A few weeks before his previous movie, Showgirls, was released, the Dutch film-maker signed up to make this $95million sci-fi extravaganza with no big name stars and the sort of script which sounds like a cast off from Sunset Beach.
When Showgirls did see the light of day in late 1995, it met with some of the worst reviews of any movie in recent history. Not that Verhoeven was too bothered. He was hard at work on this flashy adventure, a sort of Zulu meets Aliens. In fact, many of the lines of dialogue, including: "Fire at will," and "Withdraw to the main compound," are lifted straight from Michael Caine's 1964 classic.
Having re-teamed with Ed Neumeier, the writer of his 1987 smash Robocop, the controversial director pulled out all the stops in order to bring his apocalyptic vision to the screen. And if you thought you'd seen all there is to see in sci-fi movies, then think again.
While just about every major city on earth has been flattened by meteors, tidal waves and aliens in recent years, Verhoeven decided to turn Buenos Aires into a pile of smoking rubble. Let's be honest, it took some guts to take $95million of Disney's all-American money and then make the audience root for Argentinian soldiers.
With a team of special effects experts including Star Wars and Robocop veteran Phil Tippett, Paul Verhoeven turned Starship Troopers into one of the most enjoyably silly adventures of 1998.
Where else can you see Doogie Howser veteran Neil Patrick Harris dressed up as a Nazi, Michael Ironside (from Total Recall) with one of the worst false arm effects seen this side of an amateur dramatics performance and the astonishingly wooden Casper Van Dien singlehandedly tackling giant bugs like something from Jason and the Argonauts?
The movie was not an easy film to make, with arduous training and some terrifying stunts taxing the toughest thesp. However, the film-maker is not the sort of bloke to let his actors do something he wouldn't do himself. When some of the cast were nervous about shooting a shower scene in the nude, it didn't take much for Verhoeven to get his kit off and direct the movie in the buff.
While the acting may leave a lot to be desired, the special effects really do take the breath away. For years computer generated imagery looked about as phony as a two quid note. However, thanks to Tippett and his army of animators, the bugs in this movie flit through the frame so fast you barely get the chance to realise theyre only as solid as a series of numbers in a computer.
At the end of the movie you may be laughing too hard to remember much about it. However, if the film is memorable for anything it is the debut of toothy Denise Richards.
The toothy lads mag favourite fast went on to be the face of the late Nineties with this and turns in the excellent Wild Things landing her the much coveted role of new Bond girl in The World is Not Enough.
As for Paul Verhoeven? Well, thankfully he has no plans to make Showgirls 2 but is now working on a new invisible man-style thriller with Kevin Bacon called The Hollow Man.
© 1999 Roger Crow