A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC 1977

My introduction to Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music came in 1973 when I blindly purchased the Original Broadway Cast LP solely on the strength of my passionate adoration for his timeless scores to the Broadway shows, Company and Follies. I say blindly because, despite my mini-fandom of Sondheim (that same year I’d dragged my family to see The Last of Sheila simply because I’d heard Sondheim collaborated on the script with actor Tony Perkins), I really knew nothing about A Little Night Music at all. I was then-unaware of the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film upon which it is based —Smiles of a Summer Night; I didn't know anything about its content or structure, or whether it was a dramatic musical or comedy; and of course, I hadn't heard a note of the music (I know it’s hard to imagine now, but there was actually a time when not every man, woman and child had a recording of Send in the Clowns in release).

A Little Night Music sets the proper fairy tale tone by using a theatrical staging of the musical as a framing device that casts the principals in the evening's romantic roundelay as "players" in a turn-of-the-century operetta. Careful attention should be paid to the myriad couplings and uncouplings in Patricia Birch's gloriously gliding waltz choreography, for it reveals the entirety of the film's plot. 

But here is an instance of ignorance most assuredly proving to be bliss, for in purchasing the cast album without benefit of foreknowledge, I was granted the ultimate gift of being introduced to A Little Night Music as a purely musical experience. And for a Sondheim fan, what could be better? As a show, A Little Night Music is a perfectly charming little sex farce, perhaps one of the best of its stripe; but for me, its strongest suit has always been Sondheim’s lushly romantic score. Consisting entirely of intricate waltz-time melodies with witty lyrics full of astoundingly clever wordplay, Sondheim’s compositions for A Little Night Music are among the best of his illustrious career.

By the time the film adaptation of A Little Night Music opened for a limited engagement at San Francisco’s Castro Theater in 1977, I had not as yet seen a stage production (that wouldn't be until some 30 years later) but having all but worn out the grooves on my Broadway cast LP and committed the entire score to memory, I would say that I was more than primed for the event. 

Elizabeth Taylor as Desiree Armfeldt

Diana Rigg as Charlotte Mittelheim

Lesley-Anne Down as Anne Egerman

Hermione Gingold as Madame Armfeldt

Len Cariou as Frederick Egerman

Laurence Guittard as Carl-Magnus Mittelheim

Like an intricate waltz in which the participants continually and imperceptibly change partners, A Little Night Music is a lyric dance of desire in which lovers, paired by fate, and with varying degrees of success, try to manipulate the circumstances of their lives.

In turn-of-the-century Austria, stage actress Desiree Armfeldt (Taylor), wearying of her life on the road away from daughter Fredericka (the superb Chloe Franks), hatches a plot to marry former lover Frederick Egerman (Cariou). Obstacles: Frederick has recently wed the beautiful but rather shallow Anne (Lesley-Anne Down), his 18-year-old love who, after 11 months of marriage, still guards her virginity; Desiree herself is the mistress of the jealously possessive and much-married military dragoon Carl-Magnus (Guittard), whose shrewd and embittered wife (Diana Rigg) is Anne’s old school chum; and, adding to the mix, Erich Egerman, Frederick's son from a previous marriage (Christopher Guard) is tortuously in love with Anne, his stepmother.

An orchestrated string of comic contrivances results in this amorously antsy group (which also includes a randy housemaid and a handsome manservant [Lesley Dunlop & Heinz Marecek]) converging for a weekend at the country estate of retired courtesan Mme. Armfeldt (Gingold) who just also happens to be Desiree’s mother.

Self-serious seminary student Erich Egerman struggles to resist entrapment in one of "the devil's snares" in the form of Petra the housemaid. Ironically, in real-life, actors Christopher Guard and Lesley Dunlop became a couple after meeting on this film.

A Little Night Music is the stuff of classic romantic farce played out with considerable charm and wit by an engaging cast in eye-poppingly sumptuous costumes and surroundings. And interwoven amongst the sometimes heartbreaking follies of these lost and searching fools upon whom the summer night is hoped to smile, is Stephen Sondheim’s breathtaking music (lushly orchestrated to Oscar-winning effect by Jonathan Tunick who appears briefly as the conductor for the operetta that opens the film).

