jmccombi@BBN-UNIX@sri-unix.UUCP (08/24/83)
From: Jon McCombie <jmccombi@BBN-UNIX>
>From NEW YORK, 15 August 83
Movies/David Denby
"LIQUID SKY, the low-budget triumph of the year, is a science-fiction
fantasy with a wonderfully smutty premise: unseen aliens, searching for
heroin, land in their tiny flying saucer on the roof of a downtown
apartment building and attach themselves to Margaret (Anne Carlisle), a New
Wave fashion model whose friends use lots of smack. But the aliens, it
turns out, are greedy; they also want a euphoria-inducing chemical secreted
by the brain during orgasm, a chemical somewhat similar to heroin. Since
Margaret, a wanly beautiful decadent with spiky hair, is constantly
besieged by seducers and rapists of both sexes, she produces a lot of
chemicals for the aliens; when her pursuers make love to her, they suddenly
dematerialize in an explosion of iridescent orange-green-blue tone.
Margaret, beginning to enjoy her power, becomes an avenger; by the end she
has killed off all her lovers and tormentors, and she ascends to heaven in
a flying saucer. . . .
"Superbly photographed by Yuri Neyman, LIQUID SKY offers us a New York in
which somber insurance towers and the Empire State Building glow against
turquoise or lavendar skies like the coldly monumental peaks of a
comic-book planet. Anne Carlisle, the queen of this gleaming star, has the
nearly transparent blondness of David Bowie in THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH.
In the ultimate androgynous triumph, she plays a sullen male model as well
as Margaret, and thus gets the chance to make love to herself, with
spectacular results. LIQUID SKY has got to be the funniest, craziest,
dirtiest, most perversely beautiful science-fiction movie ever made."
The review above says it all (but I'm not so sure about "funniest,
craziest, ..."). I liked it, but my taste in films is somewhat
non-standard. Warning: the film is rated "R", not because of frontal
nudity (there is none), but because of the violence of some of the scenes
(e.g. there is one rape scene -- short but rather violent). This movie is
similar in many ways to THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. If you didn't like that
movie, or the violence of the punk scene really turns you off, don't waste
your time with this one.
It's playing now in Boston at the Nickelodeon Cinema. This movie seems to
be fairly popular -- on a Tuesday night, it was sold out 15 mins before
show time. Get there early if you want a seat.
Enjoy,
Jon