They Live (1988)

Posted By: brian@brianschell.com July 18, 2022

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a science fiction action thriller with elements of horror. Overall, it’s held up really well over the years and it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Synopsis

Nada walks into Los Angeles with everything he owns on his back. He goes to the employment office, he’s just come from Denver, where the economy has failed. He walks past a street preacher talking about how the human spirit has been corrupted. He talks about the owners of the human race; “our masters are all around you!”

He soon manages to get a job in construction, which is a way for Roddy Piper to get shirtless for the camera. He makes friends with Frank, who tells him where to find a place to stay. It’s a sort of homeless camp, but there’s shelter and good food. A man named Gilbert is in charge. We hear stories about the wealthy taking advantage of the workers. Nada’s a bit more optimistic, “I believe in America; I follow the rules,” but Frank is a little more realistic.

Some hacker keeps breaking into TV signals that explains some really paranoid stuff. Nada recognizes that what the TV hacker is saying matches the same woods as the street preacher earlier. After the Hacker finishes talking, everyone has a headache. Nada watches Gilbert lead the old preacher into the church— at 4 a.m.

The next morning, Nada goes over to the church and finds “They live, we sleep” painted on the wall. A recorded choir is playing over speakers. He finds a secret room full of boxes. In the front of the church, we see Gilbert and the TV hacker setting up equipment; they’re behind the secret transmission. They are running some kind of secret undergraduate operation. As he leaves, he sees a helicopter flying over.

Nada notices Gilbert and his men unloading boxes fro the church into a truck. Frank warns him not to get involved. That night, Nada watches as the church gets raided by the police. There are a LOT of police, and they bulldoze the whole homeless camp and round up all the people. Nada barely escapes.

The next morning, the people gather to pick up whatever they can, but the place is gone. Nada goes to the church, which is a burnt-out husk, but he opens the secret room and takes one of the boxes. It turns out it’s just full of cheap sunglasses. He hides the box and takes one pair of the glasses.

He puts the glasses on, and suddenly, he sees things that weren’t there before. “Obey” appears on a billboard. “Marry and Reproduce” on another. “Consume,” “No independent thought,” and others all over town. Magazines are nothing but page after page of the stuff— until he takes the glasses off and everything looks “Normal.” Some people, but not everyone, look strange too, sort of skeletal. The whole world is being told to “sleep,” and the skeletal people are everywhere.

When Nada confronts a woman, she tells her watch, “I’ve got one that can see.” They all start closing in on him. The cops show up and want to know about the glasses. He manages to overpower them and get their weapons. He walks into a bank and shoots the place up – only the non-humans. “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” He soon learns that the strange people have technology more advanced than we do.

Nada then carjacks a woman named Holly, and he ends up at her place to avoid the cops. He tells her the story, and she thinks he’s crazy. She knocks him out the window and calls the police. He soon finds that he dropped the glasses in her apartment.

He goes back to the job site, and Frank wants nothing to do with him; they all know he shot a pair of cops and a bunch of people. His face is all over the TV. He goes back for the box of sunglasses and makes Frank try them on after some convincing.

Gilbert shows up and invites the two to a meeting. They now have contact lenses that do the same thing as the sunglasses. Gilbert warns them about humans that sell out to the “ghouls.” They’re aliens, and they are changing the Earth’s environment to be more like theirs with pollution. Gilbert wants to find the aliens’ signal and shut it off. Holly is there, and she’s sure the signal isn’t coming from her station. She’s a bit more sympathetic after she tried on his glasses, and apologizes for hitting him.

Suddenly, the place is raided by the police, who shoot most of the rebels, including Gilbert. Nada and Frank get out. They get cornered and accidentally activate their watches emergency escape teleport feature.

They reappear in a tunnel under the city. They find a ballroom mostly filled with the sellout humans. A man announces that the underground terrorist network has been destroyed.

They run into one of the homeless guys earlier, now wearing a tux. They even see a teleporter to other planets aliens are on. He then shows the two the nerve center of the operation, where the signal originates. He explains that there aren’t countries or anything like that anymore; it’s all over- the aliens are completely in charge behind the scenes.

Nada and Frank start shooting and blowing things up. They work their way through the offices toward the roof, where the alien antenna lies. They find Holly, who isn’t on their side as much as they thought. She kills Frank.

Nada gets to the roof, but Holly pulls a gun on him. “Don’t interfere, you can’t win,” she says. He shoots her, and then the dish. Snipers from the helicopters shoot Nada, but the dish on the roof does explode. Worldwide, the newscasters turn into ghouls. The signs suddenly decode. People everywhere see aliens as what they are.

Commentary

Sleep.

I saw this when it came out, and dismissed it as a lazy way to get Rowdy Roddy Piper an acting job and maybe sell some cheap sunglasses in the process. Rewatching it today, it’s really very good.

Obey.

The fight scene between Nada and Frank is not terribly convincing, which is odd considering Piper’s background. There’s a lot of humor, intentional and otherwise. Still, it never gets boring, and it’s definitely got a not-very-subtle message.

Consume.

I liked it a lot more today that I did in the 80s.