I’m sorry. That title line should read,
“And now, fought with the terrible weapons of Super Science(!), menacing all mankind and every creature on Earth comes: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS!”
So our Humble Narrator concludes as the black-and-white pre-title montage of World War stock footage gives way to the bright, technicolor titles of this, the Alien Invasion movie that inspired all subsequent Alien Invasion movies. All of them – from the Independence Days of my childhood to the Battle: Los Angeles of today – owe their existence to this…which in turn owes its own existence to Orson Welles. Continue reading The War of the Worlds (1953)
The 1980s saw a remasculization of American cinema. After long years languishing inside various genre ghettos (from sci-fi to vigilante to blaxploitation), the Action film took on a shambling semblance of life all its own. When you look at Westerns, Cop Dramas, or Spy Pics from the 60s and 70s, distinct hallmarks of their diverse genres remain apparent, intact. By 1982, with First Blood, we see these conventions reincarnated as a horrific Frankenstein of a thing, neither fish nor foul. A death mongering genre that dominated the Industry well into the 1990s, putting butts in seats worldwide with its fetish for explosions and ever-more-elaborate weaponry.
In the far flung future of…for all intents and purposes, 1967…the Fuji Astronautical Flight Center, Japan’s answer to Cape Canaveral, prepares a sixth manned mission to Mars. The previous five met mysterious ends at the hands of equally-mysterious UFOs supposedly camped out in interplanetary space. “Your job,” a FAFC flunky tells the doomed sixth crew of gullible space monkeys, “is to determine what’s stopping us from reaching Mars.”
They Live is one of those unfortunately good movies that cannot be adequately analyzed without betraying the very elements designed to entrance first time viewers and inspire the unfettered love that those of us who’ve seen the movie far too many times still hold. As such, standard Spoiler Warnings apply. All bastards unfortunate enough to have never experience a context-free viewing of this picture are hereby placed On Notice. You’ve been warned. They Live, We Sleep.
Moving on, we find writer/director/producer John Sayles, whom I first encountered through my mother and the 1997 jungle bloodbath, Men with Guns. But let’s not even go there.