They Live

John Carpenter’s They Live is a sci-fi action film disguised as anti-capitalist propaganda — or maybe it’s the other way around. Roddy Piper plays a drifter who discovers sunglasses that reveal subliminal messages controlling humanity (‘OBEY,’ ‘CONSUME,’ ‘CONFORM’) and the alien elite hiding in plain sight. The film’s satire of Reagan-era consumerism is savage, its imagery has been appropriated by every protest movement since, and the alley fight between Piper and Keith David over a pair of sunglasses is the longest, most brutal, and most absurdly entertaining fistfight in cinema history — five minutes and thirty seconds of two men beating each other senseless over eyewear.