They Live
by Robbo
Posted on 2 August 2021
Rating -
They Live (titled onscreen as John Carpenter’s They Live) is a 1988 American science fiction action film written and directed by John Carpenter, based on the 1963 short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson. Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster, the film follows an unnamed drifter[b] who discovers through special sunglasses that the ruling class are aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media.
A homeless drifter, credited only as “Nada” (Piper) comes to Los Angeles in search of a job and finds employment at a construction site and befriends fellow construction worker Frank (David), who invites him to live in a shanty town soup kitchen led by a man named Gilbert (Jason).
That night, a hacker takes over television broadcasts, claiming that scientists have discovered signals that are enslaving the population and keeping them in a dream-like state, and that the only way to stop it is to shut off the signal at its source. Nada secretly follows Gilbert into a nearby church, and discovers them meeting with a group that includes the hacker.
That night, the shantytown and church are destroyed in a police raid. The following day, Nada retrieves a box from the church and takes a pair of sunglasses from it and discovers that the sunglasses make the world appear black and white, but also reveal subliminal messages in the media to consume, reproduce, and conform. The glasses also reveal that many people are actually aliens with skull-like faces.
When Nada mocks an alien woman at a supermarket, she alerts other aliens via a wristwatch-like device. Nada leaves, but is confronted by two alien cops. He kills them and steals their weapons. Nada enters a bank, where he sees that several of the employees and customers are aliens. After taunting them, he kills several aliens with a shotgun and escapes by taking Cable 54 employee Holly Thompson (Foster) hostage. At Holly’s home, Nada tries to get her to try on the glasses, but she knocks him out of the window and down a hill, and then calls the police.
The next day, Nada returns to the alleyway and retrieves the box of sunglasses from a garbage truck before Frank meets Nada to give him his paycheck. Nada tries to get Frank to put on a pair of the glasses, but Frank thinks Nada is a murderer and wants nothing to do with him to protect his family. Frank and Nada get into a long and violent brawl, after which Frank is too tired to prevent Nada from putting the sunglasses on him. After seeing the aliens and a flying saucer, Frank agrees to go into hiding with Nada.
Frank and Nada find Gilbert, who leads them to a meeting of the anti-alien movement. At the meeting, they are given contact lenses to replace the sunglasses, and learn that the aliens are using global warming to make Earth more like their own planet, and are depleting the Earth’s resources for their own gain. Holly arrives at the meeting, apologizing to Nada, with information on the source of the signal. However, the meeting is raided by police and the vast majority of those present are killed, with the survivors (including Frank, Nada, and Holly) scattering into the night as the police surround the area. Nada and Frank are cornered by police in an alley, but they accidentally activate an alien wristwatch, opening a portal through which they escape.
The portal takes them to the aliens’ spaceport, where they discover a meeting of aliens and human collaborators, celebrating the elimination of the “terrorists”. They are approached by a former drifter they briefly met in the shanty town, now a collaborator, who gives them a tour of the facility. He leads them to the basement of Cable 54, the source of the signal, which is protected by armed guards. Nada and Frank find Holly and fight their way to the transmitter on the roof, but Holly suddenly kills Frank, revealing that she too is a human collaborator. Nada kills Holly and destroys the transmitter, but is fatally wounded by aliens in a helicopter. Nada gives the aliens the middle finger as he dies.
With the transmitter destroyed, humans all over the world discover the aliens hiding among them.
They Live is an allegory for the ever growing commercialism of popular culture and politics. Aliens have taken over the world and are exploiting the Earth and it’s resources until they are exhausted. Using subliminal messages to encourage people to buy things, fueling the commercial excesses of the 1980’s.
I think this film is extremely underrated. I admit that the script takes a number of short cuts, the acting isn’t great and the effects are second rate but Carpenter’s wit and ability for storytelling make They Live fun and watchable.
And any film that gave us the line “I have come here to chew bubble gum, and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum” can’t be all that bad.
It may not be the best John Carpenter film, but is definitely worth a watch.
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