Review: "They Live"
They Live. (Sci-Fi Action starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Keith David, directed by John Carpenter)
I saw this and had to grab it. It screamed cheese. A John Carpenter movie with a horrible title ... AAAAaaaaand it has a wrestler in the leading role?!? This was too easy! This movie was a twelve-year-old walking through a Brooklyn alley at 3am wearing a catholic schoolgirl uniform. It didn't want to be beaten up -- this movie wants to be raped.
I popped it in and relished the upcoming critical carnage I was about to unleash. Here it comes -- Yup, John Carpenter is taking another stab at writing the music for his own movies. Roddy Piper walking down the train tracks during the opening credits ... this can't miss! I'm salivating. Roddy Piper is a drifter in this not-too-distant future America with its collapsing economy and shanty-towns. He finds a little work and reluctantly befriends Keith David. Piper stumbles onto a covert group who have discovered a terrible secret -- we are all actually slaves of aliens who live among us!
I'll be damned if I didn't like this movie! It was a gripping plot, with a fair amount of believability. Piper and David weren't too bad in their performances as roughnecks-with-a-heart-of-gold. And the cheese was just melty enough to be fun. The movie was just long enough to tell the story thoroughly and had a couple of really great scenes. You've got Roddy Piper and Keith David, so you know there has to be a couple of fight scenes. The big fight comes about halfway through the movie under the pretense that David is too stubborn to see the truth, and Piper is going to make him see it whether he likes it or not. The fight goes for 6 or 7 minutes and it's absolutely hilarious, making no bones about exploiting the Pipe-ster's wrestling charisma. It also delivers some of the worst-written tough-guy lines ever put on paper: "I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum ... and I'm all out of bubblegum."
John Carpenter hit the nail on the head this time. He had a loaf of Wonder Bread and some american cheese. Instead of trying to call it surf and turf, he decided to make a nice grilled cheese sandwich and even cut the crusts off for us. The plot was interesting enough to overlook the sub-standard special effects, and it was just plain fun. I'm giving it an extra star for John Carpenter's plucky make-do attitude toward the film. 4 out of 5.
I saw this and had to grab it. It screamed cheese. A John Carpenter movie with a horrible title ... AAAAaaaaand it has a wrestler in the leading role?!? This was too easy! This movie was a twelve-year-old walking through a Brooklyn alley at 3am wearing a catholic schoolgirl uniform. It didn't want to be beaten up -- this movie wants to be raped.
I popped it in and relished the upcoming critical carnage I was about to unleash. Here it comes -- Yup, John Carpenter is taking another stab at writing the music for his own movies. Roddy Piper walking down the train tracks during the opening credits ... this can't miss! I'm salivating. Roddy Piper is a drifter in this not-too-distant future America with its collapsing economy and shanty-towns. He finds a little work and reluctantly befriends Keith David. Piper stumbles onto a covert group who have discovered a terrible secret -- we are all actually slaves of aliens who live among us!
I'll be damned if I didn't like this movie! It was a gripping plot, with a fair amount of believability. Piper and David weren't too bad in their performances as roughnecks-with-a-heart-of-gold. And the cheese was just melty enough to be fun. The movie was just long enough to tell the story thoroughly and had a couple of really great scenes. You've got Roddy Piper and Keith David, so you know there has to be a couple of fight scenes. The big fight comes about halfway through the movie under the pretense that David is too stubborn to see the truth, and Piper is going to make him see it whether he likes it or not. The fight goes for 6 or 7 minutes and it's absolutely hilarious, making no bones about exploiting the Pipe-ster's wrestling charisma. It also delivers some of the worst-written tough-guy lines ever put on paper: "I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum ... and I'm all out of bubblegum."
John Carpenter hit the nail on the head this time. He had a loaf of Wonder Bread and some american cheese. Instead of trying to call it surf and turf, he decided to make a nice grilled cheese sandwich and even cut the crusts off for us. The plot was interesting enough to overlook the sub-standard special effects, and it was just plain fun. I'm giving it an extra star for John Carpenter's plucky make-do attitude toward the film. 4 out of 5.