Entry 67: They Live (1988)

They Live (1988)

Dir: John Carpenter

"You see them on the street.  You watch them on TV.  You might even vote for one this fall.  You think they're people just like you.  You're wrong.  Dead wrong."

 

I'm writing this entry in honor of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, who passed away much too early last week.  I'm not a wrestling fan, but, as a very young man in the golden days of the mid-1980s, when Hulkamania surely reigned supreme, I watched the occasional Saturday afternoon match with my dad, and smirking, kilted Piper was always the guy you loved to hate.  I also have some vague memories of him being the primary villain on the amazingly shitty Hulk Hogan's Rockin' Wrestling cartoon show.  But for me, the most important and lasting introduction to Piper was in his role as the nameless, ass-kicking, bubblegum-chewing hero of John Carpenter's underrated 1988 sci-fi/action movie They Live.

Piper stars as a homeless drifter (never named in the film, but referred to as "Nada" in the credits) who comes into possession of a pair of sunglasses that allow him to "see" reality: whenever he dons them, the upper class (bankers, stock brokers, corporate executives, bored housewives, TV celebrities) appear as black and white aliens (they look like skinned human beings), while the lower classes (homeless, day laborers, servants, retail employees, etc) appear normal.  Advertising billboards are revealed to contain subliminal messages like "OBEY" and "MONEY IS YOUR GOD."  After using some sweet goddamn wrestling moves to take out a couple of cops, Piper shotguns the fuck out of an entire bank filled with aliens, then takes a TV producer named Holly (Meg Foster, Masters of the Universe, Leviathan) hostage.  After Holly knocks him out a window, Piper tries to convince his friend, construction worker Frank (Keith fucking David, The Thing, Requiem for a Dream), to put on the glasses and see reality.  This leads to THE SCENE in the movie; a glorious, SIX FUCKING MINUTE street brawl between Piper and David ("You dirty motherfucker!")!  Eventually, David puts the glasses on ("Brother, life's a bitch, and she's back in heat."), and our heroes are able to infiltrate Holly's TV station, from which the alien's signal is broadcast, with a little coerced help from another, traitorous homeless man played by the great character actor George "Buck" Flower (whose career ranged from hardcore porn to mainstream hits like Back to the Future).  When double-agent Holly kills Frank, Piper sacrifices himself to destroy the TV signal ("Fuck it.") and awakens America to the true nature of it's overlords.        

first saw this movie as channel 29's "Movie of the Week" up in my parents' bedroom on their old antenna television; I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it now. Like the previous year's RoboCop, They Live uses the milieu of science fiction to frame a particular, anti-Reagan narrative (in RoboCop, it was the trappings of traditional superhero stories; in They Live, it's cold-war era alien paranoia).  Interestingly, Piper's character starts out as a complacent man amongst a sea of angry, but impotent, outsiders.  Only once the glasses allow him to "see reality" does he become a progressive leader.  This is why the streetfight sequence is so important-David's character is angry, but he refuses to put the glasses on; it's easy to complain, but it's far more difficult to take action.  Carpenter keeps things gritty; his low-prowling camera is filled with shanty towns, welfare lines, soup kitchens and shitty news vendors.  I'm not sure if this was the ex-hippy in Carpenter coming out to "stick it to the man," or if it was the director railing against an increasingly-corporatized Hollywood system that had failed him (by the time of They Live, a string of poorly-marketed, expensive flops had left Carpenter with increasingly-low budgets and limited studio support).  Either way, he crafts an effective us-vs-them narrative with some GREAT fucking lines and action sequences!  This certainly isn't the best of Carpenter's films; it lacks the slow-burn tension of Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween or The Thing and the madcap insanity of Escape from New York or Big Trouble in Little China, but it's genuine and "earthy" in a way those films often aren't, and is perhaps the least-cynical, most "human" film of Carpenter's classic oeuvre.

Oh, I bet you thought I'd forgotten...prior to the bank massacre, Piper announces his presence with the line "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...And I'm all out of bubblegum."  This wasn't scripted; it was a line Piper was planning to use for a WWF entrance that he decided to ad-lib here as a joke.  Not being an idiot, Carpenter decided to use it in the final cut.  100 years from now, when Piper's wrestling career is all but forgotten, people will still be quoting and paraphrasing that line...That's a goddamn legacy.  Rest in peace, sir.