MOVIE REVIEWS : Futuristic Degradation in ‘Dreams’

Mark Manos’ “Liquid Dreams” (at the Monica 4-Plex) has imagination, but it also has lots of bad acting and, much more disturbing, an even larger dose of violence and degradation directed at women that tends to overwhelm its ideas.

Candice Daly stars as a young woman who takes an entry-level job as a taxi dancer in a contemporary Dante’s Inferno in order to try to find out why and how her sister died there. The setting is a vast L.A. warehouse that has been transformed into a nightclub/brothel. Its female employees live in cell-like quarters on the premises and are at the constant mercy of their effete male supervisors and work their way to the top.

What Manos and his co-writer Zack Davis envision is a group of deranged individuals who, through brainwashing drugs and videos, prepare their victims to experience an incredible sexual ecstasy in order to then extract their endorphins for their own use. The idea of the ultimate in sexual experience becoming a solo affair, and the notion that it can be achieved only through the destruction of the lives of others, is certainly worth posing; unfortunately, its expression here lacks wit and force.

Cameos by veterans of such outre low-budget films as Paul Bartel, Mink Stole (a John Waters mainstay) and singer-composer John Doe show up the callowness of virtually everyone else, although Juan Fernandez has a slinky evil that’s fun as a key nemesis of Daly. Daly herself is game, but her leading man, Richard Steinmetz, playing a handsome cop, is all attitude.

There are some key behind-the-scenes personnel crucial in making “Liquid Dreams” (Times-rated Mature for violence, language, some sex and scenes of drug-taking) play as well as it does. They are cinematographer Sven Kirsten, a master at film noir lighting--and in a color picture at that; production designer Pam Moffat, who has created a series of striking, stylized sets on what had to be a minuscule budget; and composer Ed Tomney, whose music sets a tense, unnerving mood. You look forward to seeing their names among the credits of films to come.

‘Liquid Dreams’

Candice Daly: Eve Black

Richard Steinmetz: Rodino

Barry Dennen: The Major

Juan Fernandez: Juno

James Oseland: Maurice

A Northern Arts Entertainment release off a Fox/Elwes presentation of a Zeta Entertainment production. Director Mark Manos. Producers Zane W. Levitt, Diane Firestone. Executive producers Ted Fox, Cassian Elwes. Screenplay by Zack Davis, Manos. Cinematographer Sven Kirsten. Editor Karen Joseph. Costumes Merrie Lawson. Music Ed Tomney. Production design Pam Moffat. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

MPAA-rated Times-rated Mature (violence, language, some sex and scenes of drug-taking).