Carpenter's Tools: They Live

Political undercurrents run under John Carpenter's films as far back as Assault on Precinct 13, its depiction of insatiable, plodding youths converging on a band of police officers and secretaries a subtle inversion of Kent State. Carpenter even scripted Escape from New York as a commentary on the Watergate scandal and the deep damage it caused to public perception of government. Yet They Live is his most political feature yet, a blisteringly funny look at Reagan's consumer America. Perfectly positioned as one of Carpenter's indie films, made after he temporarily quit the box-office-obsessed Hollywood for a few years, They Live carries that extra ounce of authenticity that gives its shamelessly B-movie slant a solid foundation.

They Live takes a bit of time to get off the ground, featuring the decidedly anti-thespian performance of professional wrestler Roddy Piper, who plays such a nobody that his name is Nada. Nada is a drifter who finds himself in L.A. on a construction site to earn some money but, of course, he begins to notice strange occurrences in the area. At night, televisions intercept a homemade channel of a man warning against climate change and materialistic societies, and a nearby church buzzes with activity by night and hosts criers spouting portents of doom by day.

One night, a sea of cops floods the area, beating the churchgoers and bulldozing the shantytown around it. Nada discovers a box filled with tacky sunglasses among the remains and takes a pair for himself. When he puts them on the next day, he sees the world in black and white, and advertisements and products suddenly lose their allure. When he gazes at billboards, he sees only stark messages like "Obey" or "Marry and Reproduce"; a dollar bill becomes a slip of paper that reads "This is your god." The glasses allow Nada to see the subliminal messages not only in ads, but in the products we're meant to consume and the means with which we acquire them. As the capitalist fervor reached its peak in the late '80s, Carpenter uses harsh, decisive black-and-white to reveal the basic truth of the celebration of materialism.

Soon, Nada runs into people who look grotesque and warped when viewed through the glasses. Eventually, he discerns that these people are actually aliens living among us and the force that orchestrated the commercialization of American life. Tellingly, the wealthy in society -- or at least the ones who handled the money, like lenders -- are the aliens, guiding humans like sheep through the numbing equalizer: television. Everywhere Nada looks, he sees nothing but the work of these invaders, entire buildings comprised of messages and desperate consumers slowly made into livestock.

Unfortunately, Carpenter never delves much deeper into the fantastic premise, and while it's clearly meant to serve as a Reagan-era update for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, substituting fear of communism with our own self-destructive greed. But Carpenter traces the root of the problem not to the institutions that ensure their survival by dumbing down the populace into blind conformity but simply to TV's corrosive influence, a conclusion akin to propping up Hitler as the root of anti-Semitism. Television is merely the modern means by which people are kept oblivious, and the idea that an assault on a TV station -- which informs the climax -- could suddenly free society is oversimplified to the point of being just as empty as the culture it seeks to lampoon.

It's even more frustrating when you realize how infuriatingly little we've advanced from the culture of mass consumerism. Early in the film, Nada speaks with another construction worker, Frank (Keith David, the only person who at least comes close to what one might call "acting" here), who discusses some of the problems he's faced, particularly involving the rusting of the steel industry. "We gave the steel companies a break when they needed it," he says, foretelling some of the outrages that exist today, "You know what they gave themselves? Raises."

Having said all that, as a giddy throwback to '50s science fiction and an action thriller, They Live is aces: for all the shortcomings and easy-way-outs Carpenter places into his commentary, his barbs have a genuine wit to them, and he hasn't scripted a film so tightly since Escape from New York. Once you get to the point about 15-20 minutes in, it never lets up, which is handy, because if you're allowed even a second to spare with these actors they whole damn thing might fall apart. There's a certain irony that Nada's response to reaching an epiphany with neo-con money worship consists of grabbing a shotgun and going on a killing spree, but I suppose most revolutions are waged the same way. Besides, it allows for some excellent choreographed action that's quick but steady and sure. Plus, They Live boasts one of the all-time best, longest and most ludicrous fistfights in film history. The sheer, absurd length of it is worth the price of admission (or rental, I suppose I should say).

I originally started this retrospective when my reviews were, on the whole, more basic and a great deal shorter than the ones I churn out now, and I find that I still don't have much to say when it comes to Carpenter's work. But that's because he's so wonderfully economic, not unskilled in flashy techniques but typically unconcerned with employing them. He's one of the great workhorses of modern cinema, and while his films lack the depth of those of his hero, Howard Hawks, he displays Hawks' ability to get in and get the job done without wasting time nor money. I've never seen so many brilliantly understated action thrillers as I have combing through his corpus, and his deep love for classic cinema is perhaps most clearly seen here, with his shameless use of old tinfoil discs-on-wires for flying saucers and his distrust of television, perhaps as a result of forcing movies to become short and stupid so they might easily make their way onto the small screen. His embrace of old B-movie tropes reveals his understanding of how narrow the gap between timeless cinema and trashy kitsch was in the old days, back when the real masterpieces were genre films made by directors who received heaps of scorn for toying with conventions. They Live doesn't really play with any of its contemporary conventions, but for all its thematic simplicity, this film, made by a disillusioned artist who once dreamed of becoming Hollywood's go-to journeyman for pictures of varying genres, deserves points not merely for being terrific fun but for attacking the vampirism of '80s abandon, and not in the salacious, too-stylized way that Bret Easton Ellis would eventually make the de facto form of criticism of Reagaonomic über-capitalism.