In the 1978 Harold Robbins camp-fest The Betsy, British actress Lesley-Anne Down displayed her versatility in taking on a role the polar-opposite to that of child-bride Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music. Personal fave: 1981's Sphinx, where Down plays the world's most improbable Egyptologist.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Translating a beloved stage musical to the screen is largely a thankless job, for one would have to attend a comic book convention to find fans more vociferously persnickety and proprietary than theater geeks.
And while I've suffered my share of gut-wrenching disappointments at seeing some beloved stage show bowdlerized on the screen (cue Sir Richard Attenborough’s lame-legged A Chorus Line), I always concede to the fact that film and stage are entirely different mediums and a movie musical has to stand on its own distinct merits, not on how faithfully it translates its source material.
I’m in a small camp on this one, I know, but I find A Little Night Music to be a marvelous movie musical. One that I'm well aware fans of the stage show consider to be something of a disaster. I'm not denying its flaws (even the filmmakers admit that pressures of time and budget made certain compromises necessary), but for pure screen pleasure and taking delight in wonderful actors, beautiful music, and a sharp, funny screenplay, A Little Night Music is a most diverting and glorious entertainment.

"The night smiles three times at the follies of human beings: First for the young who know nothing; the second, for the fools who know too little; and the third, for the old, who know too much."

My lack of a theatrical frame of reference no doubt played a large part in why I fell so hard for this imperfect, yet thoroughly delightful film, just as did the circumstances of my seeing it (The Castro Theater was packed, the film was shown with an intermission, and applause followed almost every number). Hoping just for a chance to see what I had missed in never seeing the show onstage, A Little Night Music as a film actually exceeded my expectations in terms of cinematic style, performances, and overall panache.
It succeeded in being bitchily witty, unexpectedly moving, charmingly romantic, and at times, just gorgeously opulent and lovely. This kind of light, frothy entertainment is exceedingly difficult to carry off, but for me, A Little Night Music hit just the perfect key. An odd and perhaps unfortunate choice of words, I know, given Elizabeth Taylor’s touchingly hesitant vocalizing of Send in the Clowns (one critic’s diplomatic summation of Taylor’s rendition: “No chart-buster”).

PERFORMANCES

Well-suited to portraying a diva of advanced years who knows a thing or two about how to get a married man to leave his wife, Elizabeth Taylor is at her latter-career best in A Little Night Music. Not only is her much-commented upon, well-upholstered figure perfectly suited to Florence Klotz’s Oscar-nominated period costumes (although in some scenes one might wish cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson had made more of an effort to photograph her flatteringly), but is quite winning as she effortlessly glides from slightly overplayed comedy to genuinely touching drama. She’s marvelous and brings an appropriately regal star power to the film. I think she makes a fine Desiree, but in spite of her small triumphs in the role, it’s Diana Rigg who walks away with the picture.

The Ladies Who Lunch
Everyone references Send in the Clowns when speaking of A Little Night Music, but my favorite song in the entire show has always been the plaintive Every Day a Little Death. This duet by the two deceived wives is movie musical magic for me. I fall apart, it's just that gorgeous.
Listen to it Here

To paraphrase a lyric from one of the show's Second Act songs, “The woman is perfection.”  Diana Rigg, whose talent for high-style bitchery is rivaled only perhaps by Maggie Smith, is everything a film like A Little Night Music needs. She's an urbane and spirited actress with a way of commanding the screen no matter whom she shares it with. Hers is a sharp, scene-stealing performance that gives the sometimes lagging film much-needed zest and fire.
Adding to this is the brilliant Hermione Gingold who, though sadly underutilized (and denied her lovely song, Liasons), enlivens each of her scenes with her trademark droll delivery. When one is not feeling frustrated by how poorly these ladies' talents are sometimes showcased, the joint contributions of these two actresses is invaluable in making A Little Night Music such an enjoyable experience.

Laurence Guittard and Len Cariou recreate the roles they originated in the Broadway production. As fine as they are in their roles, both actors lack that intangible "something" that translates to the screen. Both tend to recede into the background and make a vague impression at best. It seems the women do all the heavy lifting in A Little Night Music.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I’m not overly fond of the arbitrary, often unimaginative “opening up” that occurs when theatrical properties are adapted to the screen, but I love it when directors discover an authentic cinematic concept for a show, justifying its transfer to another medium. The song The Glamorous Life Desiree Armfeltd's ode to the theatrical life on the road, is rewritten as the daughter's self-rationalizing boast/lament at having a mother who is wonderful to brag about, but seldom around.  The ingeniously economic number fashioned for the new song relays a great deal of backstory, plot exposition, and character information in a montage of images, both silent and sound, in a manner calling to mind the sensation of leafing through a scrapbook.

