HOLLOW MAN

Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Starring Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin

Lacking serious competition, Paul Verhoeven must stand alone as the most misogynistic director in existence, an auteur of sleaze without parallel in the known universe. Resolutely mired in the Eighties, the guy is chiefly remembered for gifting us the hollow-but-entertaining Basic Instinct, but his subsequent career has been one headlong dash for the pit: Sliver, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers are all so shockingly bad they become entertaining viewing, and his latest instalment is no exception. The high-concept, low-wit Hollow Man has no artistic merit at all to speak of, but it becomes perversely compelling (in a car-crash kind of way the longer it goes on) and there are enough unintentinal laugh-out-loud moments to make the entire experience almost worthwhile.

All the time-honoured Verhoeven ingredients are present and correct: the first gratuitous tit shot is served up within barely a minute of the opening credits, and from this point onward, Hollow Man gets progressively less tasteful at a rate of knots. It's a take on HG Wells' The Invisible Man, a bog-standard 'man plays God with catastrophic consequences' yarn most notable for the hilarious specatcle of Kevin Bacon vaporising into thin air, a development which lends the guy a screen presence he could never previously have dreamt of.

Making the most of his first serious starring role in a decade or so, Bacon plays an arrogant slime-bucket scientist who is working on a top-secret, Pentagon-financed invisiblity serum. He cracks the formula after half an hour or so, and in a fit of something less than genius he decides to use the potion on himself.

The actual injection scene is one of the most asphxiatingly hilarious sights ever witnessed on a widescreen, and renders our hero invisible for the movie's remaining duration, thus lending him licence to do more our less as he likes. Being a Verhoeven protagonist, of course, he seizes the opportunity to embark on a frenzy of activities ranging from sexual harassment to sexual assault. It should be offensive, but somehow it's not - the pure dramatic incompetence of the thing effortlessly manages to make you overlook Hollow Man's noxious sexual politics. Here are some choice snippets of dialogue: "I always knew you were a BITCH!"; "I've always admired your feistiness"; "Is it the serum or the power that's made you mad?" and several two-way exchanges that leave your jaw on the floor in a state of curious exhilaration.

The whole thing works toward a wonderfully ludicrous and overwrought conclusion, as Bacon sets about dispatching his former cohorts and girlfriend, before fading out in a grisly blaze of near-glory which could raise a smile from a corpse. For all its awfulness, I have to confess that I found Hollow Man a genuinely satisfying cinematic experience: it's expensive as hell, with no stone unturned in the SFX-overdrive department, and though all the enjoyment the film provides is entirely at its own expense, it's still fit to rank up there with Showgirls (and yes, I treasure my copy of the latter) as one of the genuine so-bad-it-shines classics of this or any other age.