They Live (15.)
Directed by John Carpenter. 1989.
Starring Roddy “Rowdy” Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster. 89 mins. Back in cinemas for one night, Friday October 26th in a new 4K Restoration.
They were called Yuppies, and in the 80s they used to have nightmares, comic horror nightmares, like After Hours or Something Wild, in which the young, affluent and bumptious suffered various indignities before returning to their consumer-driven, wealth insulated lives. They ain’t called Yuppies any more; because now they have complete control.
They Live is an angry, raging, discontented film that you are likely to feel enormous affection and indulgence for, even love. It is sweet and adorable, and watching it again some quarter century after seeing it in the cinema is like being reacquainted with an old buddy and finding, that despite the way the passing of time has changed both of you, he is still fundamentally a stand up guy. For a film that would seem to embody most of the worst traits of 80s cinemas – musclebound lunks knocking seven bells out of each other – it is uniquely decent.
They Live is Carpenter's inversion of the Invasion of The Body Snatcher. Instead of the fear of communist infiltration, the alien invaders are the rich and their stooges, set on sucking this planet dry. They really are aleady here. Roddy “Rowdy” Piper is a nameless itinerant labourer who believes in a hard day's work for a proper day's pay. In American mythology the rootless drifter is a sanctified figure, moving around finding work to do and wrongs to right. Here though this drifter is just desperately trying to stay one step ahead of bum status. Wandering into Los Angeles in search of work he instead discovers that the human race has been infiltrated and subjugated by aliens. The resistance movement have sunglasses that allow the wearer to see the black'n'white reality of the world – that most businessmen and policemen are really aliens, that the billboards, newspapers, magazines and TV screens are projecting messages such as Stay Asleep, Consume, Conform and No Independent Thought.
His process of radicalization sees him turn instantly from a humble, respectful blue collar labourer, the man who in a Springsteen song would call his elders “sir,” to a wise cracking action hero who comes up with lines like, "I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum." Casting a wrestler was an inspired move. Firstly because Piper is rather good. There's a sweetness to him, he's like an Osmond who's been pumped up to bursting with steroids. Secondly, the eighties was the era when the eye-linered Muscle Marys began to take the place of actors in Hollywood films and he was the perfect anti-Schwarzenegger.
The film has proved to be incredibly influencial, if only in originating the ubiquitous Obey Clothing logo. In that way its like a cinematic 1984 in that its ideas have been picked up and (possibly sometimes unknowingly) twisted to become part of the language of oppression.
Two crucial scenes: when Piper first puts on the sunglasses and sees the horrible truth; and the five minute fight scene when he tries to wallop some sense into his co-worker, Keith David (a scene that Slavoj Zizek has fun analyzing at the start of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology.) These scenes strike at why people really feel such affection for the film. They're simplistic, even crass, but the directness of it is really touching; this is an artist so worked up, so enraged and unhinged by inequality that he just belts it out with no feeling for subtlety or restraint.
Directed by John Carpenter. 1989.
Starring Roddy “Rowdy” Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster. 89 mins. Back in cinemas for one night, Friday October 26th in a new 4K Restoration.
They were called Yuppies, and in the 80s they used to have nightmares, comic horror nightmares, like After Hours or Something Wild, in which the young, affluent and bumptious suffered various indignities before returning to their consumer-driven, wealth insulated lives. They ain’t called Yuppies any more; because now they have complete control.
They Live is an angry, raging, discontented film that you are likely to feel enormous affection and indulgence for, even love. It is sweet and adorable, and watching it again some quarter century after seeing it in the cinema is like being reacquainted with an old buddy and finding, that despite the way the passing of time has changed both of you, he is still fundamentally a stand up guy. For a film that would seem to embody most of the worst traits of 80s cinemas – musclebound lunks knocking seven bells out of each other – it is uniquely decent.
They Live is Carpenter's inversion of the Invasion of The Body Snatcher. Instead of the fear of communist infiltration, the alien invaders are the rich and their stooges, set on sucking this planet dry. They really are aleady here. Roddy “Rowdy” Piper is a nameless itinerant labourer who believes in a hard day's work for a proper day's pay. In American mythology the rootless drifter is a sanctified figure, moving around finding work to do and wrongs to right. Here though this drifter is just desperately trying to stay one step ahead of bum status. Wandering into Los Angeles in search of work he instead discovers that the human race has been infiltrated and subjugated by aliens. The resistance movement have sunglasses that allow the wearer to see the black'n'white reality of the world – that most businessmen and policemen are really aliens, that the billboards, newspapers, magazines and TV screens are projecting messages such as Stay Asleep, Consume, Conform and No Independent Thought.
His process of radicalization sees him turn instantly from a humble, respectful blue collar labourer, the man who in a Springsteen song would call his elders “sir,” to a wise cracking action hero who comes up with lines like, "I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum." Casting a wrestler was an inspired move. Firstly because Piper is rather good. There's a sweetness to him, he's like an Osmond who's been pumped up to bursting with steroids. Secondly, the eighties was the era when the eye-linered Muscle Marys began to take the place of actors in Hollywood films and he was the perfect anti-Schwarzenegger.
The film has proved to be incredibly influencial, if only in originating the ubiquitous Obey Clothing logo. In that way its like a cinematic 1984 in that its ideas have been picked up and (possibly sometimes unknowingly) twisted to become part of the language of oppression.
Two crucial scenes: when Piper first puts on the sunglasses and sees the horrible truth; and the five minute fight scene when he tries to wallop some sense into his co-worker, Keith David (a scene that Slavoj Zizek has fun analyzing at the start of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology.) These scenes strike at why people really feel such affection for the film. They're simplistic, even crass, but the directness of it is really touching; this is an artist so worked up, so enraged and unhinged by inequality that he just belts it out with no feeling for subtlety or restraint.
