They Live (1988)

They Live (1988)



All together now:



Three

Two

One


“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.”

One of the great undersold things about They Live is how long it can be mistaken for a non-FSF/H film. As we watch Nada stroll into town, looking for the work that isn’t there, it’s not that far off a kitchen sink drama about the plight of the average Joe in the 1980s. And by taking that, and then adding monsters, Carpenter allows natural paranoia to kick in. They Live becomes a more realistic invasion film than ones with considerably larger budgets. “They’re dismantling the sleeping middle class, more and more people become poor” says a man, and again, he could be talking about society as a whole, rather than society in the film. Hell, with that, subliminal messages and dog whistles, its more timely in 2019, even. Even when the riots start, there’s a sickly tone of Soylent Green to proceedings, but that’s nothing next to Roddy finding those glasses.



The film is based on Ray Nelson’s Eight O’Clock in the Morning, first published in FSF 1963. Its only six pages long, and the film is relatively faithful to the concept. [Although the twist would have made a better impact on film than the idiot ball Nada and his pal Keith David grab onto so they can lose while they win.]

“They Live was a primal scream against Reaganism of the ’80s. And the ’80s never went away. They’re still with us. That’s what makes They Live look so fresh — it’s a document of greed and insanity. It’s about life in the United States then and now. If anything, things have gotten worse.”
John Carpenter in 2012.


I prefer this to Bodysnatchers to be honest. “Whats your problem?” says a disguised monster as Nada first realises the glasses reveal more than he thought, in a brilliant mix of horror and humour. And then, the monster looks back, and you can see in that brilliant makeup that the monster underneath has already twigged that Nada knows the score. He’s a marked man before he even knows whats going on. Soon after, the creatures in the supermarket all realise at once, and things go wrong. It’s a bit like a Miracle Mile, in that the genre change has felt slow, and then suddenly it jerks into a different genre entirely. There he is, talking trash in Roddy Piper style, and then “I’ve got one who can see”, and they’re all staring at him.

John Carpenter produced, at the very least, six great horror films: Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, They Live and Big Trouble in Little China. Arguably, the smaller the budget, the better he got as a creative director. And the film’s reputation needs to be saved from the Trump loving bigots who try and claim its all about their anti-Jewish conspiracies. This film isn’t on their side, it warns us about those little bastards.

I love this film. It’s up there with the very best by one of the masters of horror.

As for the star, he was relieved people fondly remembered this film, and not Hell Comes to Frogtown, “the worst movie ever made, bar none – there’s only one non-impotent male left in the world, and it WASN’T ME!”
Roddy Piper’s life was a film in itself. “He had life written all over him”, said John Carpenter. Escaping from an abusive home, and expelled from school early, the teenage Piper was a homeless drifter, who stumbled into pro-wrestling as a paying job, after unexpectedly finding a natural talent for amateur wrestling. “I was a delinquent with a knack for trouble finding me!” In the early 1980s, a syndicated TV show had time to kill, so the promoter asked Roddy to speak on live TV for 5 minutes. And he never stopped talking, and the more he talked, the more money he made. Before long, he had become The Joker to Hulk Hogans all conquering Batman, and like The Joker, he always got away. In a decade where wrestlers were translating to the big screen, its no surprise that They Live works around Roddy Piper, who managed to be larger than life, yet keep that every-man whimsy.

Alas, that early life story (and the overnight literal rags to riches disconnect) is not a recipe for a healthy life. Nor is the thing that everyone self-medicated with in the 80s. Yeah, I mean coke. There’s stories of Piper selling out stadiums or filming scenes, and then being paid in coke which he snorted immediately to “obliterate the demons momentarily”. The man was a walking PTSD case with chemical dependency, and it all came to ahead in his 40s when he had to take time out from the public eye. “I needed to show the world I’d stepped back from the brink, I was going to get better, even if I wasn’t better yet…”

And when he seemed to have conquered enough of his problems, and was back among his fans again, he got cancer. Being Roddy Piper, he played down the cancer, claiming he was in remission within months. In reality, it took years, and even when he was fully cleared, he was never fully healthy again. (In fact, the blood clot that killed him was likely linked to post-cancer treatment recovery.) He took a pessimistic, fatalist approach to his own life (“Face facts, I’m not seeing 65” he said in a 2003 documentary which sadly proved accurate), and even to the end of his life, he was downplaying his own talents. Whereas he was a legend, orator, and star of great cult films! He died beloved by millions across the world, but unable to ever love himself.

He also one wrestled a bear called Victor for money. But that’s a story we can’t tell you.