About the film
- Directed by
- Slava Tsukerman
- Released
- August 1, 1982
- US theatrical
- April 15, 1983
- Certification
- R
- Country
- United States of America
- Starring
- Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Bob Brady, Susan Doukas, Elaine C. Grove
More credits
- Language
- English
- Origin
- US
- Studios
- Z Films Inc.
- Written by
- Slava Tsukerman, Anne Carlisle, Nina V. Kerova
- Produced by
- Robert Field, Slava Tsukerman
- Cinematography
- Yuri Neyman
- Music
- Brenda I. Hutchinson, Clive Smith, Slava Tsukerman
- Also starring
- Stanley Knapp, Jack Adalist, Otto von Wernherr, Lloyd Ziff, Harry Lum
- Budget
- $500,000
Aliens land on the roof in a ship the size of a dinner plate - searching for heroin. They discover something better: the endorphin released by the human brain during orgasm. Everyone who has sex with Margaret dies. Margaret begins to find this useful.
LIQUID SKY (1982) - the title is New York slang for heroin - was written, produced, and directed by Slava Tsukerman, a Soviet-born Jewish filmmaker who had emigrated to New York in 1976 and spent six years absorbing the city before making this film about it.
He wrote it with his wife Nina Kerova and Anne Carlisle, who plays two roles: Margaret, a bisexual model and heroin user, and Jimmy, her sneering androgynous male nemesis.
Production designer Marina Levikova made the wardrobe budget of $500 work through resourcefulness that has since become the stuff of filmmaking legend.
The score was composed using the Fairlight CMI digital synthesiser. The cinematographer Yuri Neyman served simultaneously as special effects director, creating alien POV sequences using video thermal imagery.
Liquid Sky spent twenty-eight weeks on Variety's top-grossing film chart and was the most successful independent film of 1983.
Tsukerman died in Manhattan on February 28, 2026, at the age of 86.
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I love that film, it captures subculture and city life very well
Apologies to the original commenters – I had to repost this one due to a technical glitch and lost all the great conversations that were going on here.
This is one wild, mind-blowing wonderful movie. It also has one of the great monologs in indie movie history. Crazy.
Still the weirdest movie I’ve seen. I called it Punk Junkies Meet the Junkies From Outer Space. The soundtrack. The foil.
Remember this film vividly. Anna Carlisle was fabulous.
“Nobody fucks at the club, everybody’s gay!”
This movie has always been genuinely unwatchable due to the stiff acting, grating/abrasive electronic soundtrack, and profoundly unlikable, drug-addict characters. Its visual compositions are fascinating at times, but the shoestring f/x & cinematography budget is painfully apparent.The cast performances are textbook wooden throughout, with incredibly awkward line delivery that comes off as completely amateurish or unintentionally funny, think dialogue from Ed Wood films
Absolutely bugfuck, and wildly beautiful.
I just watched it for the first time since the 80s. So glad I got Night Flight
“Me and my rhythm box! Rhythm box! Rhythm box!”
This is a film for fractured minds, looking for something different. I loved it.
I feel I should watch it again when I get nostalgic for the Eighties.
Worst movie I’ve ever seen, no contest. Watch it just cause – if you’re not bothered by SA scenes that is.
I remember seeing this with some friends in college
I’m thinking of making a t-shirt that says; “Spare me. I’ve watched Liquid Sky and read Dhalgen.”
Me & my Rhythm Box as covered by Adult. & others.. Original pure minimal wave !
Worst acting ever