Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.
This week, it’s yet another Falsone episode.
Episode 6.6 “Birthday”
(Dir by Alison MacLean, originally aired on November 7th, 1997)
This episode is an example of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good part of the episode is that Mary Pembleton finally goes into labor and gives birth to a son. Andre Braugher was so intense on this show that it was always nice to see an episode where Frank could just be happy.
The bad is that Georgia Rae Mahoney has surveillance camera footage of Kellerman killing Luther Mahoney. The Mahoney stuff is just getting dragged out. As Luther Mahoney, Erik Todd Dellums was a magnificent villain. Hazelle Goodman is considerably less compelling as Georgia Rae but, then again, the writers aren’t doing her any favor by having Georgia Rae always talk like a comic book villain.
The ugly is that the main storyline is yet another Falsone story. This time, Falsone, Lewis, and Stivers investigate the rape and violent assault of a woman named Grace Riviera (Allison Folland). As you might expect, Falsone takes the case — wait for it — PERSONALLY! When one suspect doesn’t give Falsone the answers that he wants in the box, Falsone beats him up. He guarantees Giardello that he will close the case. Giardello responds that he likes Falsone. Well, good for Giardello, I guess.
As I’ve said before, there’s several problems with Falsone’s character. The biggest one is that Falsone doesn’t really have much depth, especially when compared to characters like Pemblton, Bayliss, or even Lewis. He’s a collection of cop show cliches. He’s the epitome of everything that Homicide was supposed to be against. Jon Seda’s one-note performance is jarring when compared to the rest of the cast. Callie Thorne’s Laura Ballard may not be a particularly interesting addition to the ensemble but at least Thorne can show a hint of emotion.
The biggest problem with Falsone is the way that this season keeps trying to force him on the viewer. If a viewer wants to watch Pembelton, Bayliss, Munch, or any of other other detective solve a murder, they’re out of luck. It’s the Falsone show!
This episode ends with Falsone going to the hospital to tell Grace that he’s arrested the man who attacked her, just to discover that Grace died. It’s not the shocking moment that the show meant it to be. And emotionally, it falls flat because it’s a Falsone moment.
Homicide is the series that I want to review. I have no interest in The Falsone Show.
When I was 11 years old, I spent about a month and a half living in a motel with my mom and my sisters. We were between homes, and since my mom didn’t really have the money to pay for our rooms, she and my two oldest sisters would work as maids during the day while my sister Erin and I stayed in our own room and watched stuff on the television that we probably shouldn’t have been watching. (“What are you watching!?” Mom would say as either Erin or I grabbed the remote and tried to get the TV off of HBO as quickly as possible.)
In retrospect, I know that all probably sounds very dramatic and traumatic, but I have to admit that, at the time, it just felt like an adventure. I was jealous of my mom and my sisters getting to wear uniforms every day and basically go anywhere they wanted in the motel. I would ask my mom and sisters about what they found in the rooms they had to clean, and I would beg for a chance to go with them because I figured it had to be fun to see how other people lived. They always refused. Years later, my sister Megan would tell me that they usually just found discarded underwear, used condoms, and half-eaten fast food.
Sometimes I would sit in the front lobby, bothering whoever was working behind the desk and trying to overhear conversations. I loved watching the various people who checked in and out of the motel, and I would imagine amazing identities and life stories for them. At night, I would listen for sounds coming from other rooms. One time, the police were called because the people below us were fighting, and I remember watching the reflection of the red lights flashing across the walls of my room.
That said, I think my main memory of living at that motel was that there was a creek right next to the hotel (though I always envision it as a raging river whenever I think back to those days), and on the other side of that creek there was a drive-in movie theater. Every night, I would go out on the balcony and look into the distance, at the silent images flickering across the giant screens. The fact that I couldn’t actually hear what Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were saying only made the experience more enjoyable. I could make up my own stories to go along with the images. Watching those movies became a ritual for me. I had to watch every night, at the same time, and if anyone tried to keep me from doing so, I would throw a fit. Though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, for me that drive-in came to represent stability.
I found myself thinking back to those days as I watched Surviving the Sleepover, a Lifetime film from 2024. Hannah (Sloan Mannino) is a teenage girl who has been living in a motel with her mother (Dawn Marie) ever since they moved to a new town. Hannah, whose father was killed in a fire, does not have any sisters or a drive-in to keep her company. Instead, she uploads videos and spends her time missing all of her friends. However, when popular girl Melissa (Jenna Hogan) invites Hannah to a sleepover, it seems like things might be looking up.
