In August 1982, Liquid Sky landed like a neon slap in the face. Downtown New York, already a crucible of punk, no wave, and restless youth, suddenly had an interstellar intruder. There they were, invisible aliens harvesting human endorphins during orgasm... It was surreal, abrasive, and utterly unwelcoming.
Slava Tsukerman, a filmmaker with a background in Soviet and Israeli documentaries, turned $500,000 into a successful independent film, grossing $1.7 million worldwide. Angular makeup, neon hair, coldwave couture painted a picture of New York becoming part of the alien machinery. Art-house polish or not, the film was all electric dissonance, and its cult status is well justified.
The score, created by Tsukerman, Clive Smith, and Brenda Hutchinson on a Fairlight CMI, is brittle, metallic, and alien. It mixes synthetic menace with echoes of Baroque composer Marin Marais, Carl Orff, and Anthony Philip Heinrich, a soundtrack that predates synthwave and still feels like the pulse of some otherworldly body. No wave meets electronica, all wrapped up in theatrical extremity.
The effect the film had on underground culture comes from more than sounds and visuals. Its androgynous leads, detached and defiant, refract the downtown scene’s rejection of conventional sexuality.
Forty-three years on, it remains aberrant, uncompromising, and strangely prescient. The alien isn’t just the plot but the film itself. It’s will always be there, waiting to be decoded.
ZR