The Glamorous Life
Sondheim's brilliant song begins as a young girl's boastful paean to the life of her actress mother and ends up being a self-convincing denial of loneliness

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Even those not particularly fond of the film express nothing but praise for the handling of the A Weekend in the Country number; the pre-intermission showstopper and the film's centerpiece. Shot in a series of escalating cross cuts that mirror the mounting anxieties of the two parties set to merge at the Armfeldt estate, its a bouncy and amusing number well-played by all and cleverly cinematic. It's a real highlight. Fans of Downton Abbey should really discover A Little Night Music...it has a wonderful look about it in its costumes and locations.

Considering how many people involved in the original Broadway production were involved in bringing A Little Night Music to the screen (Sondheim, director Harold Prince, choreographer Patricia Birch, screenwriter Hugh Wheeler, costume designer Florence Klotz) it's surprising the finished product pleased so few. The filmmakers cited crunched schedules, unstable financing, and the legendarily bad health of Taylor as the reasons for the many compromises undertaken.
True or not, I think all that focusing on what could have been clouds a fair appreciation for what was accomplished, which for me, a man who returned to the Castro Theater three more times to see A Little Night Music during its initial engagement, is something pretty special.

(Incidentally, these days, what with all those kids from Glee butchering one Broadway standard after another, I'm beginning to look more kindly on ol' Liz's  "no chart-buster" version of Send in the Clowns.)

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2020

CARRIE 1976

Joan Rivers: "I wasn't invited to the prom. I invited the guy and I had to buy my own orchid. 

Carrie had a better time at her prom than I did." 

That Carrie can be referenced in the punchline of a joke without benefit of clarification is a testament to how deeply rooted in our cultural consciousness Brian De Palma’s 1976 film (vis à vis Stephen King’s 1974 novel) has become. Indeed, contrary to the circumstances of her character in the film (she’s such a non-entity at her school that the principal repeatedly misidentifies her as “Cassie”) and the teaser ads for the forthcoming sequel (You Will Know Her Name); I'd say that by now, everybody knows exactly who Carrie is.

Sissy Spacek as Carrie White

Piper Laurie as Margaret White

Betty Buckley as Miss Collins

Amy Irving as Sue Snell

William Katt as Tommy Ross

Nancy Allen as Chris Hargensen

John Travolta as Billy Nolan

I was just starting college the year Carrie was released and (cinema snob that I was) I really couldn't have been less interested in it. 1976 was an absolutely amazing year for movies, and the films that preoccupied my mind, my time, and my interest were the more high-profile releases: Taxi Driver, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Hitchcock’s Family Plot, Fellini’s Casanova, Marathon Man, Rocky, King Kong, A Star is Born, Polanski’s The Tenant, Network, The Last Tycoon, Burnt Offerings, Sparkle, Lipstick, Logan’s Run, Bertolucci’s 1900, Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, and Bergman’s Face to Face. I hardly saw daylight the entire year!

And then there was the woefully under-hyped Carrie. Here we had a film by a director whose only other work I’d seen at the time -Phantom of the Paradise - I remembered primarily for Paul Williams' music, and whose sole marketable cast member, John Travolta, was a fledgling teen idol from the execrable sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (his whispery pop single, “Let Her In,” had turned the summer of ’76 radio-listening into an absolute nightmare for me). Everything about Carrie, from its no-name cast to its over-explicit poster art, gave me the impression it was strictly drive-in fare; a movie suitable for a double-bill with one of those low-budget releases from AIP or Crown International about Bigfoot or small-town redneck serial killers.

Eve was Weak
Margaret White's religious fanaticism adds an effectively ominous overlay of sin, sacrifice, and retribution to the story of an awkward teen and the coming-of-age awareness of her powers of telekinesis.

It was only through the persistent badgering of my best friend that I even came to see Carrie at all. My friend, a sci-fi / Dark Shadows buff, had already seen Carrie and used the excuse of wanting to see it again as an opportunity to call in his marker for the time I’d pestered him into attending a screening of Barbarella with me. As I took my seat in the packed San Francisco movie theater where Carrie was playing, I seethed with resentment over what I perceived as my friend extracting a particularly mean-spirited payback for what, the heinous crime of exposing him to the sight of a naked, zero-gravity Jane Fonda? However, some 98 minutes later I emerged from the theater, red-eyed (from crying- that Sissy Spacek really gets to me in this movie...even today) and overwhelmed. Wow! I had NOT been expecting that!

