no-nos might read, “Obscene level of incompetence, excessive inanity in the story line, gross negligence of the viewer’s intelligence, a prurient interest in the quick buck.”

Showgirls, a Las Vegas sex-and-dope opera from the Basic Instinct team of Joe Eszterhas (writer) and Paul Verhoeven (director), is one of those delirious, hilarious botches that could be taught in film schools as a How Not To. It tells the story of edgy, ambitious Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), a Vegas newcomer who gets a job as stripper at a seedy club, then screws her way to the star spot in a hotel revue, over the backs and other body parts of her rivals, notably headliner Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon).

The first NC-17 movie to be widely released since the rating was devised in 1990, Showgirls opened last week on 1,388 screens. Though many newspapers typically do not run ads for NC-17 films, only a few (including the major dailies in Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, Texas) refused to carry the Showgirls pitches. United Artists’ high box-office hopes were stoked by avid interest in a teaser cassette in video stores, and by a million visitors a day to the Showgirls Website.

The risks are high. The $40 million film has no stars and has been critically drubbed. Its sole market value, beyond the Eszterhas-Verhoeven brand name, is its rating–the one most directors so fear that they will scissor their films (as Verhoeven did with Basic Instinct) to avoid getting it. Showgirls wears this stigma as a badge of honor and a sales pitch. “Leave your inhibitions at the door,” the ads blare. Translation: Dirty movie ahead.

Would that it were. Hollywood films often wallow in bloodlust and sexual smirking–it’s the Kingdom of Leer–but genuine eroticism is hard to find. Maybe Verhoeven is right when he says, “Americans have a problem accepting sexuality. American society is more impregnated with Christian beliefs.” And to those who find the very idea of sex unholy, it may be as pointless to prefer the erotic to the lurid as to choose a call girl over a hooker. But Showgirls is cold, antierotic. It just ain’t sexy; it’s only X-ie.

Verhoeven and Eszterhas may have needed the R rating after all. When they made Basic Instinct–a sexy R movie–they deployed atmosphere and innuendo to complement Sharon Stone’s swank star turn. Here, with an NC-17 rating, the lads go slack; they let pubic hair and menstruation jokes do all the work. Since their leading lady can’t act or dance or dazzle the camera, they’ve got problems they apparently didn’t want to solve.

We don’t blame Verhoeven, the director of two sleek, inventive Hollywood fantasies (RoboCop, Total Recall), for making this movie–though we’re surprised he can bear to watch it. The real culprit is Eszterhas, swami of the High Concept. He found Nazis in The Music Box and white supremacists in Betrayed, but cogent drama in neither. His favorite plot hook, sexual mutilation, bore rancid fruit in Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct and Sliver. At least those three had some sick kick to them. But if his women characters aren’t psychos or sex-crime victims, the scripts get shrill and turgid. After an hour of naughty chat in Showgirls, you’ll start hoping for somebody to kill somebody.

Eszterhas must be great at pitching stories, because the screenwriting craft eludes him. A mild gag here–the mispronouncing of Gianni Versace’s name–is tortured into an endless motif. Nomi has a clouded past, but that doesn’t explain why she is such a gratingly annoying creature. The giddiest moment in this All About Evil by way of 42nd Street comes when a club owner is asked whether the revue should close down because the star is out sick. “Not a chance!” he actually says. “The show goes on!”

Eszterhas has urged teenagers to use fake IDs to get into his movie, to which Hollywood czar Jack Valenti declares, “Someone who would make that statement needs professional counseling–it’s so palpably stupid.” The screenwriter also insists the film has a modern, even feminist moral: “The message is that you don’t have to sell your soul to make it.”

Which only proves he is as good at disinformation as he is at disentertainment. Nomi gets one job after having sex with the hotel’s entertainment director (Kyle MacLachlan) and a better one after pushing the headliner down a flight of stairs. She has no soul to sell, no morals to corrupt. Kinda like the film. For 2 hrs. 11 min., Showgirls offers a slumming party inside the moviemakers’ libidos. Ladies and gents, no matter how curious or horny you think you are, you don’t want to be there.

–With reporting by Patrick E.Cole/Los Angeles