Brayden K
Looks like my college movie project with more nudity.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/23/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Rena Riffel, I really want to get to know you better. Like seriously, I want to buy you a nice lunch and discuss your life and learn more about it. I want to know how this movie came to be, what got it made and what you're doing now. Because man, this movie…I'm not frequently surprised by movies, but you've punched me repeatedly in the head and my brain hit my skull and everything is swimming.
A movie concussion.
You've given me a movie concussion.
Showgirls is either a movie that you absolutely hate or completely love. You'll not be surprised to know that I fall in the later camp. So when I learned that Rena, who plays Penny in that movie, had made her own movie, I just had to devour it.
But how did it come to be?
I got the chance to ask Mike Justice, who played Bob — Beer Drinker 1 and the assistant editor on this movie, to shed some light on it.
B&S About Movies: So how does a movie like this happen?
Mike Justice: Because Carolco was bankrupt and the rights reverted back to Paul Verhoeven and she asked him and he just sort of chuckled and said, "Go for it."
B&S: And why?
Mike: Rena just had TONS of fringe Hollywood friends; like sub-sub Dr. Drew Rehab/Surreal Life types. Horror hosts and strippers and ex-junkies and shit like that. She'd made a DIY musical called Trasharella that was a minor hit, so she thought her best course of action to get one of her adorkable home movies starring all her weird friends noticed was to make a "sequel" to Showgirls. And I guess she was right.
B&S: But how did she get the cash — beyond a Kickstarter — or the money to think that she could do this?
Mike: She was managing an apartment building in Hollywood and didn't have to pay rent. She also didn't really like fixing things or managing the apartments, so she had tons of free time to make DIY WTF "movies."
Rena was sort of like a nicer, less aggressive, non-drug-addicted Anna Nicole Smith; everyone around her was to varying degrees obsessed with her/in love with her/willing to do anything for her. And she was pretty smart.
B&S: So what was it like being part of it?
Mike: I remember when some extras showed up responding to an ad looking for people for the sequel to Showgirls. They walk into this cheap Mexican restaurant and are met by Rena and a guy in a paper mache devil mask. They almost ran away.
I was on that set for a few weeks doing data management. It was surreal.
What I love is when the artist becomes the auteur, so not only did Rena direct, write, produce and edit this movie, but she stars in it as Penny Slot, a girl with a dream. Isn't that always the way?
And what if — in a sequel to Showgirls — the movie stars with Penny being ripped off by the same drifter (Dewey Weber) who robbed Nomi Malone? Everything seems normal but then she's nearly killed by the MILF Murderer and barely makes it to Hollywood, where she's either going to get on Stardancer, star in Showgirls 2 or die trying. After all, she has a Hollywood producer interested in her who has Hollywood producer right there on his business card.
Somehow, violinist Godhardt Brandt wins her attention — for some time — before she learns that he's an occult devotee of theosophist Helena Blavatsky who makes snuff movies and is given to pimping her out and then dragging her over the fact that she's selling herself for money when he himself set it up. Ah, negging, the classic move of every antagonist.
Also, at some point Penny becomes Helga, she gets a maid who works for free, there's a plot to kill her, a double boiled hot dog eating scene, she gets trained to dance by Godhart's ballerina fiancee Katya, a cocaine tooth brushing scene, a makeup meltdown, she tries out for the TV show but has to get naked and she finally decides to go to Broadway before running into the drifter again, just like Nomi, tomatoes for dinner, a moebius strip of remake and remix that lasts two and a half hours or more while having the canny ability to repeat the pool sex scene but with two ladies of a certain age all set to the music from Birdemic.
This either feels like a mid-90s Rinse Dream movie without penetration or the unsexiest sex movie ever or if Bruno Mattei had replaced Paul Verhoeven or if we'd sent Showgirls on the Voyager Probe as an example of our finest art and years later, Kirk and crew touched down on a world that treated a Joe Eszterhas script as a holy tract and based their entire culture around it and Spock was like, "How fascinating, Captain. It would appear that they are doing a ritual where they shove the oldest woman down the steps and initiating another to take her place. Most logical."
It's also:
A Dark Brothers movie where no one is slapped in the face with a fish.
A David Lynch movie on a $30,000 budget without David Lynch or a trip to Bob's Big Boy.
A movie about a fallen angel, as Penny's From Heaven suggests a divine origin for our heroine, which given what happens here with all the talk of Seven Sisters and rituals, I can completely believe.
An episode of Real Housewives of Tarzana gone wrong, so wrong, but so right.
What happens in the customer lounge of a Pottery Barn after three mimosas.
A film that demands a sequel.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Deserves much more than 7% ;)
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/16/23
Full Review
hayley b
if i could give minus stars i would, I literally made this account just to say how bad it is, this was absolute garbage and the WORST film i have seen, it should have never even been produced, it almost ruins the first movie for me, they even used crappy royalty free music you hear on youtube. i would rather watch paint dry and i'm not even joking
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven: 1 out of 10: Rena Riffel one of the actresses from Showgirls cobbled together an unofficial sequel/remake fan film with some of the original cast. It is technically a film.
The Good: Under the right circumstances (I am thinking psilocybin mushrooms.) this movie can be entertaining. It starts off on the right foot and seems to be almost entertaining with interesting cameos and a Daliesque surreal touch but one quickly realizes it is just meandering from one setpiece to the other with no real rhyme or reason.
To her credit, Rena Riffel is in surprisingly good shape and does her best to work with her um assets. I would actually hold her blameless based on her performance was she not also the writer and director of the film.
The Bad: Amazon currently has a version of this film streaming called Showgirls 2: The Cut which is the original film cut down to 100 minutes from the original 145 minutes. Well, it is a start. The problem is not just length (though that certainly does not help matters) it is that the scenes simply never go anywhere in ways that defy description.
I almost think Showgirls 2 should be shown in Film School as a lesson of how not to shoot a scene, frame a shot, or transition from one scene to another. The entire film is like the first seven minutes of Manos the Hands of Fate with occasional middle-aged topless nudity. The level of filmmaking and storytelling incompetence is simply of the charts.
The Ugly: Rena Riffel is from the Cheri Caffaro school of filmmaking. No matter how old I get nothing more nubile is allowed to appear in the scene. So we have the primary rival/love interest Shelley Michelle playing the Gina Gershon role but looking like Rue Mccallahan in a Golden Girls rerun. People complained that Showgirls 2 was like watching a porn film with all the sex scenes taken out but in all honesty would it have been better if they were left in?
In Conclusion: You can do this kind of movie correctly. Misty Mundae and Seduction Cinema put together a string of these in the early aughts. (The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the String, Spiderbabe etc). Rena Riffel does have a surrealistic touch to her story but she simply should not be allowed to edit or direct film and she needs a strong co-writer to focus her craft. She clearly has talent. Unfortunately, her surreal trip was lost in a deluge of craft errors and poor follow through.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Where do you even begin with this? Porn-quality acting, basically no plot, shoddy camerawork, etc. However, there is a sly sense of humor running through it, particularly in Rena Riffel's character Penny. She has some of the funniest dialogue in the movie, although the movie is rather painful to sit through. Some scenes just go on for too long, and the conversations are pretty ridiculous and go nowhere. And the sex scenes/nudity are even less erotic/sexy than they were in the original Showgirls (which is referenced several times). Ultimately, it is worth at least one viewing, but preferably with other people so you can collectively laugh at how bad it is.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
Full Review
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