' I Have Come Here....'
They Live is
one of Carpenters most interesting and satisfying films. Opening shots
of Roddy Piper, walking through heavily run-down industrial zones, inform
us that we are in a world of economic hardship for the masses. Piper is
a drifter, looking for any sort of work just to buy food. He hooks up with
Keith David and manages to get a job on a building site and a place to
stay.
The place to stay is a cardboard city. While at the city Piper notices people creeping in and out of the church across the road at unsociable hours. These people get especially edgy when the police helicopters are making one of their increasingly frequent sweeps across the area.
Strange things are happening throughout the city. A preacher spouting doom gets arrested by the police, a weird group of scientists are tapping into TV broadcasts and saying strange things about invaders. These broadcasts urge people to wake up, shake off their apathy and take a look at what is really happening in the world.
Events come to a head when the cardboard city is cleared by the police, using excessive violence. Piper manages to escape and finds his way back to the church. In the church he finds a strange laboratory and a box of sunglasses. When he puts on the glasses he has a huge surprise.
The alien invasion has already happened, they have been living amongst us for years. The glasses enable Piper to see the subliminal messages and the aliens real faces, damn ugly. The aliens are treating Earth as just another developing zone, prime real estate space. This is where Carpenter really hits us with his anti-authoritarian satire. Money is labelled with This Is Your God, everywhere there are signs telling us to eat more, sleep more, consume more. Piper goes off on a mad rampage that ends with the apparent death of loads of innocent civilians. He later tries to get his friend David to wear the sunglasses but David has heard of Pipers killing spree and thinks he has gone nuts. There then follows one of the most hilarious and certainly one of the longest fight scenes in movie history. Carpenter apparently just pointed the camera and said GO to the two actors, they just start to knock lumps out of each other.
Armed with a set of glasses and his partner David, Piper sets out to find out what is going on and ultimately to unmask the aliens.
They Live is very reminiscent of the typical 50's sci-fi movies where something has infiltrated and is subverting our way of life. They Live replaces the 50's paranoia of Communism with JCs distrust of the capitalist money making machine. The whole thing is done slightly tongue in cheek with plenty of humour spread throughout the movie. Thats not to say the usual Carpenter suspense isn't there as well. Piper is excellent as the wisecracking hero, shooting first and asking questions later.
It is based on a short story called 6 O’clock In The Morning, it is also very similar to the Stephen King short The Eleven O’clock People. They Live is a brilliant sci-fi actioner that is one of the highlights of Carpenters directorial output.
Courtesy Of The Infinite Coolness Website a transcript of the alien message in the film:-
...our impulses are being redirected. We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep.. ...the movement was begun eight months ago by a small group of scientists who discovered, quite by accident, these signals being sent through tele... ...the poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices... ...their intention to rule rests with the annhialation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent, to ourselves, to others, we are focused only on our own gain. We ha... ...please understand, they are safe as long as they are not discovered. That is their primary method of survival. Keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated... ...they are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery. The revolu... ...we cannot break their signal, our transmitter is not powerful enough. The signal must be shut off at the source. We have...
