Liquid Dreams 1991 HOT! Download
Imke Loyack
Liquid Dreams is a 1991 American erotic thriller[3] starring Candice Daly. Liquid Dreams had some cult film buzz, mainly due to the movie's slight comparisons to the 1983 film Videodrome. The film was screened at the International Critics' Week of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.[4]
Part of the original motley crew of cast players in underground shock master John Waters' bare-bones 8mm, 16mm and 35mm cult perversions during the late 60s and early 70s, Mink Stole would remain a thoroughly offbeat, outrageous presence in counterculture films for five decades.She was born with the All-American name of Nancy Stoll on August 25, 1947, in Baltimore, Maryland. Waters took her under his wing in 1966 wherein she started "acting out" a number of his deviant creations for gross-out effect alongside other outré members that included break-out star transvestite actor Divine, plus Mary Vivian Pearce, David Lochary, Cookie Mueller and the must-be-seen-to-be-believed Edith Massey.Calling themselves the Dreamland Players, Stole would become known as both the hysterical foil and vengeful nemesis of "leading lady" Divine, playing her annoying repulsive characters as pure evil incarnate. Her role in the infamous Pink Flamingos (1972) as Connie Marble, the carrot-domed villain complete with outlandish cats-eye glasses and seedy fur coat, set the tone for her subsequent gallery of grotesques, including the tantrum-throwing girl-child Taffy Davenport in Female Trouble (1974), murderous housewife-on-the-lam Peggy Gravel in Desperate Living (1977), and corn-rowed hussy Sandra Sullivan in Polyester (1981), which was the first Waters film to star a legit actor -- Tab Hunter.Mink's movie time in Waters' campfests would grow less and less as his movies/parodies grew more and more mainstream, but she remained an altruistic player for Waters nevertheless, appearing in nearly every one of his films. From 1994 on, she did bits in his wide releases of Hairspray (1988), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), Cecil B. Demented (2000), A Dirty Shame (2004), Stuck! (2009) and Hush Up Sweet Charlotte (2015).Moving ahead, Mink Stole appeared in numerous tongue-in-cheek cameos for other off-the-cuff directing talents as well, continuing her reign as a prime film outlaw. She appeared role in Another Gay Movie (2006) playing a character named Sloppi Seconds. Need we say more? Other films with tacky, tawdry titles that begged for straight-to-video release include Liquid Dreams (1991), The Crazysitter (1994), A Dirty Shame (2004), Sunny & Share Love You (2007) and Becoming Blond (2012). She also made appearances in the raunchy "Eating Out" series of comedy films: Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds (2006), Eating Out: All You Can Eat (2009), Eating Out: Drama Camp (2011) and Eating Out: The Open Weekend (2011).Over the years, Mink has made the rounds on the experimental stage. She played Van Helsing in a production of "Dracula" and the title papal role in "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You," not to mention bizarre, contemporary treatments of the Bard's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "A Winter's Tale." She recently attracted some attention in the play "Sleeping with Straight Men" which was seen on both coasts from 2002-2004.On the sly she has written an advice column, of all things, called "Think Mink" for a Baltimore newspaper.
To Europeans, for centuries, the palace of the emperor of Chinawas a main feature of their dreams of the Orient. Not surprisingly, the fewEuropean visitors who actually had seen the place came back with accountsfilled with wonders. Medieval friars and travelers outdid each other withtales of the beauty of the palace and of the immense power wielded by the"Great Kaan." And although subsequent reports from Jesuitsstationed at the imperial court were more measured, they too spoke of itsbeauty and its many varied delights. And then, in 1860, during the SecondOpium War, the imperial palace, the Yuanmingyuan, was first looted and thenburned to the ground by a contingent of British and French troops."J'ai marche pendant deux jours sur plus de trente millions defrancs de soieries, de bijoux, de porcelaines, bronzes, sculptures,"wrote Armand Lucy, a French soldier, "Je ne crois pas qu'on ait vuchose pareille depuis le sac de Rome par les Barbares" (1861: 96)."The light was so subdued by the clouds of smoke," Garnet Wolseley,one of the British officers, remembered, "that it seemed as if the sunwas undergoing a lengthened eclipse" (1862: 279). (1)
The aim of this article is to explain this destruction. Mostexplanations focus on the political and military context of the time: thelack of discipline in the French army and a British desire to take revengefor the brutal treatment that a group of hostages received at the hands ofthe Chinese. (2) Yet when it comes to the destruction of an object thathitherto has featured mainly in dreams, political and military contexts arenever going to be enough. A proper explanation must also consider the statusof the palace of the Chinese emperor in European cultural history and in theminds of the people responsible for the destruction. The question, in otherwords, is not so much why the destruction happened as how it could havehappened. Investigating the conditions of its possibility, we need tounderstand how the imperial palace has been described by Europeans and howthe descriptions have changed over time.
