RED ENVELOPES: The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

To explain my relative absence over the past two weeks, I will say something that is technically truthful, although is not strictly speaking accurate, and is therefore an outright lie. That's right. I'm through apologizing to you people.

Anyway, my wife was out of town for a week on business. And with her gone, I had the chance to do what so many men have done, throughout the ages, when their spouses go away for a week: watch as many of the movies on the Netflix queue that she doesn't want to see as is humanly possible.

Yes, it was a manic week of DVD screening, as I raced through the decent (Li'l Abner, the Blue Collar Comedy of its day), the bad (Shadowlands, utterly boring), the curious (a Carmelite nun named Sister Wendy touring the Art Institute), and the unsurpassingly weird (Head, starring the Monkees, about which I really should talk in some future posting because it's just so bizarre). But all of that was just prelude for the crown jewel in my week's viewing: They Live, by far one of the greatest terrible movies I have ever seen.

The premise of They Live is simple: Roddy Piper (in his finest acting performance to date) plays a hard-working guy, a real salt-of-the-earth dude, a decent fellow just trying to get by in life, who stumbles across a pair of sunglasses that reveal America's elite to be pillaging aliens who control the government and the media and conspire to keep humans poor and subservient.

Director/pseudonymous screenwriter John Carpenter is in top form here. This is an 80s movie, and Carpenter's fury at Reagan-era politics is palpable. The scene in which Piper first dons the magical sunglasses is really entertaining, as he discovers that yuppies actually have hideous faces, billboards broadcast the messages "OBEY" and "SUBMIT", and -- most amusingly -- money bears the phrase "THIS IS YOUR GOD." Piper has no real ability to convey shock, but Carpenter's vision is so gloriously over-the-top that he doesn't have to.

Of course, it takes an awfully long time to get there, and while we wait, Carpenter works overtime to convince us of how a swell modern-day Jimmy Stewart Piper really is. I think he even pats an adorable moppet on the head. The deck is seriously stacked.

This wouldn't be such a bad thing, except that -- shock of shocks -- Piper turns to violence to help eradicate the alien hordes. You kind of expect that: he's Roddy Piper, they're aliens, the director also made Halloween. Let the carnage begin. Except... well, they still look like humans. When you see Rowdy Roddy mowing down his enemies, they don't look like mortifying creatures from another galaxy. They look like people. And no matter how much you know that your hero is in the right, the outward appearance is that of so much brutality and senseless killing. I had the same problem with The Matrix. It's human nature to be more comfortable with an enemy you can't identify with. Aliens. Nazis. Frat boys. These look like decent human beings, and it leaves a bad taste.

I know Carpenter's trying to have fun with this. He shows us that Piper isn't killing indiscriminately. He frequently spares his fellow human beings the brunt of his wrath. Consider the films signature quote. It is only after killing two aliens dressed as cops (although it sure looks like he's gunning down two cops in the street) and taking their guns that Piper steps into a building to rest and plan his next move. Alas, that building happens to be a bank. So Piper summons all his confidence and says, hilariously, "I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum... and I'm all out of bubblegum." Clearly, Roddy Piper is being groomed to be a sort of liberal Schwarzenegger, firing off bullets and one-liners simultaneously. Okay, I can go with that.

Except I can't, because he's clearly more at home in the film's most memorable scene, and the main reason I wanted to see this movie. It comes 55 minutes in, and it involves Piper's elements to expose his only friend, construction worker Keith David, to the scope of the alien plot by having him put on the sunglasses. And the method of persuasion he chooses? He beats him up.

To be fair, they beat each other up. It's the most ludicrous fight scene ever put on celluoid. They trade punches, attempt to maim each other, and all the whole exchange dialogue like this:
PIPER: Put on the glasses.
DAVID: Never.
BOTH:

This goes on -- I kid you not -- for over six whole minutes. Almost as long as "Hey Jude". And it's a 90 minute movie. It's a jaw-dropping movie experience.

Quite frankly, after that, the movie doesn't have much more to offer. There's more carnage, and more rich people acting insufferable and stereotypically evil. Oh, and there's a subplot involving a woman who works for a UHF station that's as riveting as it sounds, and ends up relating to the movie in the most illogical manner possible. And that's kind of the problem with the movie. Carpenter has an interesting idea, but his film's best moments don't really have anything to do with the main story.

And despite all that, I enjoyed the movie immensely. If I admire John Carpenter for anything, it's his willingness to take his political rage and turn it into an action-horror film. Joe Dante got a lot of praise for turning his anger about the Iraq War into a zombie film in Homecoming. Carpenter did at least as much here. They Live is a Grade Z epic. Roddy Piper is the poor man's Dolph Lundgren. And the six-minute fight scene is a trailer trash Rocky. It's a fantastic, remarkable mess. And it doesn't look like any other movie you'll ever see.

Don't believe me? Here. Put on these sunglasses.