They Live (1988)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

John Carpenter

Writers:

Ray Nelson (short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning")
John Carpenter (screenplay)

Release Date:

4 November 1988 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

Who are they? And what do they want?

Plot:

A drifter discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to wake up to the fact that aliens have taken over the Earth.

Plot Keywords:

Alien | Sunglasses | Television | Drifter | Everyman

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Roddy Piper	...	Nada
Keith David	...	Frank
Meg Foster	...	Holly
George 'Buck' Flower	...	Drifter
Peter Jason	...	Gilbert
Raymond St. Jacques	...	Street Preacher
Jason Robards III	...	Family Man
John Lawrence	...	Bearded Man
Susan Barnes	...	Brown Haired Woman
Sy Richardson	...	Black Revolutionary
Wendy Brainard	...	Family Man's Daughter
Lucille Meredith	...	Female Interviewer
Susan Blanchard	...	Ingenue
Norman Alden	...	Foreman
Dana Bratton	...	Black Junkie

Also Known As:

John Carpenter's They Live (USA) (complete title)
They Live! (USA) (poster title)

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color | Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:16 | USA:R (#29297) | Sweden:15 | Ireland:18 | Australia:M | Norway:18 | Singapore:M18 | UK:18 | West Germany:18 (nf)

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Alive Films

Trivia:

The only character given a first and last name is Holly Thompson (Meg Foster).

Goofs:

Continuity: At the beginning of the alley fight, Nada sets down a cardboard box; Frank sets down a backpack. Towards the middle of the fight, as Frank tries to walk away, both items disappear.

Quotes:

Bearded Man: The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are non-existent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "The Rotten Tomatoes Show: Echelon Conspiracy/Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li/Crossing Over (#1.1)" (2009)

elite, parasitic subsociety exploits American working class--reflects real American society?

This movie is not so much about aliens who are hiding among us, but instead it taps into the deeply submerged suspicion held by most of us that we are being manipulated and taken advantage of by the elite of American society, by our leaders, by the rich, etc. Also, we sometimes feel that we are manipulated and programmed (in a subtle way) to respect hierarchical authority ( e.g., the "OBEY" subliminal command from the movie).

Some leftist thinkers might say that human societies are in a way being parasitized by the elite of their societies, and that the elite operate as a parasitic sub-society, living off of the lower classes. America might be said to be operated more in such a fashion (i.e., parasitized by the elite) than are the countries of western Europe. Obvious examples of this parasitic behavior are the "golden handshakes" and backscratching exchanged between corporate CEO's and the Boards of Directors of their companies. But it is far more pervasive than just that.

_They_Live_ uses the invisible alien elite as a proxy for our suspicions about how we are all being exploited by the elite of our real-life society, and how these elite are subtly programming us to accept this exploitation.

So, the major theme of the movie is not, as another poster correctly pointed out, about being manipulated to be good little consumers in a crassly commercial world. No, it is far more profound than that. Instead, it is more about how the working class Americans in _They Live_ are being exploited by the elite upper crust, who, in the movie, happen to be aliens, but who, in the real world, are a subsociety that use their collective power to exploit the rest of us.

Unfortunately, this movie sometimes has an unintentionally comic air to it. Still, the exploration of that theme is so rare in pop culture, and that theme is so profound, and reaches so far into what American society is, was, and is becoming, that this movie is a Must-See for anyone with an interest in politics and sociology.