Cheap They Live (DVD) (Roddy Piper, Keith David) (John Carpenter) Price

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Customer Reviews of They Live

Very Silly. Ace Fun.
This film is very very very John Carpenter. No one else could have made it. In particular no one else could have shot something so monumentally daft and ended up with something worthwhile. And worthwhile it is though, if I am honest I must acknowledge, it's the sort of movie you'll probably enjoy a lot more if you're a bit the worse for drink.

It one of that endless succession paranoid alien takeover movies along "Body Snatchers" lines in which it turns out many of what appear to be our fellow humans are really horrible alien monsters bent on evil ends. It stars Roddy Piper who is not the film's strong point. He plays the sort of role Carpenter usually casts Kurt Russell as and he has none of Russell's on-screen charisma. He's a construction worker who finds a pairs of shades that turn out to be rather special and allow him to see who the evil aliens are as well as to read the subliminal messages they have plastered all over the world. These are hilariously crude: "OBEY", "CONSUME", "MARRY AND REPRODUCE". Etc: you get the idea... The high point is the line: "I came here to chew bubble gum and kick ass and I'm all out of bubble gum." Which would be enough to make any movie worth seeing whatever else it was like. The low point is the most tediously protracted fight scene in cinema history. (If you watch this on telly live the start of this is a good time to go make the coffee: you'll miss nothing).

It is, I repeat, monumentally daft. It is more funny than frightening. But it is not intended to be frightening the way "Alien" is frightening. It's a comic strip and for the most part it's a highly entertaining one. I'd say, in Carpenter's film corpus, it ranks somewhere in the middle. It's nowhere near as good as say "Escape from New York", "The Thing" or "Precinct 13" but miles better than his more disappointing outings like "Village of the Damned" or "Escape from LA". While it's flawed in a bunch of ways it has, dud fight scene aside, that wonderful cinematic rhythm and directorial sureness of touch that makes this prolific director of, on the face of it, rather silly sci-fi and horror B-movie-style fantasies one of Hollywood's most likeable and distinctive film craftsmen.

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Roddy can act.. and what a fight seen!
Carpenter does a great job with this film. It really makes you think about how it was back in the 80's. People just trying to scrap up any money they could while coorporate America is falling apart! Businesses going out of business left and right and people losing jobs by the second. But wait... there are aliens in our mist. It would seem that an alien species in taking over our planet and we can't see them without special glasses. Let me tell you that Roddy Piper does a very good job acting in this. He had no experience in any feature film before (Unless you call WWF REALLY acting! ) And that fight seen with Keith David is worth the price of the DVD alone. If there is any problem it is that there are no extras on this DVD. Sound are picture quality are decent but the best you find on anything that is out there. This movie is a cult-classic so buy it... you won't be disappointed!

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Strong philosophical and religious undertones
Made as the Reagan era came to a close, this film not only has strong political undertones, but religious and philosophical connotations as well. Carpenter emphasizes the B-film aspects of his movie - outrageous violence (and a well-known wrestler to play the main character), elaborate make-up effects, aliens, etc. as much as he can, so that the film's subversiveness is sufficiently hidden. Masquerading as a routine invasion story, it portrays a society whose members blindly accept all of the implicit materialist/capitalist messages thrown their way; the only resistance is offered by those who don't fit in that money-oriented mold - a blind preacher, the poor, some dissident intellectuals. Many religious and philosophical grids can be used to read this movie - Hinduism's doctrine of maya, Plato's cave, Gnosticism: an unlikely visionary (Piper) realizes that the 'real world' is in fact full of illusions; convincing others of his discovery proves to be difficult (witness the famously extended fight scene, at once hilarious and revealing), and a battle soon begins between two secret fraternities - one determined to maintain the illusions, the other eager to dispel them. This is one of Carpenter's best films.