In terms of pure quality and general badassery, 2018 has been a banner year for fights on the screen both big and small.
Think Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Liang Yang shotgun-arming each other around a Parisian nightclub bathroom in Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
Think Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) dodging violently tossed office supplies across from his nemesis Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) in Marvel’s Daredevil.
Or simply think of Nicolas Cage, getting in a chainsaw duel with a cult demon in Mandy.
But amid all that flash and pyrotechnics, 2018 also stands as the 30th anniversary of, for my money, one of film history’s best brawls: the six-minute alleyway tussle between Roddy Piper and Keith David in John Carpenter’s 1988 sci-fi horror mind-bender, They Live.
I recently revisited the film in light of the anniversary and Carpenter’s name slashing its way back into headlines thanks to the new Halloween, and I finally figured out what makes that brutal,
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