They Live (1988), dir. John Carpenter, Alive Films/Larry Franco Productions
Nada (Roddy Piper) walks into Los Angeles from Denver. Everyone's having a hard time, but Nada is optimistic. He just needs a chance, that's all.
He manages to pick up some work, on a temp basis at least. The construction site ain't much but it promises some cash. Nada even gets directed to a place where he can bunk by his coworker Frank (Keith David). The camp is nice enough, even if the TV's sometimes pick up some weird signals from a man claiming: "they live while we sleep!"
The preacher (Raymond St. Jacques) from the church across the way is an odd fellow though, preaching almost what the man on the TV says. When the camp leaders spending so much time over there, Nada gets curious. Finally entering the place, he finds the choir is only a recording and the church is converted to be a pirate broadcast station plus a lab of some kind.
Before Nada can get too curious, the cops arrive in full force and wreck up the place. Returning later, all Nada finds is a box of sunglasses. Hard to believe the cops would be cracking down on bootleg ray bans, but Nada stashes the box to go through it later. He takes one of them though and slips them on...
From there, well, pure 80's and pure awesome. The aliens as venture capitalists is utterly brilliant; in fact you could argue the only thing that aged in this film is the hair styles. Everything else could play just as easily today.
Honestly, this film makes me a bit mad, as watching it I was stuck by just how GOOD an actor Piper was; he had only had a few bits parts and some comedy films before this, but here? He just glides onto the screen like he's been doing this forever. This could and should have been his Escape from New York moment, putting Piper into the Kurt Russell mold of character actor who can play lead. The fact that he (or Hollywood) failed to move him into big budget affairs annoys me to no end.
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