ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 4th
"THEY LIVE" released in 1988
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Unemployed drifter "John Nada" (Roddy Piper) finds construction work in Los Angeles and befriends fellow construction worker Frank Armitage (Keith David), who leads him to a local shantytown soup kitchen. There, Nada encounters strange activity around the church: a blind preacher (Raymond St. Jacques) loudly chastising others to wake up, a police helicopter scouts them overhead, and a Drifter (George Buck Flower) complains that his TV signal is continually interrupted by a man warning everyone about those in power. Nada discovers the nearby church is a front, and is filled with scientific equipment and cardboard boxes. That night, the police attack and bulldoze the shantytown. Nada returns in the morning to find the church empty, but with the hidden boxes still in the wall. He takes one of the boxes and in an alley, he opens the box and finds it filled with sunglasses, and quickly discovers they have unique properties; they reduce the colors of the world around him to black and white and allow him to see that media and advertising hide omnipresent subliminal commands to obey, consume, reproduce, and conform. They also make clear that many people in positions of wealth and power are actually humanoid aliens with skull-like faces!
[Nada enters a bank, holding a shotgun]
Nada: I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum!
Top and Above: Drifter, Nada (Roddy Piper) discovers his peculiar sunglasses reveal that aliens are among us!
In a grocery store, Nada confronts an alien woman who then speaks into her wristwatch, notifying others about him, but Nada manages to kill the aliens pursuing and later goes on a shooting spree, killing several aliens that he encounters in a nearby bank. Pursued by a small, flying saucer-like alien surveillance drone, Nada takes a Cable 54 assistant director named Holly Thompson (Meg Foster) hostage. After trying to convince her of the truth, Nada is tricked and pushed down the steep hill underneath Holly's hillside home. Nada returns to the alley where he finds the garbage can that held the other glasses, and encounters Frank. Nada engages in an extended street fight with Frank, trying to force him to put on a pair of sunglasses. Finally after gaining the upper hand, Nada places the glasses on Frank who now understands. The two rent a hotel room to discuss their predicament, and later meet with Gilbert (Peter Jason), a member of the shantytown, who notifies them about a secret meeting with other activists.
At the meeting, Nada and Frank are given special contact lenses to replace their sunglasses and they learn from the bearded man's broadcast that the aliens control Earth as their third world, depleting its resources and causing global warming before moving on to other planets. The aliens use a subliminal signal broadcast into people's brains to camouflage themselves, which they believe if it is destroyed, will allow everyone on Earth to see their true form. Without warning, the police suddenly attack the meeting, killing everyone while Nada and Frank manage to fight their way out. After being cornered in an alley, Frank accidentally opens a temporary portal by throwing the watch, through which the two jump into a network of underground passages.
The two find the aliens in a grand hall celebrating with their elite human collaborators, including the homeless Drifter from earlier, now a well-dressed collaborator, who believes Nada and Frank to be collaborators as well. Playing along, the Drifter takes them on a tour of the passages, and Nada eventually discovers the Cable 54 station's satellite dish is the source of the aliens signal. Nada and Frank then launch their attack, fighting there way to roof in order to destroy the dish in a last desperate struggle free the people of Earth from virtual slavery!
At the meeting, Nada and Frank are given special contact lenses to replace their sunglasses and they learn from the bearded man's broadcast that the aliens control Earth as their third world, depleting its resources and causing global warming before moving on to other planets. The aliens use a subliminal signal broadcast into people's brains to camouflage themselves, which they believe if it is destroyed, will allow everyone on Earth to see their true form. Without warning, the police suddenly attack the meeting, killing everyone while Nada and Frank manage to fight their way out. After being cornered in an alley, Frank accidentally opens a temporary portal by throwing the watch, through which the two jump into a network of underground passages.
The two find the aliens in a grand hall celebrating with their elite human collaborators, including the homeless Drifter from earlier, now a well-dressed collaborator, who believes Nada and Frank to be collaborators as well. Playing along, the Drifter takes them on a tour of the passages, and Nada eventually discovers the Cable 54 station's satellite dish is the source of the aliens signal. Nada and Frank then launch their attack, fighting there way to roof in order to destroy the dish in a last desperate struggle free the people of Earth from virtual slavery!
[Nada tries to convince Frank to wear the sunglasses]
Nada: I'm giving you a choice: either put on these glasses or start eatin' that trash can.
Frank: Not this year!
Top and Above: Nada manages to convince Frank (David Keith) of the truth and the two pair up to save the world!
The idea for They Live came from a short story called "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in November 1963, involving an alien invasion in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which Nelson, along with artist Bill Wray, adapted into a story called "Nada" in April, 1986. Carpenter acquired the film rights to both the comic book and short story and wrote the screenplay, using Nelson's story as a basis for the film's structure, and added his own political criticism of the ever-increasing commercialization of the 1980s under Ronald Reagan (usually referred to as "Reaganomics" or "Reaganism"). Carpenter later remarked, "I began watching TV again. I quickly realized that everything we see is designed to sell us something... It's all about wanting us to buy something. The only thing they want to do is take our money." To this end, Carpenter thought of sunglasses as being the tool to seeing the truth, which "is seen in black and white. It's as if the aliens have colorized us. That means, of course, that Ted Turner is really a monster from outer space." (Turner had received some bad press in the 1980s for colorizing classic black-and-white movies!).
