Nightmare Sold!
It Went Cheap!
by J. Scott Malby

Seldom does a dream make it into a movie let alone a Schizophrenic episode but that's exactly what happened when Ny Quill Morpheus bought the rights to a nightmare by Paolo Honorificas. This 8 hour epic is a lanky masterpiece of somnambulistic dimensions. It is astounding in its visionary imagination. After hearing about it everyone will want to run home, put their "jamies" on and hit the mattress for a week of their own personal foreplay; dreaming about sex, art, pleasure and what it all might mean. .

The genesis of the project took an egg salad sandwhich, french fries, strawberry malt and a hot fudge sundae to engender. It took a package of rolaids and a couple glasses of root beer to complete. Paolo, who was his own old man in the dream, slept through the entire surreal event safely ensconced in his donated wheelchair. He was observed flashing a victory sign as he and his bedpan were wheeled down the theatre isle.

This dream reviewer, who was invited to the premier, can honestly say he never witnessed anything like it. Of special note were the numerous scenes with naked people reciting their poetry. I could not fathom whether they were doing it in their sleep or not. The symbolism is overwhelming to the point of orgasmic profundity.

Every image seen had "metaphor" oozing out of its flickering pores. If the director were Italian or French I could understand but Morpheus is neither. He's said to be a Greek drug dealing geek. If you go to see this dream don't expect to find Morpheus making love to a beautiful blond. He has an exceptionally talented love goddess by the name of Megaera to do that for him.

If there is a plot it's layered between purely expressionistic impressions of fields of jumping, horny sheep. Time is interminable and fleeting the characters seem to say. They lift their sexual equipment in symbolic yawns as life drifts away from them in a continuous round of uneasy encounters.

Megaera plays a deeply moving role as a demented writer who is only able to satisfy her sexual cravings through writing about the lovers she fantasizes about. One such lover is Minotaur the Luv Pug. Dressed in chartreuse Speedos, he jumps upon anything that moves, bellowing as he pounces, "Nothing ventured. Nothing gained!"

If you're into depressants and sex dreams this is the nightmare for you! Megaera meets and falls in love with what appears to be her alter ego who is an advice columnist with the appellation of Alecto. They attempt to copulate after stumbling over each other at the beginning of a marathon race. A nude merman, who has a fetish for fondling mesh, takes both Megaera and Alecto on a tour of seedy public bathrooms where they exchange underwear with gay black thugs. This lands both of them in the hospital where a nurse (who is really a naked bull with hairy armpits) pulls off their underwear with his teeth and proceeds to sell both of them to an infamous transgender Algerian gang called the "Dirty White Socks".

We are introduced to the metaphorical power of myth early in the epic. It represents the brittleness of Megaera's failing relationships and her ever increasing fascination for the sexual possibilities inherent in inorganic, remolded mortal matter. In a memorable cinematic tour de force we find ourselves under water with the merman looking up from the bottom of a pool as Megaera pouts, attempting to seduce one particular mortal in the shape of this reviewer into an act of reciprocal fellatio. From then on whenever Megaera is shown there is always a thematic allusion to the morphed, generative potential of recast plastic relationships.

If you are a horror buff this is the dream of a lifetime. It will define the genre for years to come. Terror is as much a part of this nightmare as is sex. There are sequences of undeniable power and bathos. For example, when a huffy lawn mower with the face of Picasso wearing a ski mask runs amuck, it is heroically subdued by Megaera's naked mother by the name of Madea. But not before causing a third accident involving Man Ray's truck as all three mount Alecto in a maniacal effort to mow down her extensive mythical whimsies. The drunk nylon of Alecto's panties flies everywhere interspersed with carbon monoxide as the tatters hang in pieces, dangling from increasingly frantic tire treads.

Humor in this epic is present as well. Bodies toss and turn on an uncomfortable mattress resting above a sea of peas. This sets Megaera off to the Land of Unhappy Dreams. Where, out of the all consuming fire of her countless sexual frustrations, rise love drunk Skunk Apes from the Planet Erotica. They have Egyptian phalluses which they can remove, twist, twirl or elongate at will.

