We are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be returning to The Beacon Cinema to sponsor a third theatrical screening to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund! And this time, we’re watching John Carpenter’s angry science fiction send up of free market capitalism in Reagan-era America: They Live!
When: Thursday, June 1st @ 7:30 pm
Where: The Beacon Cinema at 4405 Rainier Ave S., Seattle, WA 98118
Cost: Tickets at $12.50 each, with all admissions for PNW Starbucks Workers United
You can buy tickets now, but seats are limited!
RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS presents …JOHN CARPENTER’S THEY LIVE
With a filmography as diverse as John Carpenter’s, it can be easy to forget just how many our favorite movies he directed in his decades-long career. Seemingly alternating between box office gold with HALLOWEEN and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and commercial bombs that have since been re-evaluated as legitimate genre classics like THE THING and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, it’s inevitable that a few are going to be overlooked. Such a film is his 1988 pulpy science fiction tirade about media brainwashing and rapacious greed in the waning years of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America: THEY LIVE.
Professional wrestling’s bad boy, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper stars as Nada, a homeless drifter who comes to Los Angeles looking for work and stumbles upon to a pair of sunglasses that pierce the veil of a global conspiracy between a race of aliens who have already enslaved Earth through subliminal advertising and their human ruling class collaborators.
Piper’s often unhinged performance is a revelation. He gifts us some of the greatest ad-libbed one-liners in cinema history and, most famously, a nearly six minute-long fight scene with co-star Keith David where Piper reportedly asked David to actually hit him. You know, to make it look good.
THEY LIVE is like a mash-up of the sensibilities of Roger Corman and Noam Chomsky. This is a deliciously angry movie that isn’t concerned with creating the most thoughtful critique of obscene wealth disparity and corporate propaganda. This movie is pissed off, sometimes incoherently so. And in a world where the crimes of the richest 1% have gone intergalactic, THEY LIVE isn’t satisfied with making speeches. It’s too apoplectic for that. It wants to shoot aliens and blow up satellite dishes and burn this sucker down. Never has this movie never felt more terribly relevant.
This screening is sponsored by the RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! podcast as a benefit for the PACIFIC NORTHWEST STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED labor union, and 100% of the admissions will be donated to their Relief Fund.