Of course, they’re not.
Melissa is mean as well as popular. Melissa is also obsessed with her stepbrother (Joshua Bertell), and when it becomes apparent that he likes Hannah, Melissa goes off the deep end. Soon Melissa is threatening her guests with a knife, tying people up in the attic, and basically being a very bad host.
This is an enjoyably berserk little Lifetime film, one that understands the importance of embracing the melodrama. Jenna Hogan gives an entertaining performance as the unhinged Melissa. From the moment she complained that Hannah was still “salty” just because Melissa had attempted to drown her earlier, I knew this film was going to be a Lifetime classic.
And yet, as I watched the film, my main thought was that this all could have been avoided if the nation’s drive-ins hadn’t closed. When you don’t have a drive-in theater to visit, you end up threatening people at sleepovers. That’s just the truth of the matter.
Max Baer, Jr. co-wrote, co-produced and co-starred in this southern fried thriller about a couple of good ‘ole boys (brothers Alan & Jesse Vint) who break down in the wrong county. The sheriff (Baer), who’s somewhat suspicious of the boys, goes after them with a fierce vengeance when his wife is murdered.
I’m a big fan of this classic drive-in film. Baer is excellent as the small town sheriff who eventually goes mad with rage, which he directs squarely onto a couple of brothers who happen to be passing through. The film takes its time with the story and the characters, and when everything goes to hell near the end, you can somewhat understand why the sheriff goes nuts. It’s a nightmare scenario built around the suspicion of outsiders and then jumping to the wrong conclusions when a tragedy occurs. It definitely seems like something that could happen, and that’s one of the things that makes it so good. The marketers of the film definitely agreed. In a move that was very hot at the time (THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, WALKING TALL, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, etc.), the ads for the film implied that the film was based on true events. While that may not be true, the plan worked as the film was made for roughly $250,000 and would go on to earn over $30 million worldwide. Interestingly, I’ve read that Baer wrote the film’s story on the backs of his BEVERLY HILLBILLIES scripts during breaks in filming on the television classic. Eager to break free from his Jethro typecasting, he took matters into his own hands and made it happen!
I’m also a big fan of the Vint Brothers, Alan and Jesse. Both are good here as the drifting brothers looking for a little fun before reporting in for some military service the next week. Their fun turns into a horrific struggle for survival when they find themselves the target of the sheriff’s misplaced wrath. As part of the “This Week in Charles Bronson Podcast,” I was blessed to be part of an interview with Robert F. Lyons, who’s close friends in real life with the boys. He told us a fun story about them all making these motorized airplanes that they would then fly around and try to knock each other out of the sky. Robert would laugh and giggle while he talked about it. Alan had an important role a year after this was made in the Charles Bronson action hit BREAKOUT. In the film, he stands up to Bronson at a critical moment and lives to tell about it, which is not something every actor can say!
And what can I say about Jesse. Over the last few years, he’s actually become a fun acquaintance in real life. If you enjoy these 70’s “redneck” movies, I recommend one called BLACK OAK CONSPIRACY (1977) that Jesse co-wrote and stars in, with his buddy Lyons playing an over the top villain. Jesse’s a great guy, and he’s very proud of MACON COUNTY LINE. He told me one day that Tarantino has said it was one of “the best stories in cinema!” In the first season of his Video Archives podcast, I personally heard Tarantino brag on Jesse’s performance in THE FORBIDDEN WORLD. I love it when good things happen to good people.
First published in 1976, John Farris’s The Fury tells the story of two teenagers whose powers could change the world. Robin and Gillian both possess potentially devastating psychic abilities. Robin is the son of Peter, a government assassin. Peter’s boss, a demented film lover named Childermass, eventually learns of Robin’s power and kidnaps him. Peter is led to believe Robin is dead; Robin is led to believe the same of Peter. Gillian, meanwhile, is Robin’s psychic twin. The book implies that Robin and Gillian have lived several past lives, always connected and always returning after death. Robin realizes this. Gillian does not, and is genuinely confused by her powers.
While Robin and his growing abilities are manipulated by a doctor ordered to keep him placated through sex, Childermass spends his time trying to track down Gillian. Peter, having discovered that Robin isn’t dead, is now searching for Gillian as well.