Macabre Martyrdom

Anticipating at best a run-of-the-mill horror movie, what I got was a surprisingly sensitive character drama that morphed into a kind of a nightmarish Grimm's fairy tale. A blood-splattered religious allegory of sin and redemption that's a near-poetic parable on the inability of a legacy of pain and cruelty to beget anything other than more pain and cruelty. Just out of high school myself (an all-boys Catholic School, but let’s face it, high school is high school) it felt more than a little cathartic to see a film that depicted everyday schoolyard torments with the graveness of Greek tragedy, meting out suitably catastrophic retribution to the guilty.

I was sold by Carrie’s first five minutes - the volleyball game and the gym shower, both of which established: a) the then-atypical horror film setting of a high school; b) the female-centric thrust of the story, wherein the concerns, agency, and motivations of the women in the film appeared essential to propelling the plot forward; and c) the obvious subjective perspective the film was going to take regarding Carrie herself. Carrie absolutely floored me. I saw it three more times that month, and it has since remained one of my all-time favorite movies. A motion picture I’d readily list among the best horror films ever made.

Brian De Palma is known for his employment of the literal split-screen, but Carrie is also full of sequences in which the natural framing of a shot encourages the audience to take note of the dual /conflicting experiences of the characters as they occupy the same space.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Given that adolescence was a living hell for the vast majority of us, there’s something conceptually ingenious about a horror film set in an American high school—a “house” as haunted by the ghosts of the tortured and tormented as the dungeon of any Gothic mansion. The hierarchy of school cliques and the day-to-day cruelties teens inflict upon one another seem to be perfect subjects for a meditation on the banality of evil; a concept explored in many of the films that have proved most influential in the horror genre (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Invasion of the Body Snatchers).

School Days, School Days

Carrie was made at a time when "bullying" was seen mainly as kids-just-being-kids behavior

Unlike Stephen King’s novel, which expands the scope of Carrie to include news and science investigations into what happened at the prom, De Palma’s film wisely maintains a much narrower subjective focus (few things happen outside of the scope of the high-schoolers), heightening our identification with and empathy for Carrie and her rather tragic existence. I’m reminded of a review of Carrie that made the insightful observation that it was so fitting for Carrie to have only destroyed her high school in the film (as opposed to half the town in the novel); because to an adolescent, high school IS the world to a teenager. I honestly think the intimate scale of De Palma's Carrie is what makes it work so well. Carrie's nightmare is merely every adolescent's anxieties (public humiliation, social ostracism, the desire to fit in) writ in blood.

Adolescent trauma meets Grand Guignol

PERFORMANCES

Defying accepted Hollywood logic that holds horror films don’t get Academy respect, the two (and only) Oscar nominations afforded Carrie were for the impossible-to-ignore performances of Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. Taking wildly divergent acting paths—Spacek playing her keyed-up naturalism off of Laurie’s idiosyncratic stylization—the actresses share a symbiotic chemistry in their scenes together which elevates Carrie far above what is usually considered possible in a horror film. (Never cut any slack to anyone who tries to get a poorly made horror film off the hook with the excuse, "Nobody goes to horror films for the acting. They just want to be scared!" - we horror fans are not often rewarded on that score, but solid performances in horror films contribute more to the "scare" than some directors seem to realize.)
Spacek's Carrie doesn't amp up the cliche acting signals that would indicate an outcast character. Instead, Carrie's awkwardness appears to emanate not out of any innate strangeness (she's actually better adjusted than most of her peers) but out of perhaps an overabundance of feelings she doesn't understand and lack of emotional outlets. Carrie's slowly developing telekinesis is a perfect metaphorical representation of what happens when emotions are repressed.

Born Into Sin

And Piper Laurie...what risks she takes! And she makes them work! Grounding her performance in a reality alien to normal behavior yet familiar and accessible to the deeply disturbed character she plays, Laurie inhabits this monster of a woman and finds a way of tapping into a kind of twisted truth. I wind up not only believing in this broadly-drawn woman, but recognizing her. Her religious fanaticism comes from a genuine source, and Piper Laurie's performance makes Mrs. White a truly terrifying character. One who makes you shudder even when her eccentricities are making you laugh (Ruth Gordon pulled off a similar miracle in Rosemary's Baby).

