Well into his forties before moving to America to work, Dutch-born director Paul Verhoeven has thrived in the world of big budgets, exercising his lurid imagination and tremendous appetite for sex and violence to become a master of modern sensation. His first three Hollywood films were authentic smash hits, beginning with the explicit brutality of "RoboCop" (1987), continuing through the gasp-making action of "Total Recall" (1990) to the viscerally explosive and controversial "Basic Instinct" (1992). Then came "Showgirls" (1995), a sort of topless "All About Eve", which was such a bomb that it