The Fury is a tawdry, pulpy mix of psychic horror and over-the-top espionage, a collision of the entertainingly sordid and the shockingly vulgar. (Let’s just say the novel goes into a lot of detail about how Robin is seduced by his psychiatrist.) If the plot seems familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen Brian De Palma’s film adaptation. Farris wrote both the novel and the screenplay. As over-the-top as De Palma’s version was — he was still riding high on Carrie, so he got to indulge every trademark flourish — Farris’s novel is somehow even more flamboyant, stuffed with odd characters and action sequences that sometimes seem to erupt almost at random. That actually works in the book’s favor. It creates a secret world of psychics, assassins, and pervy doctors living in the shadows of ours.
It’s very much a book of the ’70s, and as with any work that epitomizes an era, whether that’s a problem depends on how easily offended the reader is. It mixes Watergate-era paranoia with telekinetic mayhem and even a hint of New Age nonsense. It also features sex scenes that almost read like a parody of ’70s swinger culture — though it’s harder to laugh when you remember Robin is meant to be 14 in the novel. (When De Palma made the film, he was smart enough to cast actors in their twenties and keep the characters’ ages ambiguous.) It’s sordid and trashy in a way few authors could get away with today.
Sordid and trashy, but undeniably entertaining. That’s The Fury.
With the Astros and the Red Sox having been eliminated during the Wild Card round, the MLB postseason is now down to eight teams.
For the National League, the Braves, Dodgers, Padres, and Brewers are still in contention for a trip to the World Series.
For the American League, it’s the Yankees, the Rays, White Sox, and Guardians. Since the Rangers did not win the games that they needed to win and I really didn’t feel like swallowing my pride and supporting the Astros, I have been cheering for the Rays since the season began.
Yesterday, in the first game of their divisional series, the Rays defeated the Yankees, 1-0. That score still looks strange to me but a win is a win. As a Rangers fans, I’m used to winning by either a small amount or losing by a huge amount. You can score only one run and not give up a grand slam in the 9th inning? I had no idea.
A Rays vs. Dodgers world series feels inevitable right now. Last year, I cheered for the Dodgers because I’ll support any team against the Blue Jays. This year — Go Rays!
At the start of 2012’s She Made Them Do It, Sarah Jo Pender (Jenna Dewan) is a student at Purdue University who has a good-for-nothing boyfriend named Rick (Greyston Holt) and two roommates who think nothing using her tuition money to buy drugs. At first, Sarah seems to be frustrated with the losers around her but, after smoking some weed and doing some coke, she’s soon dancing and making out with another woman while Rick plays a video game. (Who among us hasn’t?)
Sarah leaves to get some cigarettes and, when she comes back, she discovers that her roommates have been executed by a shotgun. A shaken Rick explains that an argument over money led to him retrieving the shotgun (one that Sarah bought for him because Rick’s criminal record made it illegal for him to buy a gun) and killing everyone else in the house. At least, that’s what Sarah claims Rick told her. When the police eventually arrest Rick and Sarah, Rick claims that Sarah was the mastermind behind the killings. The prosecution describes Sarah as being a “female Charles Manson” and she’s sentenced to 110 years in prison.
Yikes! That’s a long time! Luckily, the prison is a pretty nice place. Sure, some of the inmates are a little rough and everyone is initially jealous of Sarah’s combination of brains and beauty. But the prison also hosts courtyard dance parties and eventually, Sarah proves herself as a jailhouse lawyer. Much like Hester Prynne, Sarah show herself to be able and hard-working. That said, prison is still prison and soon, Sarah is plotting her escape. Luckily, there’s a smitten prison guard (Nels Lennarson) who is willing to help her out.
The title She Made Them Do It has, of course, a double meaning. During her trial, the prosecution claims that Sarah Jo Pender made Rick murder her roommates. Rick even produces a letter that he claims Sarah wrote to him in which she confessed to being responsible. Even though the letter is itself dismissed as being a forgery, the courts still rule that there is more than enough evidence to argue that Sarah was involved with the murders. However, the title also refers to the fact that everyone in prison seems to be determined to help Sarah. Nearly everyone who she meets after she escapes tries to provide Sarah with some sort of aid. In the end, everyone claims that she made them do it. A few regret helping her but the majority do not.
Because the controversy over Sarah Jo Pender’s conviction is still ongoing, the film tries to play it both ways as far as the question of her guilt is concerned. We see her version of the murder. We see Rick’s version of the murder. In prison, we see her helping the other prisoners. Outside of prison, we watch as she clearly manipulates everyone that she meets. There’s nothing wrong with a little ambiguity but this film takes it so far that Sarah often seems to be a totally different character from scene to scene. Jenna Dewan tries her best and the film’s early scenes definitely capture the sordid atmosphere of trailer park drama but the film’s refusal to take a definite stand on Sarah’s guilt or innocence ultimately makes the story feel shallow. It’s one thing for the prisoners and the guards to feel as if they don’t know what’s going on in Sarah Jo Pender’s head. It’s another thing for the audience to feel that way.
