Las Vegas provides the brightly-lit backdrop to Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. It's next to impossible to shock people here. After all, everyday Vegas sights include a giant pyramid, a warehouse-sized lion guarding the entrance to a hotel, trained circus animals galore, and seemingly endless fields of multicolored, mechanized flowing neon signs. If Vegas never sleeps, it's because the lights and sounds won't let it. Fortunes are won and lost in this city in the blink of an eye, and for some, the lure of changing ones life with the pull of a slot-machine handle becomes the only remaining thing to live for.

As a popular vacation and convention destination, Las Vegas is home to dozens of extravagant stage shows (such as "Goddess" at the Stardust hotel), and hundreds of clubs featuring regular performances by scantily - clad or entirely nude dancers (such as The Cheetah Club). For young women looking for careers as showgirls, Las Vegas is, quite literally, a city of dreams. But as the vast majority of these women learn, those dreams are hard to come by, and often require a sacrifice of respect, morality, and basic human dignity.

For young dancers with nowhere else to turn, surviving in Vegas can prove to be a feat in itself. But for those women who enter the night life of Vegas to exorcise past demons, survival is only the first step - for these women, defeating the city is the primary goal. Nomi Malone is such a woman.

What Vegas is all About (Quicktime 249K)

Dreams of fame (Quicktime 358K)