Carpenter's Tools: The Thing

I seem to admit my ignorance with film theory and (somewhat) history quite often in my reviews, which probably isn't too smart, but I do try to be honest with you. I've particularly detailed my unfamiliarity with the horror genre, so when I say that the only film outside of the work of David Cronenberg that has impressed me more with its special effects than John Carpenter's The Thing is Ridley Scott's Alien, I imagine it will carry little weight. So let me approach this from a different angle to give Rob Bottin's effects the credit they deserve: they are so convincing even in their leagues-beyond-OTT spectacle that they drive the film as much as the plot itself, even though Carpenter never lets them steal his movie away from him.

After alluding and paying homage to Howard Hawks' films his entire career, Carpenter finally went for the whole hog and adapted the director's science fiction foray The Thing From Another World, an interesting but dated offering that doesn't quite rank in the master's upper echelon. Carpenter's version improves upon it in nearly every way: it plays off of the isolation of a station situated in tundra and the un-glamorized portrayal of its crew, but it dispenses with lengthy (if matter-of-fact) scientific explanations and uses its modern effects to craft a far more sinister creature.

That creature makes its way to a US research station in Antarctica indistinguishable from a husky. A group of frantic Norwegian scientists frantically pursue it in helicopter and try to shoot the thing, only to die in accidents and misunderstandings with the American scientists. The researchers return to their tasks, choosing to forget the bizarre occurrences of the day. They put the dog in the kennel with their own, only to return to a pulsating mound of flesh slowly absorbing the caged dogs.

The researchers, naturally, accept this news with a certain concern. Upon giving the destroyed Norwegian camp a second examination, they find an excavation site that reveals a buried UFO. That doesn't give them many answers, however, and only through several more horrific incidents do they amass a rough understanding of the beast: it has the ability to assimilate and replicate any living creature, it can be damaged with fire, and any piece that survives can start the whole process over again.

As the Thing can be anything or anyone, suspicions mount among the researchers. Carpenter assembled a crackerjack team of character actors who are not only excellent in their roles but unknown enough to lend the cast a believable normalcy. Anyone could be the Thing, because, apart from Russell, no one brings any star quality to the film. Wilford Brimley's Dr. Blair goes mad when he sees a computer projection for what would happen to the world population ever got off the Antarctic, but his panic, along with that of station commander Garry (Donald Moffat), feels justified and realistic, given the fantastical circumstances. As they and other crew members spend much of their time looking anxiously at one another, Childs (Keith David) remains steely and calm, but his exterior only belies his own panic. When the others accuse pilot R.J. McCready for being just a little too quick with solutions, Childs falls in line with the consensus with noticeable speed.

Of the Carpenter-Russell collaborations, The Thing features Russell's most low-key performance. As Carpenter plays this body horror picture with a surprisingly straight face, Russell can't play the heroic buffoon that he does in Big Trouble or, to a more satiric extent, Escape From New York. Instead, he's the one who maintains a genuine calm, capable of assessing the situation and reacting to each problem. As he is assured of himself, he suspects Childs of being the Thing, given that Childs leads the accusations of suspicion against him. Their rivalry brings out some of the Plissken in Russell, and David holds his own with his deep baritone and commanding but funny presence.

As I said at the start of the review, the effects are simply fantastic. The gore arcs across the screen as webs of flesh draw in the next victim, and blood flows freely. In the confines of the station, the gore only entraps the characters further, and outside the splashes of blood clash disturbingly with the pure white snow (this would be played to much greater effect in the Coens' Fargo). Bottin's designs for the partly-assimilated beast and those unfortunate to get caught in its snare are ingenious: in one terrific scene, a copy's torso suddenly bursts open when shocked with a defibrillator, sprouts cartilage teeth, then closes on the helper's hands. When the others try to burn it, the copy's head comes off, grows spindly legs and scurries off to safety. It's some sort of schlock masterstroke.

Almost as noteworthy as the effects, though is the score. One of a precious few Carpenter films not to feature a self-composed score, The Thing instead boasts a track from legendary score composer Ennio Morricone. Carpenter contributes a few snippets for the more horrific moments, and his synthesizer blends wonderfully with Morricone's more traditional (yet no less tense) soundtrack.

The Thing cements John Carpenter's ability to make a small budget film (estimated at $10 million) feel like a proper blockbuster. Both this and Escape From New York are largely insular thanks to their budgets and Carpenter's writing, but they feel like large-scale action and horror pictures. That ability to spin straw into gold has endeared the director to me greatly as I work my way through old favorites and new experiences, and The Thing ranks as one of his finest achievements. Despite its quality, however, it marked the start of Carpenter's box office decline, barely earning back its low budget domestically. Eventually, commercial failure appeared to take its psychological toll on the director, and he's been in rough waters since the '90s, but naturally this excellent feature found a second life on home video. Thank God for nerds and shut-ins.