As for the real Sarah Jo Pender, she is still in prison and she still claims to be innocent. She had a lot of supporters. I wouldn’t consider myself to be one of them. I doubt she ‘s a female Charles Manson but I also have a hard time buying her claim that every piece of evidence against her was just a coincidence or a case of bad luck. Unfortunately, some activists are so eager to turn every conviction into a miscarriage of justice that they ignore anything that doesn’t support their preferred narrative. (Call it the Mumia Abu-Jamal effect.) Sarah Jo Pender’s earliest possible relate date is 2054, when she will be 75 years old.
He didn’t make a title card; so, I don’t have to either! Take that, Ethan! This is your run of the mill interstellar space craft crashes on an unknown alien planet and they wander around and get eaten.
Have none of these people ever gone hiking? There is dangerous stuff right here on planet Earth that should make you wary!
If you are ever on a space craft that crashes and you see bizarre abandoned stuff everywhere, don’t investigate like you’re in an 80s horror movie.
In 1968’s Castle of the Creeping Flesh, a group of wastrel aristocrats stumble upon a castle inhabited by Graf Saxon (Howard Vernon). It is explained to Baron Brack (Michel Lemoine) and his drunken friends that Saxon’s daughter died just an hour earlier. Everyone is sorry to hear that, but they still want to spend the night at the castle for… reasons, I guess.
Actually, their reasons aren’t that obscure. Night is falling. It’s stormy. There’s a bear on the loose. The Baron and his friends have their reasons for not wanting to travel at night, but that doesn’t change the fact that our film’s “heroes” are demanding that a grieving father not only put them up for the night but also serve them dinner. Saxon would be totally justified in kicking them all out and allowing the bear to have its way with them, but one of the Baron’s friends (Claudia Butenuth) looks just like Saxon’s dead daughter.
Scenes of Saxon looking depressed are mixed with scenes of the Baron’s friends all trying to seduce each other. Meanwhile, a group of surgeons in the castle’s basement are performing open-heart surgery. Every few moments the film cuts to documentary footage of an actual operation, and it’s pretty icky to watch. The heart is an amazing organ, but it’s not really something you want to spend a lot of time staring at. Saxon is trying either to save his daughter or to bring her back to life; the film is never really clear which.
Watching this German film, I was reminded of the work of Jess Franco, and I was not shocked to discover that Franco himself was credited with the incoherent story. The credited director is Adrian Hoven, but it would not shock me if Franco had a hand in the direction as well. Everything about the film—from the meandering storyline to the perpetually horny characters to the scenes of aristocratic decadence—brought Franco to mind. Like many of his films, Castle of the Creeping Flesh is atmospheric and totally incoherent.
Also leading me to suspect Franco contributed more than an outline is the casting of his favorite leading man, Howard Vernon, as Saxon. Vernon plays essentially the same character he did in the Dr. Orloff films. Unlike his co-stars, he is at least consistently entertaining. Outside of Udo Kier, no actor captured wasted European decadence the way Howard Vernon did. If any actor was born to play an early Bond villain, it was Vernon. (When I read Fleming’s originals I pictured him every time Blofeld appeared.) Here he gives a better performance than the material deserved. That was usually how it went with Howard Vernon.
Castle of the Creeping Flesh is a slow, incoherent film, but it has occasional moments strange enough to be entertaining. One woman sensually licks a chicken bone as part of her seduction ritual. Another character runs into that bear mentioned earlier. And of course no one seems to notice there is open-heart surgery happening a few doors down. It’s weird the way any film with Jess Franco’s fingerprints usually is.
That said, Howard Vernon is the main reason to watch. He did his best.
“It does not surprise me that the Devil is an Irishman. Though I thought perhaps he might be a bit taller.” — Friend
There is something deeply unsettling about a horror film that takes place almost entirely in broad daylight, and A Field in England uses that unease to devastating effect. Ben Wheatley’s 2014 release is a black-and-white nightmare about deserters, mushrooms, occult power, buried treasure, and men slowly losing whatever grip they had on reality. It is cryptic, abrasive, occasionally funny, deliberately repetitive, and sometimes so visually and sonically intense that it feels less like watching a film than being trapped inside a bad trip with several deeply unpleasant Englishmen.
