Thursday, September 24, 2009

bad/awesome flixxx review: John Carpenter's: They Live (1988)




alahoyus once again there bad and awesome movie lovers.  This here is a classic by none other than John "big trouble" Carpenter himself.  THEY LIVE starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.  I cant really think of a flick by him that i don't cherish in some weird way or another... be it Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, The Thing, ... wait a minute! what am i talking about! i forgot about Vampires!  that movie SUCKED!  you know what though?  That one is not JC's fault.  Now, if he had Kurt Russell in there instead of fucking James Woods, then maybe Vampires wouldn't have been so heinous.  but I digress: 

this gem starts out w/ Rowdy Roddy walking into LA from somewhere like Barstow... outta nowhere, a drifter, possibly a veteran a la John Rambo complete w/ sleeping bag & rucksack in tow.  you get the sense that he feels outta place and he keeps checking out everyone unquestioningly following leaders and talking heads on tv.  Then he gets a job doing construction, and the foreman tells him to beat it, he can't sleep there.  So the one dude from The Thing is there, and he's like, well, ill take you to a lil bum shanty town over in west hollywood.  And again, even the bums have power so that they can watch tv out in this junkyard.  There's this church across the street and every time a tv is on, some dude is pullin a "Pump up the Volume" on the masses.  Once when it goes down, Roddy sees this preacher fucking channeling the message, and then the dude in charge grabs the street preacher and hauls his ass the church.  Roddy gets suspicious and does some PI work.  Then, the whole shebang is discovered by the feds, and they bulldoze the fucking shantytown and rip the church apart, which is where the broadcasts were made.  fast forward, Roddy finds some glasses and figures out the church knew about this scheme where a bunch of alien assholes w/ skeleton faces are posin as real people, and as a matter of fact, real RICH people.  Then he gets busted, then he fucking kills a bunch of cops.  Then he kidnaps a chick, and then she fucking throws him out a window.  Then he goes back to find more of the shades, and to alert his buddy from the Thing.  That dudes like, get the fuck outta here, i dont want any of yer shit, but then he brings rowdy his paycheck.  Then Rowdy's like, dude put these shades on, and the dudes like, fuck you, and Rowdy's like, i said put the goddamned shades on, and then they fight each other for over 5 minutes, no shit, and then finally he shows the dude whats behind door number 2.  When they look thru the shades they can see that everything is a facade, and that our whole world is just buy buy buy and basically we are all programmed to consume and reproduce.  So then, they get cornered after they go to a meeting of "those in the know".  Theres an awesome scene where the chick he kidnapped is about to say how sorry she was, and how stupid she was and its like a love moment then BAM, the fucking side of the building blows up.  Anyway, they use a teleporter watch to go underground to where the aliens have a landing strip to space, and a banquet set up for the alien loving earth stockholders.  Then they try to blow up the satellite that is beaming them back to space. Roddy's like: "fuck it", and offs himself for the good of mankind.  Only slightly better than his other movie: Hell Comes To Frogtown.
7 out of 10 on a -10 to 10 scale.... that's pretty good, eh?

1 comment:

  1. Truly a classic! Remember Carpenter is also responsible for the complete turd-Memoirs Of An Invisible Man with Chevy Chase, and Starman, which I'm sure through hordes of rabid Halloween fans for a total loop! I always get a kick out of your reviews..keepin' coming!

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