One of the great unsung performances in Carrie is that of Betty Buckley as the sympathetic gym teacher. De Palma must have really appreciated her incisive portrayal, because he always seems to leave the camera on her just long to capture the brief flickers of emotion that play across her face at the end of scenes where she's forced to be tougher than she'd like to be, or when she's saying something she hopes to be true, but doesn't really trust in.  Ironically or inevitably, depending on how you look at it, the sweet-natured Buckley assumed the role of Carrie's mother in the ill-fated 1988 Broadway musical of the film.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The trademark Brian De Palma bag of tricks: slow motion, swirling camera, split-screen, complex tracking shots, subjective sound, Bernard Herrmann-esque scores, Pino Donaggio's sensual music used as violence counterpoint, copious bloodletting--have never been put to as effective use as in Carrie. And no sequence in Carrie better illustrates the seamless blending of visual style with narrative theme than the bravura prom sequence. One of the most amazing bits of film as storytelling as you're likely ever to see.

Last Dance

A tour de force sequence that conveys tenderness, romance, joy, pathos, suspense, and terror in an uninterrupted flow that's close to operatic. Like my favorite scene from Hitchcock's The Birds --the Tides Restaurant bird attack--the climactic prom at Bates High School is a sequence that has retained every bit of its impact over the years. It's such a marvelously effective scene. It grabs me each and every time.  

Contemporary filmmakers (especially those enamored of the horror genre's tolerance of excess) who strive to blow us away with the spectacle of sadism or a reliance on CGI,  can take a lesson from De Palma here. Were this sequence all about the destruction and blood, I think Carrie would have gone the way of obscurity long ago. Carrie endures because De Palma has taken the time to bring us into Carrie's dream come true before he turns it into a nightmare.

Grand Grotesquery 
The eruption of the "curtain of fire" is one of my favorite film moments. It is so horrifically beautiful...I recall getting goosebumps when I saw it on the big screen.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS NIGHTMARES
In speaking of Rosemary's Baby, director Roman Polanski is fond of saying that his intent was to make a horror film that looks like a Doris Day movie, yet reveals itself to be something dark and sinister. To me, Carrie works in a similar fashion: it starts out resembling one of those teen-empowering After School Specials of the day (a series of TV movies targeted to adolescents in the '70s and '80s), only to throw us a nasty curve as the heretofore reassuring ugly-duckling wish-fulfillment fantasy turns into a bullied teen's worst-case scenario. 
I wish the 2013 remake a lot of luck, but just as Mia Farrow is and always will be the one and only Rosemary Woodhouse; I've got a hunch that Sissy Spacek's touchingly raw performance will wind up being impossible to beat. Perhaps there only needs to be...and only ever will be...one true Carrie.

"If only they knew she had the power."

Movie poster tagline

2013 ADDENDUM: 
Saw Kimberly Peirce's Carrie remake. I found it forgettable and unnecessary, albeit better acted than I expected. The big prom scene finale trades De Palma's poetically nightmarish spectacle for protracted explicitness. It's a well-done if artless sequence; the underlying, deeply-felt tragedy of the first film being replaced by the superficially cathartic pleasure of seeing the guilty parties punished. De Palma's Carrie has haunted me for a lifetime. I struggled to remember the details of Carrie 2013 a week after seeing it.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

SHOWGIRLS 1995

Philosophically speaking, if the bad times in our lives help us to better appreciate the good; perhaps bad movies work the same way. Watching a staggeringly inept, epically-bad film like Showgirls really makes me aware of all the things I take for granted when I watch a movie. Things like coherence, consistency, believable characters, understandable motivations, or even human-sounding dialog. There's not a lot of good that can be said about Showgirls, except maybe that it's possessed of an uncanny ability to make most any other film, by comparison, look like Citizen Kane.

I recall how Showgirls was released to a lot of hoopla and self-aggrandizing fanfare back in 1995. Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (perpetrators of 1992’s Basic Instinct) were promising to deliver to the world a gritty and boob-filled update of All About Eve set in the "glamorous" world of Las Vegas showgirls. It was to be an NC-17 backstage musical that held the promise of doing for pasties and g-strings, what Singin’ in the Rain did for umbrellas.