Set during the English Civil War, A Field in England begins with Whitehead, played by Reece Shearsmith, fleeing an unseen battle. He is an educated man and an apprentice to an alchemist, although he is not particularly brave, heroic, or prepared for the chaos around him. Whitehead soon falls in with a small group of deserters: the blunt Cutler, the nervous Friend, and the worldly Trower. Their immediate goal is basic survival. They want food, ale, somewhere safe to rest, and preferably no more involvement in the war. Naturally, things do not work out that way.
The group crosses an enormous field and encounters O’Neill, played with unnerving authority by Michael Smiley. O’Neill is an alchemist, a manipulator, and possibly something more supernatural. He claims there is treasure buried in the field and forces the men into helping him dig for it. From there, the story gets progressively stranger, particularly after the men consume mushrooms that may or may not be supernatural in origin. The film’s central question is never simply whether the characters are hallucinating. Wheatley keeps pushing the viewer toward a more uncomfortable possibility: what if the hallucinations are revealing something real?
That ambiguity is the movie’s greatest strength and its biggest obstacle. A Field in England gives the audience fragments rather than firm answers. There are references to stolen papers, alchemical knowledge, magical control, a rival master, buried riches, and rituals that may have been going on long before these men stumbled into the field. But Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump never stop to explain the rules. The field seems both ordinary and impossible. It is a place where history, warfare, class resentment, religious anxiety, superstition, and psychedelic terror all collapse into one ugly patch of grass.
The setting is especially impressive because it is so limited. Much of the film takes place in one open field, but Wheatley makes that restriction feel like a trap rather than a budgetary compromise. The wide, empty landscape should offer freedom, yet it becomes increasingly claustrophobic. There is nowhere to hide, no landmark to guide anyone out, and no real sense that walking away would accomplish anything. The field becomes a purgatory, a prison, and an altered state of mind all at once. The characters are technically outdoors the whole time, but they might as well be locked in a dungeon.
Laurie Rose’s black-and-white cinematography is essential to that effect. The movie is beautiful in a harsh, unfriendly way. The high-contrast images turn grass, clouds, trees, faces, and dirt into something almost mythic. Instead of giving the Civil War setting a polished historical-drama look, the monochrome photography makes it feel ancient and unstable, like a series of damaged photographs or illustrations pulled from a cursed old book. The lack of color also helps detach the film from realism. Blood, mud, sweat, and the field itself lose their normal visual identity, making everything feel one step removed from the world the audience recognizes.
The film’s most famous stylistic choices arrive during its hallucinatory stretches. Wheatley uses strobing images, freeze frames, abrupt flashes, distorted sound, overlapping dialogue, and violently fractured editing to turn the characters’ mushroom-induced breakdowns into sensory assaults. These sequences are not designed to be pleasant or even easily readable. At times, they are exhausting. That is clearly the point. The men are losing control of time, memory, language, and physical space, and the film wants the viewer to feel that disorientation rather than observe it safely from a distance.
This can make A Field in England a demanding watch. There are stretches where the characters repeat themselves, argue in circles, dig holes, pull ropes, or speak in riddles that do not immediately add up. Some viewers will probably find this fascinating, while others will feel that Wheatley is testing their patience for the sake of being weird. Both reactions are fair. The film occasionally comes close to mistaking opacity for depth. Not every bizarre image carries the same force, and the narrative sometimes feels like it is daring the audience to keep watching rather than drawing them in naturally.
Still, the performances keep the movie from floating completely away into abstraction. Shearsmith is especially good as Whitehead, whose intelligence does not save him from terror or humiliation. He plays the character as someone who desperately wants to understand the occult forces surrounding him but may be too frightened and compromised to confront them. There is something deeply sad about Whitehead’s weakness. He is not a clean-cut innocent, but he is also clearly outmatched by O’Neill.
Michael Smiley, meanwhile, is fantastic as O’Neill. He does not play the role as a standard screaming madman. That would be too easy. Instead, he is controlled, smug, and almost conversational, which makes him much more threatening. O’Neill treats cruelty like an intellectual exercise. He speaks as though he is always several steps ahead, and his certainty becomes frightening because nobody else in the film can confidently say whether he is a fraud, a sorcerer, or a man who has simply learned how to exploit frightened people. Smiley gives the character the exact kind of ugly charisma needed for a villain who may be entirely human but feels almost demonic.
