Liquid Sky (1982)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Liquid Sky (1982) – S. Tsukerman

Rather strenuously outré, boho, taboo-breaking although not exactly in a comic vein like Waters but more straight-faced like Warhol/Morrissey (or perhaps it seems that way because it is set in Manhattan). It’s also a one-off early ‘80s curio that is now a time capsule for a scene that’s gone (weird fashion, spare angular music). Aliens in a tiny flying saucer arrive on the roof of a model’s building (she lives in a very art-decorated but also somehow trashy penthouse). According to a wandering scientist, they seek heroin (and there are a lot of junkies in this film) but soon they discover that chemicals in the brain during orgasm are even better and they start abducting (or maybe absorbing) people having sex.  The model at the nexus of all this (Anne Carlisle) also plays another male model (which results in some tricky camerawork/staging). But let’s face it, the plot is totally besides the point here and instead you get a melange of drug use, sex, sweary ranting, Altered States styled computer animation/modification, dancing, glow-in-the-dark make-up, and attitude, mixed with some boring dialogue scenes.  It probably doesn’t quite add up (and could be confronting) but it is certainly a thing to behold.