Another one of those bizarre little films which escaped everyone's attention when released, and can only really be caught either by John Carpenter officionados or on very late night TV. Sometime after the Division Three highlights. This film was made just after Carpenter's golden era (The Thing, Christine, Starman) and just before he went completely crap (Prince of Darkness, Body Bags, everything else since). Best seen as part of a double-bill with the equally unusual and mildly superior Big Trouble in Little China, this film showcases a director who seemingly got sick of making conventional horror fare and instead upped the humour and lowered the gore.
Starring former wrestler 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as a drifting construction worker, it quickly introduces the main theme of aliens amongst us when a church near the wasteground he is sleeping in is targeted and nearly demolished by masses of riot police, who subsequently turn on the cowering homeless nearby. Stealing a box of what appear to be sunglasses from the debris the next day, he is shocked when he puts them on to find the entire world he knows changed beyond all recognition. Billboards spell out the truth in big letters; 'Eat', 'Consume', 'Reproduce' and it seems that some of the people walking our fair streets are not quite as normal as they at first appear. It seems that the people in the church were humans who had realised that they were living under alien control, and had intended to mass produce the sunglasses (which cut through the alien mind control) with a view to retaking the Earth from them. When after a few too many run-ins with aliens posing as normal humans he is stopped by the police, Piper decides to take the conspiracy on and blow it all to hell.
No one who watches this film can argue that it isn't an extremely confused work, enjoyable certainly but also rather peculiarly caught between Carpenter's desire to make the film simple and fun for the audience, whilst simultaneously introducing and maintaining the idea of the world we know as little more than a subliminal facade, with the aliens telling us what to eat, how to live and what to worship (no prizes for guessing what that is). As such you are constantly unsure of which direction the film will, or probably should, take, but with Roddy Piper as the main character it's never much of a strain. The comparison to 80's American life, where the American Dream was taken to excess and all anyone ever cared about was their own greed, are also rather impressively, though not subtly, handled.
Despite this central flaw the film itself is a barnstormer, not quite as tongue in cheek as Big Trouble in Little China but certainly more understandable. One can't help but think that if Carpenter had cast Kurt Russell in this it would be as well loved as its compatriot, but it still works and both Piper and David produce credible performances in their respective roles. Featuring one of cinema's longest and stupidest fight scenes, and some fantastic vengeance meted out at the end to the uppity alien invaders, They Live is an under-rated gem of a flick which deserves considerably more viewer appreciation that it has thus-far enjoyed |
