History has proven that certain movies get a bum rap as a result of peoples ignorance and their lack of knowledge of the movie business. I'm a firm beliver of the fact that the cast alone has little, or none, relevance to the underlying quality of the movie. A movie with a low entertainment value can still be a good movie if you're willing to look at all aspects of the production, the plot, the characters, and even the filming of the movie itself. The death of movies is however mostly driven by moviegoers overly dramatized focus on the leading cast. 

• If a movie has a famous cast then people immediately assume that its a great movie, even after its initial screening and bad reviews people tend to flock into the cinema. Look at the collective work of Kevin Costner, he has made crap after crap ever since the early 90's, his movies still manage to gather a big enough crowd so that the budget can be evened out.
  
  
• If a movie has a unknown cast or if those old guys with hats who are still reviewing movies fail to talk about these actors, the general public thinks that its a bad flick and don't even bother to take the chance at the boxoffice. I've even experienced cases where dumbos have slashed a movie without ever having watched it in the first place. Its also common that unless one comes from the music business, a persons transition from one field of entertainment into movies isn't taken lightly by the public.
  

I might be shooting myself in the foot aswell as undermining the whole site by mentioning that i'm a longtime WWF/WWE fan. The macho part of me likes to watch guys beat the crap out of eachother (yupp, in a non-gay fashion), but the moviemaniac part of me sees the acting as intriguing. One has to put the acting of the wrestlers in a different context. A main event matchup can last up to 30mins, during this time we see a couple of muscular guys throwing eachother all over the arena, as if this wasn't enough, they also have to act out certain plotlines that have been laid out over the season. I think they do a damn good job given the circumstances.

The strange thing about wrestlers and acting is that although they do a nice work in their own environment, they totally crashland in the conversion to the mainstream cinema. Look at Hulk "Hollywood" Hogans track record, not exactly something to be proud about except for his role in Rocky 3. Hulk Hogan has had a one big role, the role in screwing up other wrestlers chances of becoming successfull actors. Since he himself has been, and still is, the front person for the whole wrestling business, his work is alway looked upon as a benchmark. So when mr.Hollywood stars in garbage as Suburban Commando & "Santa with muscles", no wonder why fans question the quality of movies starring other wrestlers. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is probably the only wrestler-turned-actor that has made it big in hollywood, his work continues to improve from one movie to the other.

Roddy Piper can be credited with atleast two great movies, the first one being his role as Sam Hell in Hell comes to frogtown (long discussion, i might write about some time in the near future). The other one is a movie about a secret alien invation, some sunglasses, medias influence on humans, and a legendary fight lasting for almost 10 minutes. I'm talking about "They live", written and directed by John Carpenter.

We start off with the character called Nada (Piper), a redneck-mullet-wearing-outsider, he arrives to L.A in the lookout for some work and a place to stay. Since he's not a rocket scientist he has to settle for some minor construction work and living like a homeless in a lesser glamourous part of town. Sleeping over in a shanty town he notices that the church right across is harbouring a mysterious group of people, in contrast to daytime there's a lot of activity by nightfall. He soon finds out that this is some sort of a rebel organization fighting for a yet unknown goal.

One night the church gets raided in a very brutal fashion by the police, everything is destructed and the group more or less beaten up. Nada uses this opportunity to snatch one of the boxes that have been coming in and out of the church in large trucks, hoping that it would contain something precious he soon gets disappointed. The box contains only cheap sunglasses.

The suspense starts when Nada chooses to use one of the sunglasses only to find out that they work as some sort of filter, showing a different reality in a sense, through the sunglasses he can see large billboards with subliminal messages. All newspapers and magazines are also covered with the simple messages written with black on white. The view through the glasses is also in black and white. The problem is that only he can see these messages, everyone else seem to go on with their regular lives. The rebel organization wasn't fighting for something, but against someone...

It doesn't take many footsteps before he realizes the traumatic situation. Not only does he see the hidden messages, but he also sees regular people as scary skeleton looking aliens. He walks along putting the sunglasses on and off, he comes to the conclusion that only richer looking individuals and the police appear to be defaced.

After the now legendary 10 minute of fight with his friend Frank, played by Keith David (Pitch Black), in order to make him try out the sunglasses, they track down the rebel organization in search of the truth. The truth is that the defaced humans are infact aliens in the quest for world domination. The aliens are disguising themselves as rich humans with subsequent big pockets so that they can buy themselves into important positions in society. The ultimate plan is to use politican parties to overthrow the current administration.

There are almost too many reasons to love this movie, the analytic moviefanatic side of me wants to mention topics as the secret alien invation and the impact that the media has on us as good reasons to watch the flick. Eventhough the movie shows a extreme use subliminal messages, science and history tells us that this in reality is a chillingly effective way to manipulate the mind. But the real reasons to watch the movie, on a pure entertainment level, are

• The fight between Roddy Piper and Keith David which lasts almost 10minutes. Its almost like Homer Simpson stepping on the rake, first its funny, then its stupid, but after the 10th time it becomes down right hilarious.
  
  
• Roddy Pipers became legendary for implementing the line "I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum"
  

They live is one of those movies that got lost in the 80's and failed to get revived in the late 90's as many other productions from the same decade. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that John Carpenter was the director, most people don't respect his work as well as they should. He is often set aside as the director of Halloween + some other slasher movies. Ok i admit that some of his movies don't have a huge budget, e.g "They live", that doesn't stop them from being good cinematic experiences.