The awful movie Quentin Tarantino absolutely adores: “It’s a hell of a lot of fucking fun”
Quentin Tarantino has always presented himself as a man of taste, never passing up on an opportunity to share his opinion on films he loves and hates, and above all, humbly bragging about how he sees himself as the ultimate decider of what is ‘good’. With every new release and renewed conversation about films of the past, the director will always chime in with his thoughts or criticisms and recently jumped in to rescue a project from the public trenches that is largely seen as one of the biggest flops of all time, leading to the demise of the lead actor’s career.
Paul Verhoeven is most famous for Robocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct, but in 1995, he became famous for another reason after the release of Show Girls, starring Elizabeth Berkley. His films can be characterised by extreme content, whether it be violent or sexual, usually blending social satire with the trademarks of exploitation films.
Exploitation films are projects that attempt to achieve financial success by capitalising on and exploiting current trends and provocative ideas. They are usually made on smaller budgets, focusing on a specific niche as a way of making money, whether it be the depiction of drug use, sex or violence. Because these films were usually made independently, it meant that they had more freedom to explore these subjects because they were working away from the oppressive control of the studio system, essentially exploiting the audience and what they wanted to see by luring them in with explicit content. This led to the creation of films like Show Girls, which, surprisingly, was not received well by most audiences.
The film was slammed by critics, with people describing it as an intentionally bad film with exaggerated and bad performances, struggling to pick up on the messaging behind the story. However, in recent years, people have started to revisit the film and view it through a new lens, understanding it as a misunderstood satire about the exploitation of women.
Tarantino began expressing his love of the film, saying, “I love Showgirls! It’s pitched high, it’s crazy, it’s wild and it’s a hell of a lot of fucking fun. I think Paul Verhoeven was in on the joke and Joe Eszterhas was not, that’s my feeling. I think a lot of people didn’t understand from whence this movie came. They’re not used to exploitation films, there’s no context. One of the things I like best about Showgirls is that it’s the biggest Hollywood attempt at pure exploitation since Mandingo”.
The controversy around the film has cemented it as a camp classic, becoming a spectacle in the way it is both good and bad. Films like Show Girls challenge audiences by using overtly sexual content to critique our misogynistic culture, something that was largely lost in translation upon its release.
However, with the rise of more socially relevant exploitation films, we’ve begun to see a new era of this type of filmmaking that confronts uncomfortable issues while being ridiculously entertaining and camp. The Substance could even be put in the same camp as Show Girls, and who knows how that would have been received in 1995. Perhaps if Show Girls was released now, the immediate reaction would be very different, and perhaps this is one of the few times in which Tarantino is right on the money.
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