REVIEW – They Live

Published on: 10th January, 2010

REVIEW - They Live  | read this item

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As the 1980s came to a close, the winning streak that John Carpenter had enjoyed for over ten years would come to an end. Having first gained critical acclaim for his studio debut Assault on Precinct 13 in 1976, he had enjoyed one phenomenal success after another, scoring at the box office with such classics as Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing and Starman. Having become disillusioned with the mainstream following his disappointing experience shooting Big Trouble in Little China in 1986, Carpenter had withdrawn from the studio system and instead decided to focus on independent productions. Following the minor success of Prince of Darkness the following year, Carpenter decided to adapt a short story by science fiction writer Ray Nelson entitled Eight O’Clock in the Morning and transformed it into the action satire They Live.

Nada (Roddy Piper) arrives in Los Angeles looking for working and manages to manual labour in the ghetto, where he makes the acquaintance of Frank (Keith David). Realising that something perculiar is happening at the small church across from where he is sleeping, Nada discovers a box filled with black sunglasses. Taking a pair, he soon finds that they are designed to show the world as it really is – money, products and even the media are keeping the human race under a trance, controlled by strange alien creatures. But when they realise that Nada now knows the truth, he is hunted down like an outlaw and is forced to abduct Holly (Meg Foster), whom he wants to drive him to safety. But with the whole city after him and unsure on who he can trust, he must convince Frank to see the truth and help him free humanity from their coma.

Whilst Oliver Stone’s Wall Street almost celebrated capitalism and even boasted a ‘greed is good’ message, They Live was Carpenter’s criticism against the mindless consumerism that was engulfing America, with television and magazine adverts instructing people on how to live their lives and what useless products could improve them. As Nada looks at the world through his glasses, he discovers that dollar bills actually read ‘This is your god,’ whilst billboards and shop signs feature such statements as ‘Marry and reproduce,’ ‘Consume’ and ‘Stay asleep.’ Capitalism, Carpenter argues, is mindless control and is brainwashing the country into becoming zombies that are only obsessed with earning money, and then spending it. America under the control of President Ronald Reagan had become focused on success and financial gain, at the expense of everything and everyone else.

Using aliens as a metophor within an action-style formula had previously been used for the early 1980s TV show V, and They Live shared many similarities. Both featured a rugged hero (instead of Piper, V had Marc Singer) leading the resistence against lizard-type aliens who had put the human race under a trance and both eventually sacrificed their political edge in favour of cheap action towards the end of the story. Once again, Carpenter creates his trademark antihero, something that he had become renowned for through his collaborations with Kurt Russell. Despite being famous for his wrestling, ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper was perfectly cast as the working class hero who eventually decides to put the lives of others before his own, defeating the enemy no matter what. The enemy in this case being the American government and media, both of whom had been infiltrated by the alien race.

David, who had previously collaborated with Carpenter on the 1982 monster movie The Thing, adds charismatic macho support as his sidekick, whilst Foster (with her unusual eyes) is perfect as the untrustworthy love interest. Other genre regulars included George ‘Buck’ Flower (who, much like with Back to the Future, once again plays a vagrant) and Peter Jason, who had replaced Charles Cypher as the older Carpenter veteran. Amongst the various in jokes that Carpenter included in his screenplay (written under the alias Frank Armitage) is a television show in which the presenter is condeming the use of excessive violence in movies, citing Carpenter as one of the guilty parties. Perhaps allowing humans to watch violence as entertainment may cause them to become violent themselves and revolt against their leaders.

Fans of Carpenter often reference They Live as the filmmaker’s last great movie and mark it as the end of his golden era. The film certainly has it faults, such as the intelligence being jettisoned halfway through in favour of good old-fashioned action. This keeps the pace up but the film soon becomes clichéd and predictable, lacking the bite that the first forty or so minutes had. But there is no denying that They Live is an extremely enjoyable movie and once again demonstrated why Carpenter was so respected and popular. With suitably camp performances, a tongue firmly in cheek and enough one-liners to keep b-movie fans happy, They Live may be a guilty pleasure but the pleasure works so well.

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