They Live (1988)

Good evening House of Madness fiends:

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and family; I hope you're spending quality time with loved ones, and I sincerely hope nobody steps on your face tomorrow as you brave the malls for a Playstation 5. Speaking of stepped on faces, there's nothing more entertaining than a good old fashioned brouhaha, and "They Live" (1988) has the greatest fight sequence of all time. This is not up for debate, but all of us here trapped inside The House of Madness believe in freedom of opinion, so it's ok if you're wrong.

So, in honour of American Thanksgiving, let's discuss this John Carpenter classic, and give thanks to all the aliens, construction workers, and former wrestlers that brought us this gratuitous violence that would surely make a mob at JC Penny smile with delight.

"They Live" follows Nada (Roddy Piper), a down on his luck drifter, that gets a job doing construction after befriending a man named Frank (Keith David), who also fixes Nada up with a place to stay in a shanty town, soup kitchen included. Upon arrival, Nada realizes his new digs also include a pack of weirdos, delivering messages of government control, enslaving people in a dream-like state they unknowingly participate in daily. Do people actually listen to these lunatics!? That night, police raid and destroy the shanty town, along with the church where these perceived loonies held meetings. Were they actually onto something, or is this simply a case of the higher ups taking out the proverbial trash?

The next day, Nada decides to search the rubble, and discovers boxes upon boxes of sunglasses. They're not name brand, but hey, they'll do for a guy that just had a night that a vampire would have stayed inside to avoid. As soon as he puts on his new shades, Nada starts seeing things differently than they're perceived through his bare eyeballs. Billboards advertising products simply say 'obey', or 'consume', while a strange UFO seems to be hovering without a care or concern of being noticed. If that isn't enough to make someone question their sanity, what the fuck are these heinous looking things that are interacting with regular people? Nada enters a corner store, and sees the inhuman intruders on the TV, in the store, and everywhere he looks. "I take the glasses off, she looks like a regular person, huh? I put them back on, formaldehyde face!" might be my favourite line in any movie, and I've seen every Arnold Schwarzeneggar flick a minimum of four times.

Now that Nada has been exposed as a threat to the army of formaldehyde faces, there's only one thing he can do: get someone else to believe him before he's caught and the alien's lies are safe for another day, week, month, or however long this has been going on. Sounds simple enough, and Frank is just the guy he needs to vindicate his alien accusations. One problem, Frank is pissed because Nada didn't show for work, and since Frank put his name on the line for him, it's not sitting well in his once generous persona. And now we have come to the moment of the hour, the piece de resistance, the holy grail of fisticuffs, the brawl that changed 'em all, the.......ok, I think you get the point, so without further ado:

Greatest. Fight. Ever. For those of you seeing this for the first time ever, 1. You're welcome, and 2. If you really care what happens after this (I don't know why, as Rowdy Roddy Piper came here to chew bubblegum, and let you watch him kick ass, and he's allllll outta bubble gum), they band together to destroy the signal disguising the aliens, and humanity is now able to see the formaldehyde faces in the flesh, or lack thereof. Happy Thanksgiving!

Madness Meter: 9/10 (2.7 bonus points included for the fight scene)

NB