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They Live Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 46 Reviews)

Gloriously subversive
This is John Carpenter in top form, taking dead aim at the faux-cheery sophistry of the Reagan era and blowing the lid clean off. Roddy Piper does a serviceable job in the lead role, but it's the always wonderful Keith David who does the heavy lifting here (what a grand voice).
This one came in under the radar and few people saw it, with fewer still getting the message. Considering the stifling atmosphere of present day America, a film like this could NOT get made currently.
While it can be enjoyed as an alien invasion thriller, the real fun is in the political sub-text, which is even more cogent now than when the film was made.

Poor maligned space bugs
Roddy Piper, a top pro wrestler, happens to star in a movie classic. I'd place this movie on my all time list of the 100 greatest movies ever made. And it's carried by Roddy Piper. He's not just the star. He's the movie. He, and the director, and the writer, and the costume designer. He carries every single scene on his shoulders.

It is a 1984 type story, about an evil repressive government that just needs to be overthrown. Your good guys and bad guys are very easy to delineate, if you have the special sunglasses. Put them on, and your bad guys look like who they really are - ugly space aliens. I love it.

My very favorite scene is the closer, the one they shock you with just before blacking out and going to the credits. A whore is in bed with one of the space aliens. She sees him as human. Then all of a sudden the matrix-like illusion is gone and she sees him as he really is - an ugly giant bug. It's great.

I think it would be fun, if you were an ugly giant bug yourself, to take over a planet as they did. However, the writing is definitely from the point of view of the Earth creatures that we have taken over, hahaha.

My favorite character in Men In Black is "Egger", the giant bug who is the villain and is pestered unmercifully by Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. When will we stop being so one-sided in these movies, these Earth-centered propaganda flicks, and let our hair down and have some fun taking over a planet for a change. In a few hours I have to get up and start another work week. Is that really a way of life worth preserving? Earth be damned, let's root for the space bugs.

Obviously this movie is dark with criticism of the wealthy capitalists who rule our planet. We learn, here, that they are really extra terrestrial space bugs. Okay. I think Bush is the Earthling who collaborates with them in this movie. I see a resemblance. They are both slick talkers with a southern twang, and I wouldn't buy a used car from either of them. I would typecast George Bush in that role. As for the Roddy Piper part, who would be better than the macho and colorful Ralph Nader, or Al Gore. Can you just see Nader or Gore breaking a trash can over Jim Brown's head in the sequel?

An Intellegent Sci-Fi Thriller! A Tale About the Haves and Have Nots

This is a fun movie. Here, Roddy Piper's acting and on-screen charisma fueled by John Carpenter's movie magic touch is a slam dunk combination! This film actually surprised me. It made me laugh and think and boy does it get exciting durning the last half.

To briefly sum up the film, sinister aliens that appear human have complete control of the world and all of its governments. Money hungry humans working as minions have sold out the planet and their own species to these invaders. A small militant resistance group knows what is happening and has developed optical lens that reveal the aliens and their propaganda messages that lay subliminal to the naked eye. Roddy Piper's character is an unlikely hero who accidently stumbles into the war.

Wow, pretty deep stuff. This has much in common with the "V" miniseries from the 80s.

You will want to show this to all of your close friends, but be warned the first half hour is a tad bit slow and the ending seems to arrive too quickly. These factors slightly dampen a film that could have been perfect.

I would love to have had this film be another ten or fifteen minutes longer if it would have provided more action and suspense.

Even though this film was made in 1988, its themes of greed, deception and nepotism is more potent today living under the newest Bush's America where the middle class is gradually becoming extinct and the wealth gap between the rich and poor has never been so vast and troubling.

In the film, you see people using cardboard boxes as umbrellas and a community of people living in a dingy hamlet that resembles something you would expect to see in a third world nation, but not in America. These people have been largely abandon by the powers that be to fend for themselves. The whole thing eerily reminds the viewer of the Bush Administration's slow and pitiful response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

John Carpenter has achieved true Art with this film.

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