Obey! Obey! Obey!

As much as I consider myself something of a cinephile (I’m certainly snobby enough about what I like), I do have to admit that I have some gaping holes in my cinema knowledge and experience. For instance, I’ve never watched Citizen Kane, even though it’s been rated as the best film ever made. I’ve also never watched Casablanca, a classic that has actually lived in my collection for years and yet I still haven’t gotten around to popping it into my DVD player. And then, despite being a big fan of John Carpenter’s films, like Halloween and The Thing, I’d never sat down to watch They Live.

And I mean, sure, one can argue about the merits of this film. It’s certainly one of the better known of Carpenter’s movies, but it’s not as highly regarded as his horror classics. He’s a master of the form who defined the slasher genre with his 1978 Halloween, and then he went about making one of the best, darkest, and most claustrophobic alien horror films ever with The Thing. Audiences might not have appreciated the latter at the time of its release, but it’s considered a true classic now. They Live doesn’t have that same level of respect.

It is beloved, though. It’s a silly and weird little alien invasion movie, backed by Carpenter’s hand-made score. It has many of the same calling cards of a Carpenter story in it as well, with a certain feeling of claustrophobia strangling the audience as our heroes realize just how big, and how deep, the alien conspiracy goes. Hell, it even brings back Keith David from The Thing so he can play another hard-assed dude that takes no shit (a Keith David specialty). It feels like a very solid Carpenter film, even if it doesn’t have the same energy or vitality to it that a true Carpenter classic maintains.

The film follows Roddy Piper’s unnamed character, a drifter who’s swept into Los Angeles from parts unknown, who is looking for work. After wandering the city for a spell, he eventually gets a construction gig doing day labor. That’s where he meets Frank Armitage (Keith David), another homeless man working construction. The two bond and Frank takes our drifter over to the homeless camp he’s been staying at. They get food, share stories, and settle in for the night. But our hero sees some weird things going on at the church across the road, people having weird conversations, and singing that goes on all night, so he has to investigate.

What he finds is that the church is a front for something else, some kind of operation that, among other things, makes weird sunglasses. The cops arrive the next night and burn out the church, taking some of the people gathered there into custody while also bulldozing the homeless camp. Our hero goes back to the church after and finds a box of the glasses, and when he puts a pair on his eyes are opened wide. There’s subliminal messaging everywhere, words buried in signs and magazines, newspapers and on television, all telling the populace to obey, consume, and be compliant. And the glasses also reveal that certain citizens aren’t humans but strange aliens. He’s one man in a city filled with extraterrestrial foes, and he suddenly realizes he’s in for the fight of his life to save the world.

They Live is a very silly movie. No offense to “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, the wrestler-turned-actor he led this film, but he didn’t have the gravitas in this performance to make this a serious movie. Not that I think this is a bad thing. He plays his nameless drifter as something of a lunkhead, cool and collected and rarely ever put out, but also prone to saying one-liners when in the heat of battle. You could imagine some popular action star, like Arnold or Sly or JCVD heading up this film and the tone would match. Piper didn’t have the same gravitas, or ability to deliver the cheesy lines, but it kind of works in the context.

That’s because They Live walks this fine line between trying to be a serious film about an alien invasion and a completely dorky 1980s action movie, after careening back and forth between the two aspects from scene to scene. Its tone shifts and changes regularly as the film goes on, being a character study before it becomes a dramatic action film, then picking up and getting quite humorous, all before settling back in for real action once more. It keeps the audience guessing, that’s for sure, but whether or not those tonal shifts work really depends on who’s watching.

I do think the film would have been better off if Keith David had been in the lead and Roddy Piper had played the co-lead. Keith David has real gravitas and he can sell whatever kind of crap is put in front of him. With him as the lead I think the tone of the film would have smoothed out some as you’d have an actor that could carry the film through all its tonal shifts. Piper is fun to watch, and his performance helps to make this film an amusing cult hit, but I think Keith David would have been able to make this film work in ways Piper simply couldn’t.

But then I do also get the vibe that Carpenter was playing around with this movie. The whole scenario is pretty silly, with sunglasses revealing the hidden alien world sitting right here on Earth. Like, it’s a cool idea, but also pretty crazy and weird. It’s a perfectly 1980s plot, and the way the film handles it makes it both an oppressive plot device and also a totally goofy concept. I like the way the film uses the alien conspiracy, keeping it strange and lighthearted even as the implications of what’s going on settle in. It keeps everything feeling fun.

And you can tell the politics of the story sung to Carpenter. It has that same “trust no one” vibe of The Thing, just handled in a way that keeps the audience from constantly guessing who is good or evil (well, up to a certain twist late in the game). It’s like Carpenter wanted to revisit the concepts of The Thing, but in such a way that would be more marketable and easier for general audiences to handle. So the special effects are creepy and weird but in no way as off-putting as in his Antarctic horror film. And there’s this sense of dread hanging over the movie, but it’s not quite so oppressive that it makes it feel truly dark and dreary. They Live is Carpenter’s more up-beat version of an alien invasion, all things being equal.

I think the thing I liked best about the film, though, was just how well it still played forty-ish years later. The film feels very 1980s in its style, but the politics on display – the haves and have nots, the conspiracy to keep people subjugated and compliant so the rich can get richer – is still as relevant today as it was all those decades ago. Like with other Carpenter films, this film has a knack for staying prescient even as fashions, music, and styles have changed, and that’s all a credit to Carpenter.

I don’t think They Live is Carpenter’s strongest work – it’s not a film I’ll go back to anywhere near as often as my favorites from the director – but it does still stand as a fun and enjoyable movie that showcases the director’s style well. Carpenter likes to make a certain kind of movie, one that suits his sensibilities, and They Live fits into that mold well. It’s a little more digestible, a little easier on audiences, and that’s fine. It certainly keeps the film watchable. And sometimes you just need that on a day when you can kick back with your sunglasses and then pick up a shotgun to take out some hidden extraterrestrials.