Of course, when Showgirls ultimately did hit the theaters, audiences found themselves more shocked by the film’s overarching vulgarity and incompetence than by its sexual explicitness; the latter tending to incite giggles more than arousal. The $45-million film tanked at the boxoffice and virtually overnight, Showgirls became a “Bad Films We Love” cult favorite. In one fell swoop, a single misguided movie waylaid careers, reputations, and legitimacy. Investors lost their shirts (appropriately enough) and hopes were dashed, but fans of craptastic camp cinema were thrown the biggest and most riotously silly chunk of cheese since Faye Dunaway had them rolling in the aisles with: "Barbra, PLEASE! PLEASE, Barbara! Leave us alone, Barbara! If you need anything, ask Carol Ann!"

I am a huge, huge fan of Showgirls -- a  fact that doesn't cloud my awareness that it is also, in every significant detail, an almost irredeemably terrible film. And no amount of revisionist Beyond the Valley of the Dolls /The Room 11th-hour damage control (“It’s a satire! It’s supposed to be bad!”) could ever convince me otherwise.

But Showgirls is so loopy and over-the-top in its attempts to be daring and sexy that watching it winds up being quite a lot of good, mean-spirited fun. Its desire to really be "about" something is almost touching in its naivete. And it's certainly more watchable than a great many more competently-made motion pictures. I never know just why it is that some bad films are ones you can barely sit all the way through, while others, every bit as bad, are entertaining as hell and become lifetime favorites you can watch again and again.
Whatever the reason, Showgirls has been a so-bad-it's-good favorite of mine since the year it was released, and no matter how many times I see it, I keep finding new atrocities to gasp and delight in. It's a perfect storm of blessed dreadfulness.

Elizabeth Berkley as Nomi Malone / Polly Ann Costello
"I used to love Doggy Chow, too!"

Gina Gershon as Cristal Connors
"You are a whore, darlin'!"

Gina Ravera as Molly Abrams
"I can barely thread a needle!"

Kyle McLachlan as Zack Carey
"Nomi's got heat!"

Glenn Plummer as James Smith
"I have a problem with pussy!"

 *(The exclamation points are my own because dialog this ridiculous fairly demands them. Seriously folks, Eszterhas was paid upwards of $2 million for this stuff.)

As Showgirls is set in Las Vegas (the Las Vegas of Joe Eszterhas’exceedingly puerile imagination, anyway), let me take a moment to talk about gambling. The business of making movies is always a gamble. No matter the genre, subject matter, or star, when it comes to knowing how the public is going to respond to a film, screenwriter William Goldman’s famous “Nobody knows anything” quote is still the law of the land. I suspect that one of the chief reasons there was so much anticipation surrounding Showgirls' release, and why the nearly-unanimous negative public response caught the filmmakers so off guard, was because...from a purely marketing standpoint...Verhoeven and Eszterhas appeared to have had such a sure thing on their hands. Sex, violence, nudity, strippers...they must have thought it was a slam-dunk.  

Run, Nomi, Run!
I have a theory that the crazy-eyed casino change-girl (Jean Barrett) Nomi encounters when she has her first (and only) stroke of luck in Vegas is actually a Nicholas Cage-like harbinger of evil.

Showgirls was essentially being peddled as Flashdance meets Basic Instinct (two massive boxoffice hits, both penned by Eszterhas). Hollywood, a town that lives by the motto: "If they liked it once, they'll love it twice," was more than happy to pump millions into a project that promised to deliver all of the most marketable elements of those films, only bigger, louder, gaudier - and a lot more naked- plus, music by Prince!

"Fucker! Fuck off!"

Reasoning perhaps that if one crass, misogynist male fantasy can produce a blockbuster, there should be no earthly reason for an even crasser, more sexually-explicit misogynist male fantasy not to do even bigger business; Basic Instinct's non-dynamic duo of Verhoeven and  Eszterhas were reassembled and given carte blanche to create the most expensive, sexually graphic, mainstream motion picture ever made. And of course, the rest is history...or, more accurately, infamy.

Yes Sir, I Can Boogie

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

To the chagrin of trash movie fans the world over, changing tastes and the decline of the Hollywood studio system sounded the death-knell for a certain kind of bad film. This once-plentiful genus of awful had once proved a reliable source of cult-worthy camp, but began to disappear with the youth-oriented 60s. I speak of the overheated, overproduced, self-important melodrama. Those high-gloss soap operas made by Douglas Sirk, Ross Hunter, or Joesph E. Levine starring lacquered starlets and lantern-jawed heroes. These films boastfully paraded their pretensions and allusions to loftier purpose while erroneously labeling their crass, commercial vulgarism as glamour and high style. Invariably, upon release, these films were branded instant laughingstocks due to the ofttimes jarring discrepancy between intent and execution.