For the aliens, Carpenter wanted them to superficially resemble walking, rotting corpses, rather than the "high-tech" creatures of other science fiction films. He decided that since these beings were corrupting humanity, they themselves should resemble corruptions of human beings. Because the screenplay was the product of so many sources - a short story, a comic book, and input from cast and crew - Carpenter decided to use the pseudonym "Frank Armitage", an allusion to one of the filmmaker's favorite writers, H. P. Lovecraft (Henry Armitage is a character in Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror). Alive Films, the studio who financed Carpenter's previous picture, Prince of Darkness, produced They Live, once again granting Carpenter the "final cut".
For the aliens, Carpenter wanted them to superficially resemble walking, rotting corpses, rather than the "high-tech" creatures of other science fiction films. He decided that since these beings were corrupting humanity, they themselves should resemble corruptions of human beings. Because the screenplay was the product of so many sources - a short story, a comic book, and input from cast and crew - Carpenter decided to use the pseudonym "Frank Armitage", an allusion to one of the filmmaker's favorite writers, H. P. Lovecraft (Henry Armitage is a character in Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror). Alive Films, the studio who financed Carpenter's previous picture, Prince of Darkness, produced They Live, once again granting Carpenter the "final cut".
Nada: You see, I take these glasses off, she looks like a regular person, doesn't she? Put 'em back on...
[puts them back on]
Nada: ...formaldehyde-face!
Top: Holly Thompson (Meg Foster) reveals herself as a alien collaborator and tries to stop Nada from destroying the source of the signal that disguises the aliens true form;
Above: With the signal now gone, this Woman has a shocking surprise waiting for her!
Carpenter originally wrote the role of Nada for frequent collaborator Kurt Russell to play, but in early in development decided to cast someone else as Russell had already starred in three of his previous films; Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986). Wanting a truly "rugged individual" to play the lead, Carpenter approached wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper for the role after meeting him at WrestleMania III (1987). Although Carpenter decided against casting Russell, They Live has numerous other actors who the director had worked with before, including David Keith (The Thing) as Frank, and Peter Jason (Prince of Darkness) as Gilbert. Actress Meg Foster was cast as femme fatale Holly Thompson after Carpenter had seen her performance in the Canadian film Ticket to Heaven (1981), while the alien featured in the last shot of the movie was portrayed by stunt coordinator Jeff Imada.
They Live began production in March 1988, principally on location in downtown L.A., with a budget only slightly greater than $3 million. The big fight sequence between Nada and Frank was originally designed, rehearsed and choreographed in the back-yard of Carpenter's production office. The fight was only supposed to last twenty seconds, but Piper and David decided to fight it out for real, only faking the hits to the face and groin, rehearsing the fight for three weeks. Carpenter was so impressed he kept the entire five minutes and twenty seconds scene intact. Carpenter recalls that, "It was an incredibly brutal and funny fight, along the lines of the slugfest between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet Man."
They Live began production in March 1988, principally on location in downtown L.A., with a budget only slightly greater than $3 million. The big fight sequence between Nada and Frank was originally designed, rehearsed and choreographed in the back-yard of Carpenter's production office. The fight was only supposed to last twenty seconds, but Piper and David decided to fight it out for real, only faking the hits to the face and groin, rehearsing the fight for three weeks. Carpenter was so impressed he kept the entire five minutes and twenty seconds scene intact. Carpenter recalls that, "It was an incredibly brutal and funny fight, along the lines of the slugfest between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet Man."
TRIVIA: Roddy Piper, being a married man at the time of filming, refused to take his wedding band off. That's why in several scenes you can see a wedding ring on.
Top: Director John Carpenter on set with a few of the "alien" cast;
Above: Carpenter on set with Roddy Piper
They Live opened on November 4, 1988 and debuted at #1 at the North American box office grossing $4.8 million during its opening weekend, and spent the next two weeks in the top ten - before quickly fizzling out at the box office. Carpenter is on record as attributing the film's initial commercial failure to the hypothesis that those "who go to the movies in vast numbers these days don't want to be enlightened". Nevertheless, They Live received some of the best reviews of Carpenter's career, with the Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum writing, "Carpenter's wit and storytelling craft make this fun and watchable, although the script takes a number of unfortunate shortcuts, and the possibilities inherent in the movie's central conceit are explored only cursorily." Jay Carr, writing for The Boston Globe, said "[O]nce Carpenter delivers his throwback-to-the-'50s visuals, complete with plump little B-movie flying saucers, and makes his point that the rich are fascist fiends, They Live starts running low on imagination and inventiveness", but felt that "as sci-fi horror comedy, They Live, with its wake-up call to the world, is in a class with Terminator and RoboCop, even though its hero doesn't sport bionic biceps".
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 84%
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