For those who can’t find much to their taste among current cinematic offerings, the coming days offer two iconoclastic movie classics onscreen here in the Valley, one from the ’80s and one from the ’70s. This Saturday night Cult Classics shows John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live; there are two shows, at 9:30 and 9:35 p.m. at Landmark Theatres in Scottsdale. Tickets start at $16.
The “They” of the title are skull-faced, pop-eyed aliens who invaded Earth long ago, and now use their superior technology to conceal not only their own presence but also that of the subliminal consumerist messages they’ve embedded in ubiquitous advertising. Our hero, a homeless guy named Nada (Roddy Piper), gets wise to the true state of the world when he tries on a pair of sunglasses he steals from a mysterious L.A. underground.
Immediately, he’s able to see things as they are: The words OBEY and CONSUME and MARRY AND REPRODUCE stare down from every billboard; paper money reads THIS IS YOUR GOD.
Based on a 1963 short story by Ray Nelson, this is, if not Carpenter’s best film, certainly his most ambitious and interesting, and probably my favorite; I greatly prefer it to the similarly themed The Matrix. Following a really intriguing, atmospheric and funny beginning driven along by Carpenter’s own thumping, bluesy music, They Live falls apart almost completely in its final third or so, with an extended, utterly pointless (but, I understand, much beloved) fight between Nada and another guy (Keith David), likely included as a sop to the fans of Piper the wrestler. This is followed by a shift to silly (though entertaining) shoot-’em-up action melodrama.
But it’s tough to shake the power of the movie’s most admirable invention, those magical bebop shades, and the unnerving visions that Nada sees through them. It’s just a shame that Carpenter couldn’t, so to speak, find a way to make us all look in the mirror while wearing them.
Then at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, May 23, the “Tuesday Night Classic” at various Harkins Theatres locations around the Valley will be the Mel Brooks favorite Blazing Saddles. Tickets are just $5.
It’s a commonplace to say – director and co-writer Brooks has said – that this movie couldn’t be made nowadays, and it’s probably true; the western parody’s freewheeling use of terrible language, especially the N-word, is probably more jolting today than it was in 1974.
It’s also one of the funniest of all American movies. Young Frankenstein, from later that same year, is a better piece of filmmaking by Brooks. But wonderful as Young Frankenstein is, the comparatively messy Blazing Saddles strikes deeper. Not only is it an affectionately riotous parody of the cowboy genre, it also keenly engages very real and deep-seated issues of racism in American life. Often, over the last decade or so, I’ve reflected that this film seemed like a prescient allegorical prophecy of our 44th President’s career.
For the uninitiated: the hero of Blazing Saddles is Bart (Cleavon Little), an amiable but unflappable Black man who is cynically appointed sheriff of the frontier town of Rock Ridge. The townies – led by the cranky, acerbic Olsen Johnson (David Huddleston) – unceremoniously reject him as soon as he rides into town, but he’s befriended by washed-up gunslinger Jim (Gene Wilder) aka The Waco Kid, and a hulking brute called Mongo (Alex Karras), both of whom help him defend the town from a land snatch by the wicked Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman). Bart also encounters the Dietrich-esque chanteuse Lily von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn).
These actors are all at the top of their game, and Brooks brings the film a brashly surreal directorial touch. Indeed, Blazing Saddles has a sunny, optimistic atmosphere that’s a tonic against the depressingly persistent bigotries it mocks. If you’ve never seen it, I recommend. But healthy as the film’s values are, you still may not want to bring the kids.
