Wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper plays an everyday palooka who has come to L.A. to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and he’s all out of bubblegum.
There’s nothing subtle about John Carpenter’s delightfully daffy screed against shiny, happy ‘80s consumerism and crypto-fascism. But why should there be? The ‘80s weren’t a very subtle decade. Wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper plays an everyday palooka who has come to L.A. to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and he’s all out of bubblegum. After putting on a special pair of sunglasses, the subliminal world becomes visible to him—a world festooned with black-and-white signs and slogans instructing the braindead masses to buy, reproduce, and obey (the last of which would later be the inspiration for Shepard Fairey’s famous street art).