Due to the recent Blu Ray release of this film I felt
compelled to review it regardless of how old it is. They Live is one of my all time favorite films. Not Top 10
favorite, but definitely within the Top 50. It’s not a good movie by any
stretch, actually in many ways it’s pretty bad. However, it is an insanely fun
movie about a different type of alien invasion that is filled with entertaining
characters and some of the wittiest dialogue I’ve ever heard from a B-Movie of
this type.
This is the story of Nada (Roddy Piper), a homeless man
trying to find work in a world that is becoming increasingly segregated between
the financial classes. He finds a place to stay at an outdoor homeless shelter,
and in a nearby church he finds a box filled with sunglasses. These are no
ordinary sunglasses as they allow their wearer to see the truth around them;
aliens, disguised as humans, are slowly taking over the world via subliminal
messages telling the population to “sleep” as they invade. The strange thing is
that the aliens aren’t interested in war or death, they want money and power
and will use up every natural resource on our planet to achieve their goals.
Nada joins a resistance movement that plans to deactivate the aliens’ means of
camouflage and expose their evil scheme.
It’s a pretty intelligent flick that riffs on Reaganomics
and the decadence of the late 80s, and by today’s standards I’d say it’s quite
prophetic in it’s depiction of class warfare. Writer/director John Carpenter
really impressed me with this film, which on one hand could be taken as just a
standard sci-fi actioner, and on the other some scathing social commentary.
Carpenter has a knack for instilling some sort of deeper message in his films,
which sometimes is obvious and others not so much. I think that’s why I tend to
gravitate toward his films so much (I can’t get enough of The Thing’s cold war paranoia).
The performances are decent, par the course for a Carpenter
movie. Roddy Piper, an energetic performer for the WWF back in the 80s, makes for
an engaging leading man. He shows a natural charisma and likeability that works
wonders to draw you in and bring his character to life. Another masterstroke
was that he was given the opportunity to improvise most of his lines and quips
which definitely have that wrestling smack-talk feel to them (“I have come here
to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum”). He’s also,
obviously, a very physical dude and it shows in his multiple action scenes.
Especially his infamous five minute fight with Keith David who, on the flip
side, I feel is the emotional core of the film. His character is doing shit
work so he can send money back to his wife and kid, so when he’s exposed to the
alien invasion all he seems to think about is how it will affect his family. He
gives a very convincing performance and the film benefits from it a great deal.
Meg Foster basically acts with her freakishly bright blue eyes and that’s it.
I’ve never really liked her as an actress and she does nothing to change my
mind here. I understand that her zombie-esque performance is part of her
character’s slavery to the system, but I found her boring to watch and her inevitable
betrayal predictable.
Carpenter keeps things decently paced and gives the right
amount of time to build his characters, as well as staging a few pretty cool
action scenes. There’s nothing epically awesome going on due to the film’s
meager budget, but it’s exciting and entertaining. His catchy blues infused
score helps to kick things up a notch or two.
The budget is what I think is the film’s biggest detriment.
Sets, costumes and props look cheap (one character uses a PK Meter from Ghostbusters as a communicator), the
finale is a little underwhelming since we don’t get to see more of the
invaders' inner workings and the alien make-up looks like it was designed in a
day and isn’t very articulate in all the places it needs to be to make it
convincing. To be honest the facial make-up looks like a bunch of glorified Halloween
masks. Some of the FX still look decent, but are archaic by today’s standards.
When all is said and done I have to say that out of all of
Carpenter’s filmography They Live is
one of my absolute favorites (Big Trouble
in Little China, The Thing and Prince of Darkness come first). It’s a
great action flick that carries a pretty surprising amount of social commentary
into the mix, and is all the better for it. If only Carpenter had made this
film in today’s economic climate. He would have a field day ripping on all the
bullshit going on and have a blast doing it.
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