I’ve always been a fan of B-movie viewing. There are shitty B-movies, and then “quality” B-movies. This one was definitely quality in my opinion. An interesting premise actually but the effects and the lead role played by none other than the WWF wrestler, Rowdy Roddy Piper, was a key component.

I think the quality of the premise/idea exists here because John Carpenter was the director and he’s a bad ass.

Basically Roddy Piper’s character is a “down on his luck” transient construction worker guy, looking for work in a new town/city. With eerie hints that something is going on like random abstract transmissions on Televisions, weird sonic noises sprinkled throughout the city/movie, it’s obvious something subversive is going on.

Roddy stumbles into box of Sunglasses he found from a suspicious looking church. When he puts the glasses on, all of a sudden every other human’s face walking around the city is actually alien and billboards, magazine covers, etc. are all short messages like “OBEY”, “DON’T QUESTION ANYTHING”, “SLEEP”, and more.

During the whole movie he finds other humans that know what’s going on and they’re the underground humans plotting to identify/overthrow the aliens. The humans invent conact lenses that behave the same as the sunglasses so that the aliens don’t know they can be seen.

The ending actually sucks. They manage to break into this underground base the aliens have set up, they shoot some dudes, blow up a control center and some other shit. At the end Roddy Piper makes it to the top of some apartment building, where sits some giant glowing glass tube responsible for running the whole alien operation of the city. He’s able to destroy it with one gun shot. You’d think aliens smart enough to pull off the deception they pulled off would be smart enough to hide the most crucial technological part of their whole effort in a more protected private place with guards all around it…..but hey..then it wouldn’t be a B-movie right?

Onward…