Just saw Showgirls for the first time.
I thought it was a bad movie, then never watched it before.
I was impressed by the picture quality, and liked the cynical point of view of the movie.
It is a pretty good movie for me, and don't really understand why people don't like it.
I love Verhoven. And the only movie he doesn't I don't like is Basic Instinct, because Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas are so bad in my point of view.
I will post screens of the US LD (very beautiful edition !)

Oh Showgirls, where to start.

I think a lot had to do with the writer and the actors to pull such a film off.
The main girl was right out of TV and I believe this was her first or early film as lead, so could she really put the weight of a film like this.

The writer is notorious with this type of stuff, look at Basic Instinct, same writer.

I saw a special once on 20/20 about this film years after, or maybe it was about the writer, very funny if you can find it.

I want the open matte Hong Kong disc so I can see the A too and not just the T

Yeah it was pretty bad. She was from Save By The Bell and wanted to shake off her good girl image.

I don’t like PV. Him getting paid like 10x what the star was paid irritates me on million levels. The movie is one of the funniest of all time but despite what they say now it wasn’t meant to be. It was a perfect storm of crap.

I only have the US one but the Squeeze ver has been on my Wishlist for years.

No, I think that Verhoven is doing that on purpose.
In Starship troopers also the main actors act like sitcom actors...
I think he wants to criticize the artificiality (and the place of the body like an object) of the world of Vegas by using such actors.
And it works well. I laughed lot of time during the movie just by seeing actors faces
I think Verhoven can choose good actors if he needs it. And he wants sometimes choose bad actors on purpose.

I did captures today !
My LD captures
(end of the page)

There are many things that irritate you.

Those captures do look awesome. Of course, I cannot afford a 3000 $ upscaler ( I think the internal upscaler of my Pioneer Kuro plasma TV works just fine ) but those captues look excellent !

Thank you confederate ! I will continue to post capture the best I can.
I would like to have a Kuro and a HLD-X0 to test it with the lumagen ! Maybe someday in the far future !

Ok then explain this to me. Basic Instinct was at least as stupid as Showgirls but nobody ever treats it the same way. Why? It’s still considered an “erotic thriller” instead of a camp classic like Showgirls.

My personal opinion is that America was so sexually repressed and made so horny by Basic Instinct that they didn’t figure it or look very closely at it at all. For whatever reason PV failed in making Showgirls convince anyone that it was a seriously brutally realistic take on dark things (like the trailer said it would be) and instead everyone laughed. Newer ads present it as a ridiculous thing but the original ones didn’t.

In other words, PV is a more successful Tommy Wiseau and Showgirls is his The Room. Now they both claim to have been in on the joke all along but in fact both films are so successful because they totally failed at being what their hack creators originally wanted them to be.

Oh No, The Room.

I understand what you want to say, and I partially agree.
My vision is a little bit different. For me Basic instinct is a bad movie who tried to be good. Showgirls is just a "free movie". Verhoven did with Showgirls for himself, not for people to watch it. It just did what he wanted to do at this time. I have an interesting article of him in french magazine. I will scan it. He claims that with Showgirls, he had for the first and last time all the freedom of the world. Money, no censorship, and no needs to please the public. Sure this way of thinking doesn't make cult movies, but it is interesting, and the result is good in my point of view.

That's cool, mimilovesjapan. I have Showgirls on LD ( Squeeze title from Germany with German audio ) but I have never watched it so far. I am curious.

I have always heard that the Showgirls MUSE LD looks really really good.

About to find out - a copy should be arriving next week.

Never seen the movie; looking forward to this!!

Awesome ! Please let us know.

Here is the scan of the article about Verhoeven !
For those who can read french, it's very interesting !
Les années Laser N°33

You know he also made Robocop and Total Recall, right?

I mean sure, when you ask people what their favourite Verhoeven movie is, it's usually Robocop or Starship Troopers, but I like Total Recall better than the latter.

Also you have to give the man credit for not letting the bright lights of Hollywood blind him since he's gone back to Netherlands to shoot domestic films instead.

I wish John Woo had followed his example.

I personally love Flesh and Blood, Robocop and Starship troopers.

I wonder how much of an improvement the captures would be if you use the 16x9 Japanese edition (PILF-7352)?