Liquid Sky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Liquid Sky | |
|---|---|
 The film poster. |
|
| Directed by | Slava Tsukerman |
| Produced by | Slava Tsukerman |
| Written by | Anne Carlisle Nina V. Kerova Slava Tsukerman |
| Starring | Anne Carlisle Paula E. Sheppard |
| Music by | Brenda I. Hutchinson Slava Tsukerman |
| Cinematography | Yuri Neyman |
| Editing by | Sharyn L. Ross |
| Distributed by | Cinevista Media Home Entertainment |
| Release date(s) |  April 15, 1983 |
| Running time | 112 min. |
| Country | US |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$500,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
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 performed on the Fairlight CMI, the first digital sampler/synthesiser. Much of it was original, while some songs were interpretations of music by 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.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The story follows the early 1980s New York dance/art scene in which space aliens land to feed off of endorphins released during sex or heroin use. Their hat box-sized spaceship lands on the roof of a loft occupied by two junkies: fashion model Margaret and her girlfriend Adrian. Another junkie, Jimmy (also played by Anne Carlisle) is her rival and enemy. The animosity between the two is vague, but potent.
Jimmy's upper-class, oversexed mother befriends a German scientist who is secretly observing the aliens. He also serves to explain the aliens' premise to the audience.
Margaret has sexual encounters (some wanted, some not), resulting in the deaths of her 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, funky 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.
[edit] 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."[1]
[edit] Quotes
"I was taught that my prince would come and I would have his children... and on the weekends we would barbecue... and all the other princes and their princesses would come and they would say "delicious delicious..." Oh how boring ..." - Margaret
"You wanna know who and what I am?... I'm a killer...." - Margaret
"I kill with my cunt"- Margaret
[edit] References
- Russian producer flies high with crazy, dirty Liquid Sky, Dick Saunders, Chicago Sun-Times, 1984.
- ^ Levy (1999), p. 185.