The supporting cast also deserves credit. Peter Ferdinando, Richard Glover, and Ryan Pope give the film its rougher, more grounded energy. Their banter provides an odd kind of dark humor, especially early on, before the nightmare fully takes over. Wheatley has always had a talent for making people sound casually vicious and absurd at the same time, and A Field in England contains that familiar bite. These are not noble historical figures delivering grand speeches. They are exhausted, hungry, crude men trying to survive a war they barely understand.
What makes the movie linger is how it turns that survival instinct into something ugly. The field strips away the characters’ supposed identities. Religion, social rank, education, loyalty, and military allegiance all become flimsy protections. Whitehead may be literate and knowledgeable; O’Neill may possess real occult power; Cutler may be physically capable; Trower may seem more practical than the others. None of it guarantees safety. Everyone is vulnerable to fear, manipulation, and the possibility that they have walked into a place where ordinary rules no longer apply.
As horror, A Field in England is less interested in jump scares than spiritual contamination. It is about the horror of not knowing whether you are seeing reality, madness, divine punishment, or the Devil at work. Wheatley uses the English countryside not as a comforting pastoral image, but as something ancient, indifferent, and possibly hostile. The movie shares some DNA with folk horror, but it is rougher and less traditionally structured than something like The Wicker Man. It also has the psychedelic aggression of a 1960s or 1970s experimental film, filtered through Wheatley’s mean streak and dark sense of humor.
Ultimately, A Field in England is not an easy movie to love, but it is difficult to dismiss. It is too committed to its mood, too visually striking, and too full of uneasy ideas to be written off as empty weirdness. Wheatley makes the viewer work, and sometimes he pushes that demand to the point of frustration. But when the film locks into its nightmare rhythm, it is genuinely haunting. The sound design rattles around in your head, the images feel burned into your memory, and the field itself starts to seem like the kind of place you would never want to wander into alone.
For viewers who want a straightforward historical horror movie, A Field in England may feel like a punishing experience. For anyone willing to follow Ben Wheatley into a muddy, surreal, pitch-black vision of war, magic, and madness, it is one of the strangest British horror films of its era. It does not explain itself, it does not comfort the audience, and it definitely does not care whether everyone comes out of it satisfied. That stubbornness is exactly what makes it memorable.
“I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum.”
— John Nada (Roddy Piper)
Roddy Piper improvised the most famous line in 1988’s They Live.
When John Carpenter was casting They Live, he specifically sought someone who was not a film star to play John Nada. The character was meant to be a drifter, an often-homeless man who lived on the fringes of society and did what he had to do to survive. Carpenter viewed John as the epitome of “the forgotten man,” and he knew that casting a big star would sabotage what he was going for. Ultimately, Carpenter cast professional wrestler Roddy Piper as Nada, and history, as they say, was made. Piper showed up on set with a notebook full of one-liners he had jotted down but hadn’t gotten a chance to use while wrestling. The famous line was not in the script. Piper came up with it on his own and spontaneously used it in the bank scene. Carpenter kept it in the film.
The line worked because of its combination of unhinged humor and genuine bravado. It was a line that would have worked before a wrestling match but, even more importantly, a line that perfectly captured John Nada’s worldview after he put on the dark glasses and saw the reality of the world around him. The line was pure John Nada.
John Nada. John Nothing. It was the perfect name for a man with no home, no family, and, until he meets Keith David’s Frank Armitage, no real friends. He’s the 1980s version of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name. John has nothing, and once he puts on those glasses, that becomes his greatest strength. John has nothing to lose, and therefore the aliens who have convinced everyone else to “Obey” have nothing to offer him. Because society has given him nothing, he’s far less susceptible to being manipulated. He’s too angry to be controlled, and once he sees the truth, he becomes determined to share it with everyone. When he and Frank fight in the alley, it’s not just a fight scene. It’s John committing to opening his friend’s eyes, no matter how much pain it may cause. John, who lives on the fringes, who has no home, and who would probably get the police called on him if he ever showed up in the suburbs, sacrifices his life for humanity. He still manages to give the finger to the aliens before he goes, and somehow that feels like the character’s greatest triumph. He remains defiant to the end. No one brainwashes John Nada.
They Live works because of John Nada, and John Nada works as a character because he’s vulnerable throughout. If he were played by a traditional star, we would have no doubt about his ability to defeat the aliens. But with Piper in the role, we’re not quite sure. John Nada doesn’t set out to be a hero, but by the end of They Live, he definitely is one.