The language of marvel was the preferred idiom of medievaltravelers (Daston and Park 2001: 25-38; Greenblatt 1991a: 52-85; Bynum 1997:12-14). In the Middle Ages travelers always marveled at what they saw, andsince marvels were thought to be more common "in the margins of theworld," they were more common in the East. (3) This supposition wasamply confirmed in the thirteenth century when Pax mongolica made it possiblefor European merchants and missionaries to travel all the way to China. Intheir accounts, the palace of the "Great Kaan" featuredprominently. The most famous description is by Marco Polo (1871), who reachedBeijing in 1266 and spent some twenty-four years in China, but Odoric ofPordenone, who set off from Padua in 1318, also mentions the palace, as doesGiovanni de Marignolli, who visited Beijing in 1342; William of Rubruck leftan account of the palace in Karakorum, which he visited in 1254. (4)
Returning home, the "marvels of the East" featuredprominently in the travelers' accounts. Marco Polo was nicknamed"Millione" for his reputation for exaggeration, but believable ornot, plenty of marvels were required if the stories were to find an audience.Marvel was what travelers were supposed to do, and when they did, it helpedto make sense of their long journeys (Greenblatt 1991a: 77-79). By makingtheir listeners marvel in turn, the tales and their tellers borrowed some ofthe magic and power of which they spoke. But just like the travelers'initial reaction, the response of their audiences was not one of fear. Behindthe many wondrous objects, animals, and people, there was an emperor who wasthe source of them all, and his person, in the end, was the true marvel(Bynum 1997: 13-14, 20, 24). Seeing him in his attributes and in his actions,but rarely catching more than a glimpse of the person himself, the Europeanswere amazed.
Coleridge is clearly moving in the same poetic territory asChambers. It cannot be very far from his "caverns measureless toman" to Chambers's "deep caverns in the rocks." (18) Butit is equally not very far from the account that Marco Polo once had given.What Coleridge had seen in his dream was the palace of Kublai Khan, whichPolo had visited, and Polo's account was reprinted in Purchas HisPilgrimage, which Coleridge read before he fell asleep. (19) Coleridge isunashamedly medieval in his references, relying on dreams rather than onempirical observations, and the violent, intoxicating images are, much likethe descriptions of medieval travelers, combining the marvelous withimpressions of overwhelming might. (20) Subjected to a neo-Gothictransfiguration, the wonders of Polo's palace have become sublime. Whathas been added, that is, is a Burkean aesthetics of the vicarious frisson:the intense pleasure that comes from a knowingly unjustified fear of imminentand grievous bodily harm.
On the morning of 7 October 1860, French and British troops madetheir way into the Yuanmingyuan. Despite orders from the commanders, thecompound was looted by the French, while the English, quick to spot abusiness opportunity, put the remaining articles up for sale. On October 18,the buildings and what was left of their content were burned to the ground byBritish troops. There is, we said, a political and military context to thisvandalism: the lack of discipline in the French army, miscommunicationbetween the allied commanders, and, in the case of the final incineration, aBritish desire to take revenge for the brutal treatment a group of hostageshad received at the hands of the Chinese (Stanmore 1906: 349-355; Knollys1875: 214-225). Yet when it comes to objects that hitherto have featuredmainly in dreams, a political and military context is not sufficient. We alsoneed to understand the status that the imperial palace had in the minds ofthe people responsible for the destruction. These reactions can be dividedinto three groups: those of the British officers, those of the Frenchofficers, and those of ordinary soldiers. Depending on how they reacted, theyjustified their actions quite differently.
As for the ordinary soldiers--British as well as French--once theywalked through the gates of the Yuanmingyuan they seem to have entered adream. (40) This was a magical kingdom full of all the treasures,enchantments, and sensuality that, by the middle of the nineteenth century,constituted the required props of tales of the exotic East. Less worried thantheir commanders about being held accountable, they owned up to their actionsand appealed instead to the fantasies of the reading public. "I wasdumbfounded, stunned, bewildered by what I had seen," wrote one,"suddenly Thousand and One Nights seem perfectly believable to me";everything was "feerique"--"like a fairytale" (Lucy 1861:95; d'Herisson 1886: 318; see Wolseley 1862: 280). "I felt likeAladdin," wrote another, "filled with wonder in his enchantedpalace, paved with gold and diamonds" (Negroni 1864: 51). In order todescribe it, I would need to "dissolve all known precious stones inliquid gold and paint a picture with a diamond feather whose bristles containall the fantasies of a poet of the East" (d'Herisson 1886: 306). ACorsican adventurer, Jean-Louis de Negroni (1864: 45-50), even claimed tohave rescued the emperor's favorite courtesan from the marauding troops,and she, gratefully, had given him both a kiss and a box of jewels. Clearly,these are not descriptions of the Yuanmingyuan as much as summaries of midnineteenth-century works of cheap Orientalist fiction.