Flying off on the wings of their imagination they land in a canoe where they proceed to attack a boatload of drunk male jocks. Megaera comes to the rescue by a kung fu stratagem that will go down in the annals of martial art films. In a wonderful scene playing on the theme of female dominated exploitation, her hands move in an incredible blur as she simultaneously pleasures both Skunk Apes and jocks at the same time. The scene turns bloody when she refuses to show mercy and the friction of her hands, through hours of agonizing abuse, manages to fry all their meaty adornments into a collection of pitiful burnt sausages. Alecto then proceeds to feast on the splatter.

One incredible image follows another. Each more unexpected and astounding than the last. The dream has something for everyone. The women are beautiful. The men insatiable. Erotic center folds wearing nothing but the skimpiest of cloths share their magazine layouts and sexual experiences with men around a hot tub that has been turned into a nightclub called the "Gory Hole". Minotaur the Luv Pug is the champaign lapping owner.

Here, another of Megaera's alter egos in the form of the "Editrix" introduces the viewers to late night ghetto life through the deft use of computer screens. What emerges is a mélange of images like a ripe fruit cocktail exposing both Megaera's strengths and weaknesses. Megaera as "Editrix" is a writer, voyeur, librarian, screaming bitch and poet all rolled into one very entertaining ball of erotic barbed wire slowly unraveling itself.

She is weak pretending to be strong. She is strong pretending she is weak. In a series of wonderful stream of conscious meditations she takes you inside herself with tellingly erotic confessions such as this one:

"Divine is that sexy shudder in your stomach when you realize he's smelling your red panties thinking of you.or better him with you. And there is nothing more sexy than a man with your panties held in his hands".

We watch in fascination as she talks about herself. Find her getting into trouble, into relationships, into descriptions of herself and others, getting out of trouble, always looking for some kind of emotional equilibrium that seems to elude her. She is vulnerable and exposed. She is determined. She is above all human with all the emotional baggage that term entails.

If this dream is anything it is a complex rendering of life that seems to pass for reality. We can never be sure where the boundary between reality ends and the nightmare begins. This represents one of the most significant aspects of the ever changing plot. In fact the plot itself is not the important thing but rather simply the machinery that allows Megaera to experience and make sense of her observations of the world as she understands herself performing in it. Even when Megaera fails she succeeds by somehow managing to turn all the sweaty nuts and hairy bolts of her experiences into a thing called art.

This dream is a postmodernist feminist confessional diary that manages to catch our attention as we fondle it till our voyeuristic appetites implode and we are left with a beautifully naked woman that refuses to let any organ, no matter what its shape dominate her. In order to understand this nightmare it is important to recognize that Megaera, Alecto and the "Editrix" are each victims and perpetrators in their turn. They are their own oppressed minority, mixing into one, intent on dominating others as well as being dominated, only able to talk without stammering when assuming the persona of the other. It is a confessional about searching for liberation but not attaining it.

This brings us to the aspect of alienation as one of the overriding themes. As Megaera changes mercurially into Alecto and the "Editrix", what remains constant is the free-spirited artist in search of emotional and professional stability. It is a contradiction that Megaera plays with continually. However, it is a contradiction that can never be resolved because in the nexus of that instability is where her art essentially draws its strength, bite and fertilization.

Megaera says to herself: "What does one do with a head full of broken glass no one else can see?". The answer is one all good writers ask. It is a double edged, seething blade. You cut into your soul that you may use your own blood as a medium to write with. It is not necessarily a question of self destruction though for the unfortunate few it may lead to that. Actually, it is life enhancing because it leads to the truth in singing. It is an expression as much of love and concern as it is of pain. It is the attempt at compassionate understanding in a world that refuses to explain itself except on its own terms. It is up to us to draw our own understanding out of the experience. Most basically expressed; alienation translates into an anxiety we must somehow learn to live with as best we can. You can't create without experience and dreams. It is through our experience that we are able to weave that anxiety and alienation from dreams into something meaningful.

If reality is a raft in the middle of an unforgiving sea than Megaera and all her alter-egos are paddling like hell in an effort to stay afloat. We can respect that and even enjoy watching in an insane sort of way. The truth is whoever is dreaming this nightmare really loves life, while this voyeur enjoyed his describing it. It all goes to show how easy it is to make sense out of nonsense.