It's REEL To Me Dammit: They Live by PaperClipMike

Welcome back to “It’s REEL To Me Dammit”, where wrestling and the silver screen (and CRT) collide. Last week I discussed movie hosts and Mr. Nanny. This week is about another movie host and a movie that is not good because it is fun and mindless to watch, but an actual good movie. Before we get to the movie we should mention movie host, Joe Bob Briggs. 

I mentioned in the last article that two shows that helped develop my taste in movies as a teenager were “Dinner and a Movie” and “Monstervision”. Since we talked about the former previously, time to talk about the latter. You see, “Monstervision” was more of a ‘traditional” show. It was hosted by Joe Bob Briggs, who had started hosting movies on The Movie Channel way back in 1986. Even more impressive, after a extended hiatus, he is still hosting on Shudder to this day.

While “Dinner and a Movie” played a variety of movies, “Monstervision” played a specific type of movie. Horror, action, and the like. Stuff you would see on a weekend afternoon, or even more so, stuff you would see in a drive-in or a grindhouse movie. Stuff that made me who I am now.

In the summer of 1998, Joe Bob had a special set of shows called Summer School. Each week there was a ‘subject’ and had two movies that corresponded to the subject, usually with a guest. And on August 8, 1998, the guest was none other than one of my personal favorite wrestlers, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Piper guested on the Phys. Ed. episode and showed two of his movies. The second movie was an action movie with TaeBo maestro Billy Blanks called “Immortal Combat”. The other was, in my opinion, the best Piper movie, “They Live”.

For the longest time, I thought Piper was the greatest wrestling actor. If you look at his filmography, it was way more varied than you see wrestlers do. He was never really the heavy in a movie or a thug role to take advantage of his experience. He did action movies, sure. But he also did horror movies, family movies, spiritual movies. Hell, he even did one of my favorite episodes of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” that gave me vibes similar to “The Wrestler”. Hell, he was my fave wrestler/actor until Dave Batista, with Piper coming in a solid second place, between Batista and John Cena, both with similar paths of varied projects.

I would be remiss if I also did not mention the director of the movie, the legendary John Carpenter. Most people know him as the director of the original “Halloween” as well as the composer of the iconic theme song. A few of his other many movies he directed were “The Fog”, “Assault on Precinct 13”, “Christine”, “Big Trouble in Little China”, and “Escape from New York”. He is up there as one of my favorite directors and an influence on me.

I try to keep my content overall as apolitical as I can as I would rather people appreciate my content for what it is and not what one person or another believes. However, in a movie like “They Live”, it cannot be passed by. Not only is it the basis of the movie, but confirmed to be a vehicle for that by the director. John Carpenter has said he used this movie to talk about capitalism and his dislike of ‘Reaganomics’. There is even a message about class warfare mixed in. And the message is not subtle one bit, and you don’t even need the sunglasses from the movie to see it. Is it a bit heavy handed? Maybe. But using the sci-fi setting makes up for it, using aliens as the bad guys.

On to the movie.

Piper plays John Nada, a drifter coming into Los Angeles looking for a job and maybe a plate of food. Getting a job as a construction worker, he meets up with a group of people in a sort of homeless encampment. While there, he learns of a conspiracy theory of some sort of frequencies being used to subliminal control the middle and lower class. He comes across a pair of sunglasses that are far from a pair of Ray Bans. Once he wears them, he can not only see that the subliminal control is real with signs all over the city, aliens have assimilated with the normal people and can only be seen by wearing the sunglasses.

There are two moments that have become part of the pop culture zeitgeist that came from this movie. First off is the scene where Piper walks into a bank and utters the famous line “I am here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I am all out of bubblegum.” Now, Roddy Piper was one of the best talkers in wrestling history. He could get you to boo, cheer, cry, whenever he decided by just using the microphone. Now, the story goes that this was a line Piper had written down to use perhaps in the future and it was liked so much that it made it into the movie. 

And the other moment was the famous alley fight between him and the other main protagonist played bu equally legendary actor Keith David. This scene went over five minutes and is considered one of the best fight scenes in movie history taking three weeks to coreograph. And with Piper’s background as a professional wrestler and as a boxer in his youth you can see he had a lot of input into this. It actually looks like a real fight. This was parodied in South Park in the famous “Cripple Fight” episode. Gamers will also recognize this from “Saint’s Row 4” as this was a mission in the game. And you could also see some inspiration from this in the first half of the Hollywodd Backlot Brawl  from Wrestlemania 12 between Piper and Goldust.

Even though this movie came out in 1988, you could argue that this movie is actually more prevalent in today’s society. The themes of capitalism, class warfare, and subliminal messaging run true today, maybe more so now. However with one of the greatest wrestlers of all time as well as one of the greatest directors of all time, it still makes for a good romp of a movie. Check it out.

Thank you all for reading.

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