Review of They Live (1988) by Randy T — 10 Nov 2010

âRowdyâ? Roddy Piper fights metallic space alien skeletons using his magic sunglasses he got from a shantytown. This is one of those movies that sounds like the coolest and dumbest idea ever at the same time but there is an above average sci-fi/horror film here.

A smart one, too, though you would not know it if you accidentally surfed into it one night while flipping through the channels and caught the last 30 minutes. Our hero is essentially a drifter, befriended by Frank, a fellow construction worker he meets on the job who introduces him to the wonders of an underground community that harbors a secret or two.

Fortunately, Rowdy survives a police ambush against the community and comes into possession of a box of nifty sunglasses harbored at a local church that show things for what they really are in the world: billboards are replaced with signs reading âOBEY,â? certain elite individuals in society are actually robotic skeleton alien things bent on mind-controlling everyone into slavery, every piece of currency reads âTHIS IS YOUR GOD,â? etc.

Naturally, word gets out and faster than you can say âJohn Carpenter has some pretty slick ideas,â? just about everyone is swarming Rowdy trying to subdue him and his truth-revealing shades. So most of us can agree this is a pretty awesome and clever approach to a film, and certainly levels smarter than most anything else coming out of the 1980s cinemas and that is what makes this movie even more tragic: for as cool as it is, Carpenter canâ(TM)t keep the momentum going.

Chalk it up to a low budget or pressures to get the thing wrapped up as efficiently as possible, but nearly everything in the final half of this falls prey to the âone step forward, 11 steps back into the cactusâ? school of thought.

Frank doesnâ(TM)t want to believe what Rowdy has to say (fair enough), so they beat sense into each other in an alley for literally six minutes (okay, that was stupid). Our duo out to save the world stumble into the secret alien base (awesome) only to have the entire thing end so abruptly and dumb that you find yourself looking for a pair of these magic glasses that will show the ending as a blank screen with the words âINVENT YOUR OWN ENDING HEREâ? (wait, actually, that would be pretty awesome).

Wonderful ideas at work here brought down by an inept second half and some acting that will have you cheering for the aliens.