John Carpenter makes entertaining movies in the grand tradition of 1950s sci fi Saturday matinée. Maybe because of this, they seem to fall short of becoming blockbusters. With a Carpenter film you know what you're going to get: a great premise that doesn’t quite hit a home run, but is fun to watch anyway. They Live is a good example of that at work.

In They Live, Roddy Piper plays the nameless protagonist, a drifter who wanders into Los Angeles looking for work. He comes across a construction site and quickly find a job. There he works alongside Frank (Keith David), who leads Piper to the shantytown he calls home. Frank is a gruff, angry outcast who just wants to be left alone. As expected, these two vagabond loners end up together, complete with the old cliché that they don’t trust each other at first but eventually team up.

At the shanty, strange things are happening. Pirate signals keep cutting into the TV programming featuring a man talking about a conspiracy to control everyone ... yet no one is interested. The workers just want their regular old TV. But lo and behold, Piper wanders across the street to a church and stumbles upon the very resistance group transmitting the pirate broadcasts! (Isn't life in the movies convenient?) Naturally, this sort of thing isn't going to go unnoticed. Eventually the police come in, raid the church and destroy the shantytown. During the raid, Piper wanders through the carnage, looking at people being beaten down and chased by police like he’s window shopping. He’s mildly bemused by the whole scene. And then he suddenly shifts gears and takes off wandering again.

Piper’s character does a lot of wandering in the film. He wanders into town, through town, out of town, into town, around town, all over town. Wandering. It’s kind of his thing I guess.

So Piper hides out nearby until the chaos passes, returns to the church, and finds a box. Inside are a pair of sunglasses. A very special pair of sunglasses (as we'll soon see). So he tosses on the shades and, well, wanders out of the alley.

Yes, he’s still wandering.

So here's the “special” part of those sunglasses: they allow him to break through some kind of interference all around the city, transmissions the pirate broadcasts were talking about. Now he can see what is truly going on – billboards saying things like Obey, Reproduce, No Thought, Consume. Has he entered a world gone mad where the Christian Coalition is teamed up with Microsoft to control our every action? No, something far less sinister – aliens are running things and the glasses help you see them. The aliens are all around, mixing among us. No one can tell who is human and who is alien. Except, that is, Piper and his fancy pants sunglasses.

And boy oh boy, those aliens. The makeup, masks, or whatever the hell they used? It looks absolutely goofy. I mean, I’m talking Halloween costume bought at the supermarket goofy. Star Wars fanfilm level goofy. The jaws move like a Muppet’s, on hinges; up and down like an old guy eating pudding. The rest of the makeup makes it looks like the aliens are just people who have been skinned alive. It’s jarring in its amateurness and comical as a result. But that’s part of what makes this movie fun. It's the sort of fun B movies of the 50s, with their rubber suited monsters, offered. A wink and nudge (as if casting Roddy Piper wasn’t wink and nudge enough) that this is not a movie that’s going to take itself too seriously.

Anyway, Piper stumbles and bumbles around the city, wandering into a store and mouthing off about the aliens. To the wrong people, it turns out, because some of those people are aliens! They use their Dick Tracy wrist watches warn the authorities that there is someone who can see them wandering around the city. The chase is on!

From here the audience is given a steady stream of Roddy Piper getting into all sorts of misadventures, including some truly hilarious moments. At one point he utters one of the most so-bad-it's-funny lines in movie history. “I have come to chew bubble gum and kick ass … and I am all out of bubble gum.” Riiiight. What makes it so damn funny I don't know, but it is funny. Perhaps it’s Piper’s semi Scottish brogue, or his near mispronunciation of bubble gum, or his merriment in delivering the line. Who knows? Just know that it’s silly and it’s something I encourage you to use in everyday life, like during a meeting at work, or in line at the airport, or when you're closing on your house.

And that's not even the film's landmark scene!

Later in the film, Piper tries to recruit his old buddy Frank into fighting the aliens with him. What happens as a result is quite simply the Greatest Cinema Fight Ever. If you’re a South Park fan, you’ve seen Trey and Matt’s take on it in the Cripple Fight episode from Season 5. The real fight is 1,000 times better. It has punches of all types – kidney punches, nut punches, uppercuts, jabs, hooks. It has head butts, kicks to nearly every part of the body, wrestling moves, biting, eye gouges, eye rakes, lip tugs, head slams into the concrete, full body racking, foot stamping, and back breakers. An endless series of blows that never seems to end. The fights takes up something like four hours of screen time. It goes on forever and is hilarious for it.. The battle would kill a normal man, but not Piper or Frank.

Truly one of the legendary film scenes ever.

And that’s only the start of the bizarre, wacky, truly absurd, endlessly entertaining fun.

They Live tries to offer a little social commentary about consumer culture, the drive for riches and the increasing under class in America. The social commentary usually doesn't work - Carpenter uses an axe where George Romero uses a scalpel – but I’ll give him credit, at least there IS a message in the movie.

The sum total is that this movie is laughable fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and has some laugh out loud scenes. Some are even intentionally laugh out loud. It’s fun, and gives the audience a chance to play Mystery Science Theater 3000. It’s a great B movie, inconsistent and silly, and just a brainless popcorn level good time.

Video 
Looked fine. A nice, clean looking picture. The lady at the end had nice ta-ta’s and they looked good picture wise.

Audio 
Sounded good to me. Waves got to both my ears. No complaints.

Extras 
There was a “If you like this you’ll love The Thing and The Village of the Dammed” thing. I wouldn’t call it an extra really. I can’t complain though. I would have liked a Carpenter/ Piper commentary. I’m not sure what they could have said, but it sounds like it has an outside chance of being fun.

The Bottom Line 
Roddy Piper wandering the Earth like some Kung Fu reject, bad effects and make-up, poor production values, and the single funniest fight in cinema history make this a must own in my book. Get it. Now.