The Live

They Live
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They Live

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Carpenter
Produced by Larry Franco
Written by John Carpenter
(as Frank Armitage)
Based on Eight O'Clock in the Morning by
Ray Nelson
Starring Roddy Piper
Keith David
Meg Foster
Raymond St. Jacques
Peter Jason
Sy Richardson
George 'Buck' Flower
Music by John Carpenter
AlanHowarth
Cinematography Gary B. Kibbe
Editing by Gib Jaffe
Frank E. Jimenez
Studio Alive Films
Larry Franco Productions
Distributed by Universal Studios
Release date(s) November 4, 1988
Running time 93 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $3,000,000 (estimated)
Box office $13,008,928
They Live is a 1988 science fiction/horror film directed by John Carpenter, who also wrotethe screenplay under the pseudonym Frank Armitage (this is the name of one of the characters in the movie). Part science fiction horror and part dark comedy, the film echoed contemporary fears of a declining economy, within a culture of greed and conspicuous consumption common among Americans. In They Live, the ruling class within the moneyed elite are in fact aliens managing human social affairsthrough the use of a signal on top of the TV broadcast that is concealing their appearance and subliminal messages in mass media.
Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
3.1 Development
3.2 Casting
3.3 Filming
4 Reception
4.1 Critical response
4.2 Box office
4.3 Legacy
5 References
6 External links
[edit]Plot

The story revolves around a nameless man referred to as "Nada"(Roddy Piper), a quiet drifter who finds work on a Los Angeles construction site. One of the workers, Frank Armitage (Keith David), takes him to a local shantytown. After eating at the soup kitchen and spending the night, he notices odd behavior at the small church across the street. Investigating, he discovers that the church's soup kitchen is a front: inside, the loud "choir practice" is arecording, scientific apparatus fills a back room, and cardboard boxes are stacked everywhere, including some in a secret compartment that he stumbles across.
That night, the police surround the church, forcing the inhabitants to flee. The police then turn on the shantytown, destroying it with bulldozers and beating the blind minister of the church. Nada returns to the site the next day and investigatesthe church again, which has been emptied. He takes one of the boxes from the secret compartment and opens it in an alleyway, finding it full of sunglasses. He keeps one pair and stashes the rest in a garbage can.
Looking through the sunglasses reveals to Nada that all advertisements and media in the world actually contain subliminal messages designed to control an unwitting human population;billboards, television programs, magazines, and store products now simply display totalitarian commands such as "Obey", "Consume", "No Independent Thought", "Marry and Reproduce", or in the case of money, "This is your God."
Additionally, he soon discovers that many people are actually aliens, who are human-looking except for skull-like faces. The aliens tend to be wealthy upper class members ofsociety, as well as politicians. When the aliens realize he can see them for what they truly are, the police suddenly arrive. Nada escapes and steals a police shotgun; while evading the police, he accidentally stumbles into a local bank filled with aliens. Realizing that the jig is up, he proclaims, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum." A shooting spreeensues and after killing many aliens, one of them disappears after twisting a dial on his wristwatch (that resembles a Rolex) before Nada can shoot him. Fleeing the bank, he forces a woman named Holly Thompson (Meg Foster) at gunpoint to take him to her house in the Hollywood Hills. Taking off the glasses to rest, he remarks "wearin' these glasses makes you high, but, oh, you come down hard." Holly...