John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors, a man whose against-the-grain, gory and brilliant scattergun cinema poetry embedded itself into my young mind via the cult VHS days of my childhood. The Thing will always remain my favorite, but They Live is a great offering too, albeit more depressing because its alien threat seems more plausible, and abetted by the worst yuppie Quislings of our species. The movie’s Los Angeles is full of urban homeless camps housing radical underground revolutionary signal hackers who offer a vision of reality to the
lucky few to snag a pair of illusion-stripping sunglasses before the group is snuffed out by a viciously realistic L.A. police force. An epic fight between Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper in an alleyway stand-in for Plato’s Cave sees the brutal naked reality of interplanetary class subjugation overpowering the pain of the protracted brawl. A nonstop seesaw of paranoid horror and massive, violent action, along with some truly ugly alien overlords who give our own disgusting elite a run for their money. This flick has it all. Come see for yourself at the Arcata Theatre Lounge. Doors at 6 p.m., the show’s around 7 p.m., snag a seat for $6, or $10 if you want to leave with a poster.
This article appears in ‘God Looking Back at You’.