| HugeReviews.com Reviews:
They Live
by Jorge Solis, Resident John Carpenter Expert
Huge
Imagine the world being taken over by aliens. No knows this except you. You don't know who to trust and you're afraid of the person next to you. There is
no help for you. This is John Carpenter's sci-fi classic They Live.
John Nada is a loner who drifts from town to town. He has no past and no future. He is like
Snake Plisken but he chooses to have a soul. He lives with the homeless working class led by Keith David (in his return after
The Thing) as Frank. John Nada discovers with his black sunglasses that there are aliens disguised as humans. What does a man do when he discovers that aliens have taken over the world? He grabs a shotgun and goes hunting for aliens.
John Nada is played by superstar wrestler, Rowdy Roddy Piper. This is not The Rock playing the
Scorpion King or Vince McMahon acting as executive producer. Rowdy Roddy Piper plays an average Joe looking for work. You wouldn't expect this guy to save the world. You also don't expect him to walk into a bank with a machine-gun and say the best line in the whole movie.
John Carpenter used a pseudonym to buy the rights for "Eight O' Clock In The Morning" by Ray Nelson. Then he
gave Frank Armitage his first chance to write a screenplay. The screenplay is funny, action-packed, and most of all, surprising. John Carpenter and Frank Armitage have invented a new breed of aliens.
Bloodthirsty aliens are bad but yuppie aliens are the worst. These yuppie aliens live by something I learned in high school, Reganomics. The movie points at and satirizes everything Regan's presidency stood for. At the end, John Carpenter makes fun of the movie critics that have hassled and annoyed him over the years. John Carpenter does some tricks with the camera that deserve to be seen. You see humans at first but when John Nada puts on the black sunglasses, you see aliens. The visuals are great as you see the aliens in black and white. Then there is the infamous 7 minute fight scene between Keith David and Roddy Piper. There is no graceful choreography, no pretty ballet, just
two guys beating the crap out of each of other. This is why it is considered one of the Ultimate Fights on DVD next to Brad Pitts' boxing scene in
Snatch.
When I heard John Carpenter's They Live was coming out on DVD, I was in total shock. I hope they have commentary between John Carpenter and Roddy Piper. They have been friends since they first met in Wrestlemania III. I hope they have behind-the-scenes features on how they made the movie both in color and black and white. This is the movie to buy on DVD.
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