(Seriously, though, if you haven’t seen it: What’s the matter with you?) But you can probably already spot an anachronism or two. To reveal more would be to spoil They Live. When Nada puts on a pair, he realizes that the richest, most powerful people in the world also happen to be “real fuckin’ ugly,” skeleton-faced aliens. Eventually, Nada learns that this signal is coming from a nearby church, which also contains a box of truth-revealing sunglasses. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, is also the pseudonym that Carpenter used as the movie’s screenwriter.) Early on, we see that local TV is occasionally interrupted by a pirated signal carrying the warnings of a bearded conspiracy theorist, who declares that the human race is being controlled by unseen forces. Nada soon meets fellow laborer Frank Armitage (Keith David), who brings the homeless drifter to a soup kitchen and ad-hoc squatters’ community on the edge of the city. Introducing the Horror Oscars: The 40 Best Scary Movies Since ‘Halloween’ The setting of the film is also nada it’s ostensibly Los Angeles, but the time frame is pitched somewhere between a dystopian future and a pessimistic present. It’s not science fiction.”īased on Ray Nelson’s 1963 short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning,” They Live centers on a blue-collar cipher symbolically named John Nada (Roddy Piper).

“You have to understand something,” he told Yahoo in 2015, “it’s a documentary.

Over time, his take on the film has settled more on the latter. From the beginning, he saw They Live-which turns 30 next month-as a fun action-adventure movie about a magnificently mulleted construction worker who saves the world and as trenchant social commentary.

and she’s back in heat”? Have I been wearing these magical sunglasses for too long? Is that an overly grandiose way of describing a cheesy, semi-self-aware ’80s action flick? Am I projecting outsize cultural importance onto a cult classic starring a professional wrestler who utters awesome one-liners like, “Brother, life’s a bitch. They Live, meanwhile, sort of became reality.ĭrones in the sky, conspiracies in our heads, militarized police in the streets, economic inequality in every corner of society, media that seeks to control our minds: The terror of They Live is more tangible and primal in 2018 than a slasher movie could ever be. How ‘Halloween’ Brought Horror to the Suburbs and Inspired a Legion of Copycats

Subliminal messages to become shorter