Director John Carpenter gave us the definitive reason for why capitalism is just so darn evil way back in 1988.
It’s run by aliens in human disguise! These rotten, stinkin’ aliens are bent on promoting greed and the subjugation of the poor, and only one man can stop them.
“Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
Maybe Jean Claude Van-Damme was busy that day.
“They Live,” one of four films featured in the new “John Carpenter: Master of Fear” collection, is out this week (Sept. 15) just in time for Halloween. (The other films are “The Thing,” “Village of the Damned” and “Prince of Darkness.”)
The thriller begins as a campy but utterly watchable hoot, junk food for anyone who never can get enough processed cheese. But it implodes half way through and doesn’t have the good sense to lie down and fake its own death.
Piper, working without his full wrestling moniker, plays a construction worker who stumbles onto the film’s alien invasion. Seems these soulless creeps have infested our planet, planting subliminal messages on nearly every surface to remind us to submit, obey and spend.
Sounds like the advertising slogans you’d find at any U.S. mall. Maybe Carpenter is on to something …
The only way to see the aliens for who they really are is to put on a pair of Blublocker-style sunglasses. But how can one bespectacled man defeat a race of “free enterprisers” pulling the strings of global capitalism?
Suffice to say the social commentary here is as subtle as a pile driver, but for a while the film is too loose, too vibrant for anyone to mount a complaint.
Everything changes after Piper delivers either the worst snippet of dialogue in screen history, or the best, depending on your pain tolerance.
“I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass … and I’m all out of bubble gum,” he says before blasting a dozen or so aliens lurking within a bank.
Piper struggles to give the film’s poetic lines much finesse, and he’s pinned by the expository material as well. He looks more at ease beating the heck out of Keith David, the film’s other hero-in-waiting, during a ludicrous fight scene that stops the story cold.
The erstwhile wrestler isn’t the only one guilty of horrible acting. Meg Foster, whose radiant blue eyes seem like a CGI effect, gives a Botox-style performance long before the rat poison transformed too many 40-something actresses.
“They Live” is Exhibit A in Carpenter’s stunning decline from horror auteur (“Halloween,” “The Thing”) to misplaced talent (“Vampires,” “Ghosts of Mars”). But for a while “They Live” offers just enough fun to distract us from that descent.
(Photo: Roddy Piper preps to say his famous screen line in “They Live”/Universal Pictures)
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I first saw this on late night TV in 6th grade. I picked it up a few years ago and was surprised at how well it (or at least the first half, as you point out) works as satire in addition to fairly entertaining junk action fare. It’s pretty obvious why Roddy Piper never made it far as an actor, though.
Enjoying this film is one of the many things I will have to atone for in the afterlife.
I hate this picture. Aside from the presence of the forever underrated Meg Foster, it has no virtues. Like “Mimic,” it was based on an SF masterpiece that was five pages long, so they had to cut out a lot of the plot. And the unbelievably wrongheaded idea that color is an undesirable artificial additive to the universe? And the dialog is all unspeakable. Contains my least favorite much-quoted line of all time.
Oh, sorry. “They Live” is based on “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson, “Mimic” is based on the story of that title by Donald Wandrei. Both absolute masterworks of the difficult short-short form (that is, stories less than two thousand words long.) Forget the movies, both those stories will do a much better job than anything Philip K. Dick ever wrote to make you look at the world around you with new fear and wonder.
I confess I rather liked “Mimic” – where have you gone, Mira S.?
… and Bob wins for the pithiest quote of the day (week? month?)
Lets just say I’ll be spending time with Bob in hell.
Another thought; Meg Foster used to scare the hell out of me. Those eyes, my god those eyes. And speaking of Foster, lets not forget Blind Fury, with Rutger Hauer, and Foster’s 10-minute cameo before she bites the bullet.
The first time I ever noticed Meg Foster was when I watched a softcore porno on Cinemax in 7th grade. Thankfully, by then she was just playing the madame of a brothel, not the naked lady.
Check out Sam Peckinpah’s last movie, “The Osterman Weekend.” The sequence in which Meg Foster turns into Diana the huntress and wipes out a heavily armed hit team with a hunting bow and a crossbow is priceless. The great poster featured her eyes. And “Mimic” certainly has the excuse that it was supposed to have been one short film among three in an anthology type movie, but that short and “Impostor,” based on a Dick story, were expanded to feature length, with less than satisfactory results. I’d like to see “Mimic” in its original length.
And the short story “Mimic” was written by Donald A. Wollheim, not Wandrei. Sorry.
i don’t know about the rest of you guys but i am so glad that charles is intent on being correct about who wrote the short story to “Mimic”. i have always considered ‘They Live’ one of my guilty pleasures. i love Carpenters earlier work and he is actually in my hometown right now shooting his first full length film in over 8 years i hope he can return to his former glory.
Am really surprised at all the love here for “They Live.” Even as a teen I didn’t take to it, and it didn’t age well for me seeing it with fresh eyes recently..
That said, there’s something kinda great about a bad movie … one that revels in all its sub-standardness.
I love the movie “Scavenger Hunt,” which I can’t find on DVD, but I know it’s pure, unadulterated junk.
I’ve mentioned this movie before because of the longest fight scene between two dudes ever filmed. Its ridiculous but you have to watch it.
I looked for my VHS version in my movie stash and its missing. I will be going out sometime to replace this because its a rare “so bad its good” kind of movie. And totally agree about Meg Foster’s eyes.