I must have missed that musical where Ann Miller tells June Allyson she likes having nice tits 
"Showgirls is a throwback to movies in the '40s while combining Bob Fosse and a twist of the Marquis de Sade," said a touchingly delusional Elizabeth Berkley in a 1995 interview.

In my personal roster of the best of the worst, The Oscar (1966) and Valley of the Dolls (1967) signify the apex of the nadir of the 60s. For the 70s, nothing can touch Lost Horizon (1973) for blissful wrongheadedness; and in the 80s, the notorious Mommie Dearest (1981) has to be the gold standard.

Checking out the Competition
All too often Showgirls feels like a film made by men who have never had a conversation with a woman that didn't start with "How much?" or "You're not a cop, are you?"

By the 90s, as mainstream movies settled into a kind of uniform, bland mediocrity born of trying to reach as broad a demographic as possible, I thought the age of the so-bad-it’s-good fiasco had passed. Well, thank God for Showgirls! A grandiose grotesquerie that made even a jaded, seen-it-all, trash-addict like me sit up and take notice. Fully deserving of all the critical brickbats and backhanded compliments hurled its way since its release, the astonishing thing about Showgirls’ unique brand of terrible is that it is entertaining as hell. Not even one minute of the film is ever less than a demoralizing humiliation for all involved, yet unlike other cult classics that suffer from the occasional lag in pacing (Sextette, Myra Breckinridge, Can’t Stop the Music) Showgirls mines a vein of profound godawfulness that pays consistent dividends. There's never a dull moment!

An equal opportunity offender, Showgirls makes galling use of the "Magical Negro" stereotype in the character of Molly, Nomi's ridiculously selfless and self-sacrificing friend, confidante, and 'round-the-clock rescuer

PERFORMANCES

I recently watched Goodbye, Columbus and The Last Picture Show and found myself struck by how clearly protective and watchful the directors of those films (Larry Peerce and Peter Bogdanovich, respectively) were in shaping the remarkable screen debuts of their novice stars (former models, neither Ali MacGraw nor Cybill Shepherd had ever acted before). Alas, after watching Showgirls, it becomes equally obvious that the same can't be said for Paul Verhoeven's direction of Elizabeth Berkley.

Switchblade Sister

With nearly ten years of television experience behind her by the time she made Showgirls (most notably, Saved by the Bell), Elizabeth Berkley is far from being a novice, but she's certainly not what anyone would call an actress. Giving a frenetically undisciplined performance better suited to a Russ Meyer movie, the very game Berkeley (perhaps too game, in retrospect) would have benefited greatly from some real guidance in modulating her emotive intensity, and was in dire need of a director more determined to show her off to her best advantage and less dedicated to shining a spotlight on her shortcomings. Berkley's 100% commitment to each scene is more embarrassing than laudable, and it's hard to think of someone as red-hot sexy when you feel sorry for them.

Attempting perhaps to pay homage to that weird scene in the 1981 musical, Pennies from Heaven where Steve Martin bullies wife Jessica Harper into indulging his fantasy of having her apply lipstick to her nipples, Showgirls inexplicably has Nomi go through the same ritual just prior to opening up a jumbo-sized can of whoop-ass on heartthrob/rapist Andrew Carver

On the other hand, Gina Gershon as Cristal, the Texas Tassel Twirler, fares much better. She plays Cristal as if she were a drag queen, which proves to be an insight into character wholly appropriate to the depth of Eszterhas' script. Although a considerable amount of her performance seems centered around her rather dangerous-looking mouth (I'm reminded of how Joan Collins was always biting into something [or someone] for evil emphasis on Dynasty), and the script conspires to make her and every other woman in the cast look as foolish as possible at all times; Gershon nevertheless is an exceptionally fun and campy villain and is, throughout, consistently better than the material she's given.  It's almost impossible not to go around calling everybody "darlin'" for a day or two after seeing her in Showgirls.

