Showgirls - it doesn't suck

Great news for lovers of trashy movies, bitchy dialogue and lipstick-covered nipples - a sequel to Paul Verhoeven's 1995 classic Showgirls has been greenlit.

Fans of the original movie will no doubt rejoice at the chance to revisit the tawdry world of 'exotic dancers' and the lengths they'll go to in order to pursue their ambition.

Writhing from the profane pen of Joe Eszterhas, Showgirls attempted to update the classic All About Eve with the story of Nomi Malone, an athletic young dancer following her dream all the way to Las Vegas. Any attempt to recap the plot in any more detail would be doomed to failure, since the film ultimately made about as much sense as a fever dream after a midnight cheese feast.

Eszterhas' script stirred faux-lesbianism, deadly ambition and dialogue so nonsensical it could have been written with a magnetic poetry kit, into a heady stew of soft-porn idiocy.

Cursed with the dreaded NC-17 rating, Showgirls struggled to find an audience (or at least an audience that hadn't cut strategic holes in its jacket pockets) and soon disappeared from cinemas. But it found a second life on video, where word-of-mouth carried it to an astonishing $100 million in rentals. Presumably because it enabled its target viewers to freeze-frame in the comfort of their own home.

Nothing in the film makes any sense, from protagonist Nomi's motivations, right through to a staggeringly brutal rape scene that serves no purpose other than to give Nomi a reason to kick ass in nothing more than a pair of stilettos. Other delights include a slow-motion calamity involved carefully spilled beads, chimpanzee faeces, and a loud-mouthed woman with a mechanical bra that pops open every time she tells a cancer joke.

The film's overwhelming awfulness ultimately propelled it to infamy, garnering a record-breaking 13 Razzie nominations and winning seven. Showing a sense of humour sadly lacking in his movie, 'worst director' winner Verhoeven was the first recipient ever to accept his award in person.

Showgirls has since grown into a cult-favourite, often playing alongside The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, both of which are notable for their similarly twisted representations of femininity. And sequins, lots of sequins.

So now, fourteen years later, it's revealed that German film-maker Marc Vorlander is working on a follow-up which will "centre on a minor player from the original" who travels to Frankfurt to avenge her brother's death. It's hard to know what to expect (well, besides the obvious), since this kind of lightning doesn't strike twice. It takes a remarkable convergence of elements to produce a film as eye-wateringly, jaw-droppingly awful. Still, we can only hope it's as good as this: