UAMC Classics: How ‘They Live’ is Still Relevant Today

Why – They Live – Lives On

John Carpenter’s 1988 action sci fi movie They Live is a classic example of how sometimes a deeper concept can be shown in a more entertaining way. Based on Ray Nelson’s short story ‘Eight O’Clock in the Morning,’ They Live explores how the media and leaders can manipulate the greater population and what lengths we will go to, to achieve wealth and status.

A Lasting Relevance

They Live has so many plot holes, bad acting, interesting editing among other foibles that it should be destined to B grade hell, yet people view this film today nearly 30 years on and appreciate how relevant it is today possibly even more than when it was first released. The term ‘fake news’ and people believing their side more than others because it came from their source no matter how questionable, cements the point of what this set out to achieve. Unfortunately I believe this will continue to be relevant for generations to come. In the interim, enjoy what is one of the most intelligent, yet somehow completely idiotic movies to ever be released.

Plot Breakdown

They Live follows John Nada (played by Roddy Piper), an incredibly well looked after drifter who makes his way to a new city looking for work and the grave discovery he makes which lets him see the world for it really is. Making an immediate friend in Frank (Keith David) at a construction site where he is hired to work, Nada is taken to the local shanty town where the city’s homeless live.

It is near here that he finds a church which is not all that it seems. Upon some investigation he discovers some superbly 80’s sunglasses which when one wears them, turns the world into a black and white nightmare where half the population looks like decomposing lizards and billboards read phrases like ‘Obey’, ‘Marry and Reproduce’ and ‘Consume.’

Traffic lights have speakers which repeat the phrase ‘sleep’ and small drones travel the skies keeping an eye out for people looking to disturb the peace.

John blows his cover when he freaks out and starts abusing a lizard woman who, using her watch, notifies her fellow lizard people (Steve Jobs you’re a thief!) and then decides to kill two cops who confront him. You of course finish this off by going into a bank and shooting a few more people. He escapes by taking a lady who has had way too much Xanax hostage and making her drive to her house where she manages to smash a glass over his head and push him through a pane glass window. He survives the three story fall by hanging out under a bridge for a while and then seeks out Frank which leads us to one of the greatest fight scenes in cinema history.

This includes eye gouging, biting, repetitively kneeing someone in the balls and as you would expect some great wrestling moves. This scene between Piper and David will go down in history as one of the greats, in John Carpenters own words ‘I wanted to show a real fight.’ He succeeded. Immediately following the fight Frank is awoken to the real world too, so our heroes of the lower class decide to walk bruised and battered which using the accompanying bluesy theme music, (a departure from Carpenters usual synth perfection) almost seems a parody of itself. The final act shows why Carpenter is a master of the genre, with brilliant shoot out sequences and wonderfully over the top action explosions and deaths.