#218: They Live

Release Date: November 4th, 1988

Format: Streaming (YouTube)

Written by: John Carpenter (billed as Frank Armitage)

Directed by: John Carpenter

4 Stars

John Carpenter’s They Live is about a rambling man named Nada (Roddy Piper), a simple hulk who thumbs it into Los Angeles to hopefully pick up a construction gig and some shelter. He’s not in town long before he notices a secretive group that meets in the church across the street. What are they up to?

His curiosity gets the best of him, and what he finds in the church he wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t found it himself. The group runs some sort of strange lab and an underground television station. Their mission: to warn the human race that they are being controlled by evil, external forces. Kooky stuff, Nada thinks. They’ve also stashed dozens of sealed cardboard boxes behind the church walls.

One night the church is raided by the police and the group’s leaders are brutalized in front of a homeless encampment. A message is being sent, clearly. Nada has the wherewithal to run into the church and take one of the boxes before the police can, and he escapes into the night.

What does he find in the box? A bunch of cheap plastic sunglasses. 

He tosses them in the trash, keeping one pair for himself. 

Walking aimlessly through downtown LA, his life changes forever when he puts the glasses on and sees a completely different reality. Billboards and other advertisements are replaced with simple commands like, “Obey” and “Consume.” Even more disturbing, certain people are revealed to be grotesque alien life forms with lifeless, bulging eyes. 

What the hell is going on? 

Nada is able to rush back to the trash and salvage another pair of glasses so he can enlist his construction co-worker friend, Frank (Keith David), to join him in the fight for truth and to save the human race.

And it’s here where They Live becomes a brilliantly simple, blue collar allegory. 

The film’s most famous scene is a six-minute fight in which Nada is trying to get Frank to put on a pair of the glasses. In terms of motivation, the fight doesn’t make much sense. Really, Nada couldn’t persuade Frank to put the glasses on for just a moment? Must they really punch and body slam each other in a dirty alleyway? The fight is as needless as it is well-executed (no doubt having pro wrestler Roddy Piper helps to stage a great film fight).

Embedded in the fight, though, is Carpenter’s thesis: not only do people not know the truth of their existence, but they don’t want to know the truth. They’ll avoid it at just about any cost. They’d rather fight tooth and nail than know that their life has been a big lie, an illusion (I’m looking at you, MAGA folks).

After Nada comes out victorious in their bloody street fight, Frank is forced to wear the glasses, and to his disbelief, he sees the same unbelievable alternate reality that Nada does.

What is all this shit? Frank wonders. What do we do?

Well, according to Nada, it’s time to exact some revenge on these aliens. Or in his words, he’s going to “chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all outta bubblegum.”

I’m sure there is criticism out there that knocks Carpenter’s script as surface-level philosophizing. I’m not going to argue that the subtext isn’t simplistic, because it is. But it’s intentionally so and it matches the film’s milieu. 

Nada and Frank are a couple hardworking laborers who are getting screwed over by Reagan’s America. The stock market is booming for the wealthy industrial class, furnished by corrupt politicians, but the Nadas and Franks of the world don’t grasp that on an intellectual level. They just know that something ain’t right, and somebody deserves to have their ass kicked. 

I agree Mr. Carpenter. 

When it was first released, They Live was considered one of Carpenter’s lesser films. In the years since, with the rise of social media and mega corporate mergers, They Live has only grown in importance and cult status. In my opinion it now sits solidly in Carpenter’s Mt. Rushmore of films, alongside Halloween, The Thing, and either Escape from New York or Big Trouble in Little China, depending on your taste. 

It’s a great blue collar allegory about facing hard self-truths and standing up to The Man (or alien).   

Postscript: I watched this movie for free on YouTube, which was purchased for $1.65 billion by Google back in 2006. The irony is not lost on me.