“In the same class as Terminator and Robocop”: This great sci-fi movie from the 80s will blow your mind!

On April 12, Splendor Films presents a retrospective of 5 films by maestro John Carpenter in 4K restored versions: Dark Star, Invasion Los Angeles, New York 1997, Prince of Darkness and Fog.

Among these titles, Invasion Los Angeles is undoubtedly John Carpenter’s most striking and engaging work.

We remind you that the 4K restoration of this film was carried out in 2018 by the Silvercast laboratory in Great Britain, in collaboration with Studio Canal. It was also directed by the film’s own cinematographer, Gary B. Kibb.

In Invasion Los Angeles, Carpenter introduces us to John, an unemployed worker. The latter, played by Roddy Piper, discovers a discreet group that manufactures dark glasses.

Intrigued, he tries on a couple and discovers a terrifying world: many people are actually aliens with ugly, leathery faces; Sending orders for billboards under Big Brother conditions.

Together with another worker, he confronts the invaders. But what game is Holly, Channel 54’s seductive program manager, playing?

Released in the late 1980s, during the Reagan years, Invasion Los Angeles exudes a confident and dominated America. For release, this movie is a “A violent indictment of Reagan’s policies, a brutal portrait of an apathetic America.”

According to Les Inrockuptibles, Carpenter’s work is a “A brilliant political pamphlet and an excellent visual film.” John Carpenter was inspired by the story to write his screenplay charmersWritten by Ray Faraday Nelson.

A prominent pamphlet

If the film still seems relevant today, it is especially because of its subversive dimension that it is connected to the sharp criticism of capitalism and the media. Capitalism is described as a system of exploitation of the poor and oppressed majority.

A small alien oligarchy imposes its rule on humans through the cooperation of a few who are rewarded with money or power in exchange for their servitude.

Moreover, the idea of ​​the glasses revealing the mundane truth to the hero is a perfect metaphor for a bitter indictment of media and mass manipulation.

For Carpenter, the message is clear, much of the media world is complicit in the lobotomization and enslavement of people, particularly through the constant stimulus to consumption.

brainwashing

A masterfully orchestrated brainwashing presented by advertisements that can be deciphered while looking at John Nada glasses: “Submit”, “Consume”, “Marry yourself and multiply”, “Abandon all imagination”…

At the time, the director wanted to shoot red balls for Reaganomics (US President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies in the 1980s).

In the United States, the work received mixed reviews. Jay Carr, a journalist for the Boston Globe, specifically writes that Invasion Los Angeles, “As a sci-fi horror comedy, it’s in the same class as terminator and robocopEven though his hero doesn’t sport bionic biceps.

For his part, Richard Harrington of the Washington Post is less appreciative: “Just John Carpenter, as usual, trying to dig deep with a toy shovel. The plot of the film is full of black holes, the acting is pathetic, the effects are second-rate.”

However, Invasion Los Angeles is doing quite well at the box office. Filmed with a modest budget of 4 million dollars, it grossed 13 million GEL in the United States. In France in April 1989, it attracted 177,294 spectators.