"I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubble gum."

Boy oh boy, did Death ever bring me a huge present just before my deadline last week! It was a truly thoughtful gift, exactly what I wanted.

I am of course speaking of George Herbert Walker Bush.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. He was old and in poor health, and I get to keep just about all the politicians, but it's always a special day when I receive a warmongering U.S. president.

Just looking at him, watching his flesh bubble and dissolve in the flickering light of a blue, sulfur flame makes me nostalgic for the 1980s. They were simpler times.

Corporate downsizing, the widening gap between rich and poor, and climate change were just becoming a part of the national conversation, but in 1988 the elder Bush rode a wave of mud-slinging, race-baiting, negative ads to the White House.

And it's no coincidence that same year John Carpenter released one of my favorite movies.

This week's Thursday Thriller is They Live.

On its surface, They Live might look like another sci-fi/action flick about a mullet-headed tough guy whipping alien ass, but if you pay attention it's a chilling satire about Reaganomics. Carpenter has said as recently as October that the film is a documentary.

Infamous wrestling heel Roddy Piper stars as John Nada, an honest, hardworking but down-on-his-luck fellow looking for a break. He gets a job on a construction crew where he meets Frank (Keith David) who shows him the way to the nearby homeless camp. The two men are friendly, but they have their differences. Nada believes in America, that he's just hit a rough patch, and with hard work, he'll overcome it; whereas Frank thinks the system is rigged against the poor.

They later have a grueling, bare-knuckle, 5 1/2-minute difference over trying on sunglasses. See, Nada found a box of them in the church near the homeless camp after the church was raided by police. He puts the sunglasses on and notices there are subliminal messages on every billboard, magazine and TV program. The messages say things like, "OBEY," "CONSUME," and my favorite, "MARRY AND REPRODUCE." Money says, "THIS IS YOUR GOD" on it. Then Nada notices with the sunglasses some people look different, too -- like their skin's been peeled off and they have big, buggy eyes. He calls a lady "formaldehyde face" in a convenience store, then the police show up and he whips their asses with his pro-wrestling moves.

You know how these things go. Once you've beaten up four or five cops and you've got their shotgun, it's time to go shoot up a bank and escape by taking Holly Thompson (Meg Foster) hostage. After that, it's tough to go back to work, because your face has been all over the news.

Nada wants Frank to see the truth, and Frank would rather not because he doesn't want even more trouble than being homeless and estranged from his family back in Detroit. So when Nada urges Frank to try on the sunglasses (and thus confirm Frank's suspicions were a gross underestimation), they have one of the longest, most glorious, one-on-one street brawls in modern cinema.

As for the rest of the movie? You know how I hate to spoil things. Suffice it to say, lots of shit blows up.

They Live is social commentary so cleverly disguised as ass-kicking fun you won't even care. It streams on Starz.