If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

I’ve been seeing memes based on this film for years, but last night I finally got around to watching John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster.

This is supposed to be one of those “cult classics” and I can see why. That said, it hardly qualifies as one of Carpenter’s best movies. The plot had holes big enough to drive a truck through, the acting for the most part was pretty flat (especially from Foster, which surprised me), and at best, it was a middle-of-the-road movie.

Actually, Keith David as Frank turned in a good performance as did Peter Jason as Gilbert, and George “Buck” Flower (more on him in a minute) as the Drifter.

The basic story is about a homeless construction worker named Nada played by Piper (the character is never named in the movie) who wanders into L.A. Along the way he encounters a blind Street Preacher (Raymond St. Jacques) who rants less about God and Hell and more about how “they” are taking away our freedom and turning us into slaves.

Managing to talk his way into a job, he meets Frank (David) who has left a wife and two kids behind in Detroit because the jobs all dried up. Nada left Colorado for the same reason, no employment opportunities. While Nada seems to have a more or less optimistic view of life, Frank describes the world as dog-eat-dog where even people who are in the same spot like the two of them, are encouraged to hate and betray each other so they can survive.

Frank takes Nada to a homeless encampment on a vacant lot across from a church. It’s run by Gilbert (Peter Jason). People seem friendly and helpful, but as Nada keeps watching, he finds out that Gilbert and the Preacher are keeping secrets in the church.

Some of the homeless people are watching a cable TV station (I wonder how that works) that keeps being jammed by some video pirate delivering the same message as the Preacher.

Nada sneaks into the church to find that Gilbert, the Preacher, and a number of the other homeless are running some sort of resistance movement. They also have a chemical lab and for some odd reason, hundreds of crates of sunglasses.

Then the riot police arrive. They come with helicopters, a bulldozer, and a bunch of cops with guns and shields. They empty out the church, but not before the resistance leave in their cars with their boxes, level the homeless camp, and brutally beat the Preacher and a few others.

Nada and a few others manage to get away. They go back to the camp the next day trying to salvage something, but there’s not much left. The TV is still there and still works, oddly enough (this makes sense as the movie progresses). Nada finds one box of sunglasses that escaped discovery and stashes it in a garbage can in an alley. He keeps a pair and that’s when things start getting interesting.

When he puts them on, the world is rendered monochromatic and all of the TV screens, books, magazines, billboards, anything with a message, are revealed to be commands to “obey,” “comply with authority,” marry and have children,” “stay asleep,” “watch more television,” “consume,” and “spend.” Even money has the command, “This is your God.”

The worst part is that some people aren’t people. They look like decomposing corpses.

He confronts one woman about it in a store and then sees that the “corpses” start talking into their wrist watches, reporting that “one of them can see.” He also finds that one of the corpses can use the wrist watch to disappear.

He is accosted by police, both of whom are “corpses,” and kills them. Taking their guns he stumbles into a bank and kills more corpses. I found out that Piper adlibbed the line “I’ve come to chew bubble gum and kick ass and I’m all out of bubble gum.” This movie is a fountain of memes.

He hides in a parking garage and when a woman (Meg Foster as Holly) gets in her car, takes her hostage and forces her to go to her home. She appears compliant but not exactly afraid. He finds out she’s an executive at the same cable TV station the homeless people had been watching. Nada tries to get her to look through his glasses but she refuses.

Instead, when he turns his back, she attacks him, knocking him through a window. He falls down a hill taking enough punishment to put most people in a hospital. Unfortunately, his glasses are left behind.

Very calmly, she calls someone, we assume the police, who respond, forcing Nada to leave the area.

Nada goes back to the alley but the garbage has already been collected. He manages to salvage a couple of pairs of glasses from the garbage truck that is still there. Attempting to bring Frank into his secret, they get into a five minute long fist fight (I found out they practiced the fight for three days in Carpenter’s backyard).

Eventually, Frank “sees”. Gilbert finds them and brings them into a secret resistance meeting. Holly is there, which is odd, and unlike everyone else, doesn’t interact with everyone else. If Holly were a member of the resistance, why did she act like Nada was crazy when he told her his story at her house? Why didn’t she look through the sunglasses or understand they were on the same side? More on that later.

In exchange for their sunglasses, they’re given contact lenses that do the same job. One of the resistance has captured a corpse’s wrist watch to listen in on their transmissions. He has been unsuccessful in finding out how the teleport function works. Then the riot squad invade and almost everyone is killed.

They’re separated from Holly, but Nada and Frank stay together. Frank accidentally activates the watch’s escape mode and the two of them get away from police down a tunnel which closes in after them. They are in the aliens’ underground lair which leads to the basement of the cable TV station.

One of the drifters Nada met before (George Flower) turns out to be a human collaborator. Thinking they have also been recruited, the Drifter gives them the grand tour. The aliens are from another dimension. They’re using the cable station to send a signal across the U.S. via satellite that subliminally sends their “compliance” message. The idea is to turn humans into wage slaves who’ll sell each other out in order to get ahead. They need some humans to execute their plan which is where the collaborators come in. They are the ones who get promotions, more money, acquire wealth disproportionately to the rest of society (Carpenter was a prophet given how economics works today).

Here are some fun facts. Actor George Flower, who plays a homeless drifter in this movie, is also “Red” the homeless guy in the first two Back to the Future movies. The construction site foreman played by Norman Alden also plays the diner owner the BTTF films as well. I like these little trivia bits.

Nada and Frank figure out if they can destroy the transmitter on the roof, they can stop the aliens. Flower’s character escapes, but our heroes cause general chaos and panic in the building as they make their way up. They find Holly and bring her along but as they reach their goal, we see Holly is one of the collaborators (no surprise to me given what I pointed out above). She kills Frank. As she’s about to shoot Nada, who has made it to the roof and found the transmitter, he kills her. A police helicopter attacks and guns him down, but not before he destroys the alien transmitter (with a handgun of all things).

He dies while flipping them off, but the result is that people are able to now see the aliens and their messages without glasses or contacts.

The end.

Carpenter says he’s always had issues with authority and wrote the movie as a protest against then President Ronald Reagan’s “Reaganomics” and runaway consumerism. Over the years, some people have tried to say it’s about the Jews and the “One World Order” but Carpenter has strongly denied this.

The reason I think this movie still works is because it can ALWAYS be applied to any current governmental and corporate power structure, regardless of party politics. The impact of news and especially social media in the 21st century is just the cherry on the cake.

That’s why this rather flatly performing movie still “works” and should be a “must see” for everyone.

Piper was a professional wrestler before this and although he went back to that career, he also continued to make movies. Carpenter cast him in the role of Nada rather than a big name actor because he communicated being a homeless person and a “basic guy” very well.

The movie was low budget, poor special effects, down in the dirt film, and has attained cult classic status because its message is so incredibly relevant and probably always will be. It tells the same story as Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s novel 1984. We are being manipulated. The world isn’t what we think it is. We are being kept ignorant. We are made to be slaves. Even our thoughts and feelings are under the control of others.

Especially with the divisions in differing genders, racial strife, and so on, this all seems to be true. If we banded together, we would “get” the message and fight back, like Nada who is white and Frank who is black band together. But like Frank said early in the movie, we are bred and trained to hate each other and to only get ahead by doing in anybody else. Like the Drifter said, “We all sell out every day.”

This is terribly familiar. Catalog “They Live” in the “Current Events” section.