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The title is seen as graffiti and then later scrawled as "They Live We Sleep," abstrusely abutting Goya's "sueño de la razón." The stage is a Los Angeles homeless camp with shiny skyscrapers in the distance, tough times but the drifting prole (Roddy Piper) rolls with them: "I believe in America. I follow the rules." Pirate broadcasters in the church with glowing green windows, the red, white and blue of police cars in the dark, thus the rude awakening. Pulling back the veil is as simple as putting on sunglasses, suddenly the colonialists from Andromeda and their hidden messages can be observed as plain as day. "Obey" and "Consume" and "Marry and Reproduce" on billboards, "This Is Your God" on dollar bills. "Formaldehyde face!" he snaps at the ghoul in the supermarket, who replies with a Margaret Dumont-like huff of indignation. The skinned skull behind the Reagan smiling button, "free enterprisers" from outer space quite at home in the Eighties. "You aren't the first son of a bitch to wake up out of a dream." The Dziga Vertov Group's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is what's needed, John Carpenter delivers it and then some with a lacerating satirical raid on greed, subjugation, and vision itself. The hypnotizing TV tube, against it the goggles of radicalization. The most direct surrealism is that of things not being what they appear, getting a colleague (Keith David) to see it can take an alley slugfest that outdoes The Quiet Man, the rest of the world requires an exploding signal transmitter. A work of calm outrage and high pulp poetry, embodied by the blue-collar musclehead in flannel who nobly proclaims, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." Verhoeven in Starship Troopers has his own take on the cosmic "Third World" theme. With Meg Foster, George "Buck" Flower, Peter Jason, and Raymond St. Jacques.
--- Fernando F. Croce |