Thanks for the memories!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Here's another one for my list of great 80s cult movies, one I will remember as fondly as Repo Man, Blue Velvet and Videodrome.The vision is maybe less accomplished but as vibrant as those films, basically what we get at first glance is something between Daisies (the Czech film) and a Yugoslav film I recently discovered called W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism, with many of the same preoccupations— youth, feminism, freedom of expression, attitudes to sex, contrasted with repressive mores in men and sex.The obvious metaphor used here is aliens (as in a flying saucer lands in New york) for the emerging glam punk scene with its androgynous Bowie sex-image and post-Factory and Warhol scene with its drugs and ersatz madness as style. AIDS had officially entered the lexicon the year before, this is reflected in the film as the men evaporating when they achieve an orgasm with our 'alien' heroine.The whole worldview behind this is what you can expect from the 80s. Rejection, solipsism, a general detachment from anything that does not please a sense of escape and fulfillment now, a numbed attitude I normally find vacant. Usually mistaken as Zen, it seems to attach itself to American youth every decade or so since the mods. And yet the dignified assertion of individuality in the face of small-mindedness and abuse shows a still sparkling soul—the girl casually invites to her place a stranger from the club because he promised cocaine, and seems surprised and mildly disgusted that he lied and basically expected sex.Three women are finding out the men in their lives are not worth it, the junkie boyfriend is more interested in his own pleasures, the German in his science of 'observing'. The young model, who exists with more freedom outside the norm, unconsciously removes them from the story. In the end, this synthetic avatar of freedom and unconventionality is consumed and magically disappears in the night as the two women watch.In its nested layering of created situations where a woman explores by allowing fragmented selves to be explored, this is situated close to two of my favorite movies of all time, another Eastern European film called Loves of A Blonde, and Celine and Julie. It's an 80s take on dreamy flight.It's all here so lovely and heartfelt about the overall world, with its heady cocktail of now innocent strangeness and still evocative flicker in the eye.The New York penthouse at night, with its open balcony to gleaming skyscrapers is one of the most vital spaces in any film I know.The cool, composed rejection of fixed roles and images, tuning out minus the constructed cosmology of world-renewal of a decade earlier. The painted faces of models casually desperate to be captured against the gleaming skyscraper-void, stating nothing beyond the flickering moment of things coming to be.The parting shot with our heroine lost in her dervish spin in the dark, a dreamy incarnation that couldn't last.

Some of the reviewers here must have serious mental issues; they actually talk about the supposed merits of this piece of absolute garbage of a movie. It HAS no merits. It's TRASH. WORTHLESS.Horribly written. Horribly cast. Horribly acted. Horribly lit. Horribly scored. ATROCIOUSLY edited.I had to laugh when one reviewer on here actually said that the editing was "sharp."That would be fine if he had meant, "The editing cuts abruptly to and from scenes with no sense of story or continuity whatsoever," but that's evidently not how this person meant it. He meant it in a complimentary way, which leads me ineluctably to the conclusion that he is on the same cocktail of trendy drugs that the characters are on

Herion influenced.So why did it look like a bad acid trip?Artistic (hah) view of self-obsessed models in NYC during the (very) early 80's. This film is so dated it's almost a crime. Unfortunately only people alive in that era will like it.Pint sized Aliens land on a ledge in Manhattan and give a local model a killing.....no won't say it. However she uses it a lot and doesn't seem to be to upset by it. The male and female leads are the same person. Anna Carlisle doing double duty here. Not hard to tell really. The technical specs are very amateur.Paula Sheppard might be recognized from "Alice Sweet Alice." She almost steals the film with her OTT monologues. The rest of the cast were just there.A 100% Russian production.....in 80's NYC.

A tiny alien spaceship lands on top of a New York apartment looking for heroin. The apartment is occupied by a former model now a drug addict Margaret(Anne Carlisle) and her abusive lesbian lover. The aliens discover that a certain pheromone is produced in the human brain during sex that is similar to heroin. Margaret basically discovers she can have sex with people...and they're vaporized by the aliens for the drug.That synopsis may not make a lot of sense...but neither does the movie. This was a HUGE hit with the college crowd back in 1982. It played to sold out houses and lasted months. I was in college back then and went to see it. I found it a stupid dull movie that thought very highly of itself. It's just full of unpleasant people who seem to be constantly drugged out or looking for drugs. There's an especially irritating subplot involving a Jewish woman and a German scientist. It's supposed to be funny (I think) but I just found it pointless--kind of like the whole movie.In some ways this is interesting. They completely caught the fashions, music and feel of that era--but the ridiculous plot, cruel characters and pathetic acting make this a real chore to sit through. The only bright light here is Carlisle. She's not good but she's better than any of the other actors and she plays two roles--one a male! I tried watching this recently at a revival theatre--I walked out. It was even WORSE than I remembered it! A boring, pretentious and unpleasant little movie that has deservedly slipped into obscurity. Skip this one.