Ok, I have to confess that until very recently I'd never even heard of this film. Then I saw it mentioned somewhere, became curious, read up a bit about it, and feel like perhaps I've missed out on a classic post-punk/sci-fi crossover.

Has anybody here seen it? Has everybody here but me seen it? Is it any good?

It's one of those films that's often mentioned but hardly anyone has seen. Every opinion I've ever read either thinks it's amazing or completely shit.

That cracks me up. I've still never seen it, but my acting teacher during Freshman year of college's big brag was that he was killed in it. He was one funny, drunken buffoon.

That's two of my acting teachers who were in famous/infamous NYC low-budget horror/schlocker shockers. Harry Schultz was the gay art dealer in Abel Ferrera's Driller Killer. He was also my English/Theatre Arts teacher.

Ha - this is Mrs Scouseroos favourite film ever apparently. Nope I've never seen it and hadn't heard of it until she mentioned it.

I did manage to get a copy via BitTorrent - bloody impossible to find any other way - but we've yet to watch it.

The wife is hesitant to watch it with me as she's sure I'll just take the piss.

"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 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 human pheromones created in the brain during orgasm are more preferable to their needs rather than the endorphins induced by drug usage. 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."

Bob Brady's IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0103579/

The lead actress, Anne Carlisle, has this prestigious directing credit from IMDB:

Directed music video for rock band Malaria

It also has a pretty bonkers soundtrack by Danny Elfman and his then band. I've a track on a compilation.

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I saw it when it first came out. I was living in Madrid and went to see it with my gf at the time. She loved it, I thought it was utter w*nk. We didn't last much longer ...


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Heh, decided I had to watch this, so downloaded it (the only way to get hold of it, it seems) and gave it a go.

I'm not quite sure how it could be anyone's favourite film, but it's definitely watchable, and quite fun. I started to tire of it a bit by the end, but it's definitely worth a watch.

I guess if you had to compare it to anything it would be early Gregg Araki, or maybe John Waters, but that still doesn't quite give the right feel.

File it under low-budget oddity.