MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THEY LIVE (1988)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Thursday, March 16, 2023

THEY LIVE (1988)

Credit John Carpenter for downsizing between full-budget/high-profile fare (BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA/86; MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN/’92) for this minor-league horror item. If only it were better. (Well, it is better than his Chevy Chase INVISIBLE MAN, a pretty low bar.) This one has Carpenter trying on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS for size, and finding an uncomfortable fit. Too many alterations or not enough? Starring ‘Bad Guy’ pro wrestler Roddy Piper as a drifter (with pecs to spare) looking for construction work in L.A., and getting a hand from fellow laborer Keith David, easily out-acting Piper as well as putting up a decent fight. (Carpenter extending the mutual bashing to ridiculous lengths for the WWF crowd.) Bonding thru the pain, Piper forces David to try on the magic sunglasses he’s found in a box on the street, glasses that reveal Alien Invaders in disguise living among us. And not only programmed humanoids are revealed thru these glasses, street-sign ads, tv broadcasts, magazines, all can be seen plain (in b&w Arial Black font - Yikes!) hiding social and political conformist doctrine mottos out of a bad reverse translation of 1984. (They’re like the green-tinted Emerald City glasses in the book, if not the film of THE WIZARD OF OZ.) But why?, since it’s only aliens who see beneath the surface facade and they’re already under mind control. Still, you can see what Carpenter was aiming for, a sort of anti-genre take on a familiar subject. Something on the order of Jean-Luc Godard’s ALPHAVILLE/’65, but either unable or unwilling to go the distance. We do get another one of those loopy repetitive Carpenter vamps as background music score, a touch of spacey ‘transport’ action for a Sci-Fi vibe, and the sensation of seeing Meg Foster switch from helpmate to killer . . . and back, behind those all but unfathomable alien-blue eyes. (Are she and Ellen DeGeneres the only humans on the planet with this precise unworldly eye color?)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56. And I’d wager teenage Carpenter was also a big fan of the 1967 cult tv series THE INVADERS. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html

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Thursday, March 16, 2023

THEY LIVE (1988)

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