OBEY
- The aliens are secretly hiding among us! It's one of the classic science fiction scenarios and nowhere is it handled more memorably than in John Carpenter's They Live. Note specifically that I say more memorably. The subject has certainly been treated in better films, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers and even Carpenter's own The Thing, but did any of them star a professional wrestler? No, I didn't think so.
CONSUME
- The plot of They Live is simple: an itinerant named George ("Rowdy" Roddy Piper) stumbles upon a set of special sunglasses that enable him to see the alien conspirators surrounding him. These strange creatures look a bit like skeletons with googly eyes, but the surprising thing is how completely ingrained in society they have managed to become. News anchors, politicians, and even your neighbors in the hair salons and grocery stores may very well be aliens in disguise or, worse still, human collaborators. It's never made completely clear what these villains want from humanity, but their billboards and TV shows urge submission and docility at every turn.
MARRY AND REPRODUCE
- So what makes They Live so unforgettable? Well, actually, about three-fourths of the film is eminently forgettable. But then there's that great revelatory scene in which George first perceives the contrived shallowness of the world around him. Plus, there's a fight scene between Piper and Keith David that seems to stretch on and on for about ten minutes. And...ummm...then there's that one line where Piper says "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum." Hilarious! Okay, it isn't Shakespeare and it doesn't even really count as good science fiction, but you'd be hard pressed to find a better midnight movie than this one.
- I was overjoyed to discover that George "Buck" Flower, who plays a drifter in this film, has made a career out of playing drifters in such films as the Back to the Future series. Also, he does porn.
- Jason Robards' son was also in this film, as was someone named Meg Foster.
- IMDB confirms that the guards were talking on props from Ghostbusters.
