Carpenter Trio: Invasion of the Individual
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how it is depicted in Prince o f Darkness (Muir 142). While this is an interesting
notion to consider, it is important not to leave out the similarities in theme
between Prince o f Darkness and the following year’s release of They Live.
Prince o f Darkness and They Live are both strongly urban films. Carpenter takes
great pains to establish a location that emphasizes the run-down, crumbling
interface between the old Spanish church buildings of Southern California and the
dirty squalor of the vastly overpopulated city, an overpowering visual theme in
his previous films Assault on Precinct B, Escape From New York, and Big
Trouble in Little China, and used later in They Live, Escape From L.A., and
Vampires. Prince o f Darkness depicts a disgusting city in which the “street
schizos” are easily taken over by the influence of the Dark Lord. These shuffling,
homeless, homicidal zombies can be regarded as another poke at the fallout from
failed attempts at renewal of the American economy. These people, devoid of
employment, and cut off from support, express their anger at their situation by
turning on the organizations that they were told would uplift them—organized
science and organized religion.
Prince o f Darkness is unique in this trio of films for its modestly positive
ending. Without being too syrupy and heavy-handed, the conclusion of the film
attests to the strength of love as the ultimate force in the universe. However, the
love that defeats the Antichrist is no more than a brief fling between two graduate
students, Brian and Catherine, which somewhat upsets the potential power of the
message. Catherine sacrifices herself in an attempt to save mankind. In doing so
she fulfills the premonitions in the strange recurring dreams she has been having.
Carpenter seems to be saying that only human trust, honesty, and love can combat
the forces that were threatening to undermine American society: greed,
materialism, and the rapid influx of people to urban centers.
Little critical thought need be applied to Carpenter’s 1988 release, They
Live, to discern what metaphorical connection might exist between the alien
identity thieves of the film and late 1980s American society. As pointed out by
Kenneth Jurkiewicz, the humans are brainwashed into accepting alien beings
masquerading as yuppies as normal, albeit successful, humans. Jurkiewicz
describes the film as a “full-frontal assault on the social and political costs of
eighties affluence and post-‘me-decade’ materialism, as promoted by the
insidiously ubiquitous mass media” (34).
Our plucky hero, John Nada, played by the ever-sublime thespian Roddy
Piper, is depicted as initially rather naive, despite the hard times he has happened
upon. He truly believes that things will get better, and that the government is
looking out for his interests. However, John soon becomes quite mad upon
discovering that aliens are holding the rich and elite positions in society: positions
his fellow construction workers can only dream about. While the film’s political
message is pretty clear, when you stop and think about it, is there really a
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