They Live

It’s an effective ploy, forcing us to confront certain basic facts about the state of the world around us without sounding preachy, and it articulates a decidedly working-class anger in response to social iniquity without sounding self-righteous. And it does all of this while retaining the surface appeal of its B-movie origins, frequently (and entertainingly) indulging in the seductive spectacle of ghouls and guns in combat—though always with ulterior motives.

They Live, Carpenter’s 1988 paranoid freakout, deserves to be thought of as a masterpiece, an artist’s defiant last grab at substance before losing the thread. It’s a cheesy but lovable movie.

They Live is, to scramble its most famous line, better at chewing bubblegum than kicking ass.

All in all, an entertaining (if ideologically incoherent) response to the valorization of greed in our midst, with lots of Rambo-esque violence thrown in, as well as an unusually protracted slugfest between ex-wrestler Roddy Piper and costar Keith David.

once Carpenter delivers his throwback-to-the-'50s visuals, complete with plump little B-movie flying saucers, and makes his point that the rich are fascist fiends, They Live starts running low on imagination and inventiveness. The big alley-fight scene between Piper and David, in which the former tries to punch some awareness into the latter and make him put on the X-ray sunglasses, is as contrived as it is brutal. And the ending isn't much. The acting has the good sense not to try to be anything more than two-dimensional, though, which keeps the entertainment value at a lively comic-strip level. As sci-fi horror comedy, "They Live," with its wake-up call to the world, is in a class with "Terminator" and "Robocop," even though its hero doesn't sport bionic biceps. [4 Nov 1988, p.52]

Live dies around the time Carpenter allows 10 minutes of gratuitous Piper-David eye-gouging, an apparent bone to wrestling fans. Forget the amusing premise; a full crate of magic glasses couldn't make this a bearable movie. [7 Nov 1988]

The plot for They Live is full of black holes, the acting is wretched, the effects are second-rate. In fact, the whole thing is so preposterous it makes "V" look like "Masterpiece Theatre." [5 Nov 1988]

A seminal film! Gotta get people to wear those glasses! Some average acting, but an excellent storyline for its time. One of the most quotable films ever! The laboured fight scene is also a laugh! So relevant to our times. I loved it and would watch again and again! Awesome!

Obey! Conform! Marry and Reproduce! These are the demands of an oppressive ruling class, pasted in secret script behind the billboards and TV commercials consumed by LA’s blue-collar working stiffs. The addled, harassed population can’t see those hidden messages, but they certainly feel their effects, ineffectually shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes until the ideas sink in and they resume a mindless pursuit of phony happiness. There’s almost no shred of subtlety to John Carpenter’s wacky, hallucinatory They Live, which peels back the cover of that secret, authoritarian society after discovering a set of magical Ray-Bans. These special shades cut through the noise and reveal the truth, baring both the curt, black-and-white commands plastered everywhere and the grotesque alien monsters profiting from our compliance. Carpenter’s metaphor is almost as blunt as the bad guys’ mandates: a loud, frustrated call to arms against rampant materialism and the soulless fatcats who hoard its spoils. It was a me-first world in 1988, and almost nobody seemed immune to the attraction of bigger homes and shinier jewelry. Wish I could say that idea’s gone out of fashion in the ensuing forty years. Roddy Piper plays the face of the resistance, a serene drifter who’s happy to earn an honest paycheck until those specs change his outlook. He’s in for a wild ride, but not always a cohesive one. His stroll through the gates of subliminal insanity is a happenstance affair, a constant case of arbitrarily bumping into the next plot development, which makes the story feel flat and aimless. Carpenter visualizes a lot of crazy ideas, and Piper delivers his own unique blend of cool, confident and charismatic, but the puzzle pieces don’t always fit together. A supremely fun concept with great meme material, several hilarious curveballs and a pertinent underlying message, it’s not exactly satisfying as a finished picture. The message gets lost in the shuffle, and that ending sequence might be the most taped-together gob of afterthought nonsense I’ve ever seen.

It looks fine. The sunglasses world is particularly startling. Good music but slightly disappointing sound overall. The underpinning story of underclass values destroying middle and lower class life was fascinating although I think that the target audience possibly missed that. Biggest issues for me were the main guy being a terrible actor and the alleyway fight scene looking like god-awful wrestle mania. Not very scary but certainly very interesting and relevant.

This movie takes forever to get going and once it does, it really doesn't go anywhere. It proves to me that Roddy Piper should have invested some of the wrestling money he earned into acting lessons and it also shows that John Carpenter is a hit and miss director, and this is one of his misses. Meg Foster has some of the weirdest eyes I've ever seen.

At least there is a story, albeit woefully executed. Bad preceeds any aspect of the movie you care to address. The fact that the movie addresses some social issues that have existed since the dawn of time does nothing to or is of relevance to the quality of the movie.