“Brother, life’s a bitch. . . and she’s back in heat!”
John Carpenter with Filmizon.com’s Nikolai Adams
Let’s face it, some movies don’t age too well, but if they’ve got the three main ingredients – solid writing, visuals, and acting, usually they can stand the test of time. One film that is still as timely today as it was back in 1988 is John Carpenter’s horror tinged sci-fi action film They Live.
Welcome to Reagan era America, all trickle down economics, high unemployment rates and rising poverty. Set in ‘any city’ USA, Nada (Roddy Piper) is an out of work drifter looking for a semblance of the American dream. . . a job would be a start. Finally finding some employ on a construction site, fellow hard worker Frank (Keith David) takes him to a sort of shantytown, where the long travelling man can find a warm meal and a night’s rest.
Yet, there is something just a tad off in this unnamed city. . . people staring at televisions in storefronts, street preachers warning of conspiracies, and a bizarre man hijacking the cable signal to warn of a similar Machiavellian machination. Nada, an astute if idealist citizen, notices these unusual happenings, including the fact shanty leader Gilbert (Peter Jason) spends an awful lot of time across the street at a church – especially at odd hours. Like in the later film Shaun of the Dead (and many of the horror movies it is based on), there is a sort of dread in this slow build towards an unknown but horrific revelation.
Soon after, the shantytown and church are razed by a nighttime police raid, everything in disarray. Returning the next day (you know what they say – curiosity killed the cat), Nada finds a box of black-tinged sunglasses hidden in the wall of the emptied church, and when he puts them on, the world becomes all black and white – both literally and figuratively.
Beneath each and every billboard, sign, magazine or television broadcast is a subliminal message – ‘OBEY’, ‘CONFORM’, ‘CONSUME’, and printed on money: ‘THIS IS YOUR GOD’. Even more frightening, certain human beings are actually aliens in disguise – always in positions of power. An eye opening conspiracy, Nada is the type of guy who will fight – after all, they cast ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper for a reason. His ever more dangerous journey down the rabbit hole brings him into contact with Holly (Meg Foster), a woman that works for the local television station that is originally unwilling to believe his ranting. But, will Nada be able to convince anyone of this, as it sounds completely insane? And even if he can sway a few of his new acquaintances, can so few battle an entire race of hidden-in-plain-sight alien beings?
A fascinating combination of 1950s sci-fi horror (think It Came From Outer Space or Invasion of the Body Snatchers), an episode of The Twilight Zone and a scathing satire of politics of the time, in many ways, it speaks the same truths it did back in 1988. Without getting too deep into politics, similar Reagan-era thoughts are still being used today in this realm, while consumerism, and all of its capitalist tendencies, are still raging, everyone desperate for the newest and best piece of technology, coolest toy, or poshest home; while technology plays an even bigger part in our lives than it did back in the 80s. People are so interwoven with their phones, social media accounts, and, like in the movie, television, it is easy to say that most of us are utterly addicted. It would not be that much of a stretch to believe that we are being subliminally controlled by those unseen powers that are hidden behind our devices – BUY THIS MOVIE.
With that typical, quirky John Carpenter flair, he builds a low budget film that has since become a cult classic (a brilliant combination of dirty big city America in all of its colour, and a horrific black and white world festering just below the surface – many of Nada’s first views of billboards were done in an old fashioned way – using intricate matte paintings). Intriguingly, Carpenter allowed Piper to write some of his own dialogue – an iconic wrestler, it is perhaps not that big of a surprise that the man wrote some of the most kitschy epic lines in the film, with one of my favourites being, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass – and I’m all out of bubblegum!”. I must also mention the epic fight between Piper and David’s characters, a comedic tilt modelled off of the famed battle between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952). . . and like this original, it is a whole lot of fun (impressively realistic fisticuffs with many of the hits actually landing, it was originally supposed to last twenty seconds – instead, it grew into a running time of five minutes, twenty seconds).
And, any time you discuss a Carpenter flick, you must talk about his music (co-composed along with Alan Howarth). Improvised from top to bottom, the pair came up with an electric-style working man blues tune with a dystopic tone (adding an eerie vibe). . . another stellar score from the auteur. Check out John Carpenter and his band performing the score live directly below:
A prime example of creative world building, John Carpenter’s They Live is a cult classic in every sense of the word. Coming first at the box office for its opening two weeks, it disappeared from theatres soon after – a mysterious event when you consider the narrative’s topic. So, make sure to receive this transmission, and help this film live on.