THEY LIVE
US, 1988, 97 minutes, Colour.
Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster.
Directed by John Carpenter.
They Live is not a bad science fiction horror thriller (though there is an unnecessarily prolonged brutal fistfight and some rapid-fire shootouts). Director John Carpenter (Halloween, Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing) sets his scene well amongst marginal workers in the city, street preachers, and then takes us into an imaginative variation on alien body snatchers and subliminal totalitarian state. It is a wry comment on contemporary consumer complacency. We humans sleep, but they (ghoul-like under their skin) live. The ideas are interesting, some good action and a glib but flip ending (with a viewer commentator criticising the excesses of films by George Romero and John Carpenter). The screenplay is by Walter Armitage from a story by Ray Faraday Nelson, `8 O'clock In The Morning'. Music is by John Carpenter and Alan Howath, his regular collaborator.
1.Interesting science fiction? Contemporary fable? The US? The world?
2.The American city, building sites, marginal people and their camp, the ordinary city with its shops, television stations? The underground? The plausibility of the setting from the plot?
3.Stunts and special effects, the effect for the sunglasses: the totalitarian slogans, the drab monochrome world, the totalitarian state? Seeing the ghouls under the skin of ordinary-looking people? The contrast with ordinary citizens? The pounding and mesmerising score?
4.The tone of the film: adventure, the loner from the country in the city, the preacher and his message, the mystery of the church, the TV message, the glasses and the new world, violence, the attack, siege and fight? The flip ending with its commentary about media?
5.The influences on the film: films about aliens, George Romero's films of the Living Dead, ghouls, body snatchers?
6.Nada and his name? The hero, wandering into the city, unemployed? Disillusioned? The road and the city, jobs at the building site, the unions, the bosses? Work, his treatment? Meeting Frankie, following him to the accommodation, a new buddy? Black and white buddies?
7.Frankie and his work, Detroit background, his family, buddy, helping Nada?
8.The camp for the unemployed, the preacher and his apocalyptic themes? The church, the recorded music, the TV program, the interference, the ordinary people having headaches? The contrast with the showing of ordinary television commercials and programs? The group in the church as terrorists? Whose side were they on?
9.Nada going into the church, hearing the message, the personnel and their views, the dark glasses, the raid, his escape, the destruction of the church? His return to the church and the garbage sequence, getting the glasses? The group, the meeting, strategies, Holly present, her being a spy? The massacre?
10.Nada and the glasses, the revelation of the totalitarian world, the dangers, the shooting, in the shops and his behaviour, the watchers and their giving of information to headquarters, his experience, the return, Holly as hostage, her hitting him over the head, her disbelief? His concern for her?
11.The confrontation with Frank, trying to persuade him, the fistfight? The massacre, the police, the shooting, the hole in the ground? Frank and Nada in the underground, the banquet and the speeches, the boss and his tour, information, the aliens travelling to Andromeda? The shooting and the sabotage of the antenna?
12.Holly and Nada, as hostage, seemingly in love, the sabotage, her infiltration, her wearing a mask - shooting Frank dead, Nada shooting Holly?
13.The ending with the ghouls literally unmasked? Their being exposed for what they were - their moral comments, the television programs, the sex movie? Nada and the irony of his name as a world saviour?
14.Themes of conformism, obedience, Americana apple pie, greed and money, morals, the American dream? The title: We Sleep, They Live?
