It’s almost Halloween, the time of year when every good socialist watches They Live (1988). The cult classic about the politically revealing sunglasses that expose the monstrosity of our overlords and the brutal alien society they’ve made never fails to satisfy upon repeat viewings.

Though it didn’t do well on initial release, They Live is one of John Carpenter’s ever-more-revered films, because of its extraordinary prescience in depicting the fallout from the Reagan Revolution that overwhelmed American society in a disastrously complete way starting in the 1980s. Regarding the admiring reappraisal of the film, Carpenter says, “Over the years, what I was yelling and screaming about in economics, has become painfully clear to a lot of people. . . .  The eighties never ended, and they’re really with us today.”

The film is specifically about the thoroughness of Reagan-era brainwashing. There’s a scene featuring an alien pundit on television spouting that it’s “morning in America” — the presidential campaign slogan Reagan ran on in 1980 — wedged between vapid and insistent commercial ads representing the consumerist madness of the 1980s, when everyone was urged to run up credit card debt, live beyond their means, and worship wealth.