Liquid Sky

Infobox Film
name = Liquid Sky


caption = The film poster.
director = Slava Tsukerman
producer = Slava Tsukerman
writer = Anne Carlisle Nina V. Kerova Slava Tsukerman
narrator =
starring = Anne Carlisle Paula E. Sheppard
music = Brenda I. Hutchinson Slava Tsukerman
cinematography = Yuri Neyman
editing = Sharyn L. Ross
distributor = Cinevista Media Home Entertainment
released = flagicon|United States April 15, 1983
runtime = 112 min.
country = US
language = English
budget = US$500,000
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:29459
imdb_id = 0085852

"Liquid Sky" is a 1982 science fiction film produced and directed by Slava Tsukerman that has become a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit. The screenplay, which features an absurd storyline, was written by Slava, his wife Nina Kerova, and Anne Carlisle, and the director of photography, Yuri Neyman was a special-effects expert from the Soviet Union. Anne Carlisle also wrote a novel based on the movie (same title, ISBN 0-385-23930-0) in 1987.

The film had a $500,000 budget, which meant that Tsukerman and his wife had to use a renovated Greenwich Village loft as the sound stage. The music for the film was composed by Brenda Hutchinson and Clive Smith using the Fairlight CMI, the first digital sampler/synthesiser. Much of it was original, while some songs were interpretations of music by Carl Orff and Baroque composer Marin Marais. The film is out of print and only a limited number of VHS tape re-issues and DVDs were produced. The film, however, does run occasionally on the Sundance Channel.

Plot

The story takes place in the early 1980s New York dance/art scene. Space aliens land to feed off of endorphins released during heroin use. Their hat box-sized spaceship lands on the roof of a loft occupied by bisexual cocaine-addict fashion model Margaret (Anne Carlisle) and her drug-dealer girlfriend Adrian (Paula E. Sheppard). Another fashion model and junkie, Jimmy (also played by Anne Carlisle) is Margaret's rival and enemy. The animosity between the two is vague, but potent.

Jimmy's upper-class, oversexed mother, a television producer, befriends a German scientist (Otto Von Wernherr) who is secretly observing the aliens. He also serves to explain the aliens' premise to the audience.

Margaret has several sexual encounters (some wanted, some not), resulting in the aliens' discovery that the endorphins released in the human brain during orgasm are more preferable to their needs than heroin. This results in the deaths of Margaret's partners. Getting rid of the bodies becomes a problem until the aliens answer her call to vaporize them automatically when they die.

Paula Sheppard (as Adrian) acts in a memorable performance art piece entitled "Me and My Rhythm Box".

The film is full of memorable, colorful, and disturbing images, including middle class slumming, glow-in-the-dark makeup, trendy uptown lofts, and generally druggy behavior. Several shots make the Empire State building look uncannily like a syringe.

The novel follows the action and dialogue of the movie very closely, but offers a completely different interpretation. In the novel, both the alien and the German scientist are figments of Margaret's imagination, and the ending is tragic rather than romantic.

Cast

*Anne Carlisle ... Margaret / Jimmy
*Paula E. Sheppard ... Adrian
*Susan Doukas ... Sylvia, Jimmy's Mother
*Otto von Wernherr ... Johann Hoffman the Scientist
*Bob Brady ... Owen
*Elaine C. Grove ... Katherine
*Stanley Knapp ... Paul (as Stanley Knap)
*Jack Adalist ... Vincent
*Lloyd Ziff ... Lester
*Harry Lum ... Chinese Food Deliveryman
*Roy MacArthur ... Jack
*Sara Carlisle ... Nellie
*Nina V. Kerova ... Designer
*Alan Preston ... Photographer
*Christine Hatfull ... Hair Stylist #1

Reception

"Liquid Sky" was one of the last true independent films to become a midnight movie hit during the movement's most influential years. As critic Emanuel Levy describes, like many midnight classics, this "perversely beautiful sci-fi movie...appeared out of nowhere." [Levy (1999), p. 185.]

References

* "Russian producer flies high with crazy, dirty Liquid Sky", Dick Saunders, "Chicago Sun-Times", 1984.
* The second episode of the Dr Who spin-off sci-fi series 'Torchwood' (Day One (Torchwood)) uses a similar plot (aliens feeding on orgasms).

Music

* The "Noon" performed on a Fairlight synthesizer is Marin Marais' "St. Germain Bells".
* The "Alien’s Theme" (I, II) is a part of Carl Orff's "Trionfo di Afrodite" cantata.

External links

*imdb title|id=0085852|title=Liquid Sky