Irresistible Force...Say Hello to Immovable Object 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Perhaps my favorite source of unintentional comedy in Showgirls is the dancing. It’s plentiful and the professional dancers in the cast are certainly talented, but it kind of reeks. There's a great deal of fun to be had at the expense of “Goddess,” the appropriately cheesy and strangely atonal Las Vegas topless revue that signifies Nomi moving up the sleaze ladder. From appearances, the review is all glitter and g-strings and seems to be comprised almost exclusively of the dancers chaotically running about, gnashing teeth, and letting go with frenzied head-releases.

And then there’s the freestyle dancing that Nomi engages in that’s supposed to reveal her fire and passion, yet looks more like she’s being attacked by a swarm of bees. And then there is the artistic, high-minded dancing promoted by choreographer-hopeful, James Smith (Glenn Plummer), Las Vegas’ shortest nightclub bouncer and Showgirls’ baldly hypocritical voice of moral outrage. Unfortunately, the actor portraying James (“I studied in New York…Alvin Ailey!”) clearly can’t dance a lick, and the “artistic” choreography attributed to him looks suspiciously like the lap dancing he berates Nomi for doing.

Which brings us to Showgirls’ raison d’être: the T&A triumvirate of lap-dancing, stripping, and pole-dancing. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that sexy never looked so unsexy, and unsexy never has, and never will again, look so deliriously ludicrous.

Over the course of my career as a dance instructor here in L.A, I've had a few Showgirls cast members take my class: Gina Gershon (Cristal); Michelle Johnston (Gay Carpenter, "Goddess" line captain and brown rice & vegetables pusher); and Gina Ravera (Molly). But back when I was just a student and learning to dance, there was one surprising member of the Showgirls cast who used to attend beginning jazz class with me at the now defunct Dupree Dance Academy... 

You guessed it. None other than tough-guy, former Bond villain, Robert Davi (as Al, the oafish but fatherly manager of Cheetahs topless lounge). Yes, I've seen Al in spandex. And surprisingly, he's actually a better dancer than Showgirls' Alvin Ailey disciple, Glenn Plummer!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

There’s an old Hollywood axiom that says, “No one starts out intending to make a bad movie.” But take even a casual glance at Showgirls and you're likely to be left with the nagging impression that making a monumentally bad film had to have been a part of Verhoeven’s and Eszterhas’ strategic purpose.

What's My Line?
One of these men is sleazy Showgirls screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and the other is actor William Shockley, who portrays Showgirls' sleazy pop star, Andrew Carver. Or maybe they're both the same person? Know me...Nomi...Malone...Alone...it's all starting to make sense

A flop upon release, Showgirls, through DVD sales and savvy marketing that made peace with the film's overriding incompetence by embracing its cult-classic status, has, at last, become a bona fide hit.This reversal of fortunes doesn't alter Showgirls' quality (except perhaps in Hollywood, where the only bad film is one that fails to make money) but it's nice to know the audience for magnificent cinematic trainwrecks didn't die out with the 60's, the studio system, or Mommie Dearest.

FAVORITE SHOWGIRLS MOMENTS
1. James Smith's lead-footed "dancing" at the Crave Club.
2. The allegedly hetero male dancer in Goddess" threatening another dancer with the line, "You want a knuckle-sandwich?" Really? What is he, one of the "Dead End" kids?
3. The absurd insistence that Suzanne (Somers?), Latoya Jackson, Janet Jackson, or Paula Abdul would appear in a tacky, topless Vegas revue. OK, Latoya would, but the others? C'mon!
4. The exaggerated force and sound of the roundhouse punches delivered during the Crave Club brawl. Every jaw would be dislocated. It's like a Popeye cartoon.
5. Nomi's reaction when called "Pollyanna" which she mistakes for someone calling her by her real name (Polly Ann).
6. I may be alone in this, but I think Zack has a waaaay nicer butt than Nomi. Verhoeven should have exploited this angle more. Certainly would have helped keep me from laughing so much.
7. Am I the only one who thought that much-discussed "Ver-sayce" dress was kinda putrid? Like something Mariah Carey would wear.
8. Zack's haircut reminds me a lot of Liza Minnelli during her "Results"/Pet Shop Boys phase.
9. Those two little kids backstage who are shocked by the use of "The F word," but not by seeing their mom in a g-string amongst an ocean of exposed boobs and naked butts.
10. Nomi's "intensity" when she dances (aka, scowling and baring her teeth), eats, has sex, sits.

"Showtime."

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2012