Verhoeven's first major hit was the Dutch art film The Fourth Man, with Jeroen Krabbe as a bisexual novelist entwined in the murderous web of femme fatale Renee Soutendijk. Eszterhas had his major break with the vacuous script for Flashdance, where Jennifer Beals outdid the men with a welder and searched for Terpsichorean fame in a loin-revealing leotard. In Basic Instinct, the mindless, ultra-chic thriller, both took great pains in the script and its execution to make all its women beautiful, horny and completely psychotic.
Showgirls is no different.
In this epic, at least 20 percent of the dialogue revolves around mammaries. In this movie Las Vegas becomes the world where nipples are king. And Verhoeven and Eszterhas once again hone their talents for obnoxious lesbian-like parrying between the female stars. The story is simple enough, even classic in an old Hollywood musical kind of way. The only decent character in the movie is a costumier who helps Malone out when she arrives, but she ends up being violently gang-raped when the movie has to get some kind of revengeful climax in motion.