They Live

Join me for John Carpenter's polemic against commercialism and rich people and aliens and stuff. Roddy Piper is a drifter looking for work in an economy racked by... consumerism? Keith David is an angry man who absolutely does not want to put on sunglasses NO MATTER WHAT. Meg Foster is the woman whose eyes will FREAK YOU OUT. I examine the rather heavy-handed themes (greed, for lack of a better word, is bad). I point out that John Carpenter might know more about horror than economics but isn't really showing off either one here. And I try to suggest that aliens, say, eating people might be more horrible than aliens selling us Lee Press-on Nails. But whatever, I like the movie a lot and rank it among my favorite Carpenter films.