John Carpenter's They Live

IMDb

A drifter discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to wake up to the fact that aliens have taken over the Earth.

Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

A homeless drifter discovers a reason for the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor: a conspiracy by non-human aliens who have infiltrated American society in the guise of wealthy yuppies. With the help of special sunglasses that reveal the aliens' true faces and their subliminal messages ("marry and reproduce," "submit to authority"), our hero tries to stop the invasion. This satire of Reaganomics and the "greed is good" era also has one of the funniest (and longest) fight scenes in American cinema.

NYTimes

LEAD: The idea that alien forces control our media, making subliminal use of billboards, commercials and magazines to subvert our thinking, probably isn't that hard for most of us to believe. So credibility isn't the problem with John Carpenter's ''They Live,'' which opens today at the Movieland and other theaters, but execution is.

The idea that alien forces control our media, making subliminal use of billboards, commercials and magazines to subvert our thinking, probably isn't that hard for most of us to believe. So credibility isn't the problem with John Carpenter's ''They Live,'' which opens today at the Movieland and other theaters, but execution is. Mr. Carpenter has directed the film with B-movie bluntness, but with none of the requisite snap. And his screenplay (written under the pseudonym Frank Armitage) makes the principals sound even more tongue-tied than they have to.

B-movie casting is another problem, since the star, Roddy Piper, plays his role like the former wrestler that he is. Mr. Piper appears as John Nada, a generic drifter who finds his way to Los Angeles as the film begins. The best part of ''They Live'' is its opening, when the story still holds some surprises and the promise that it may catch fire. Nada wanders through Los Angeles, gets a job as a construction worker, and is led by a new buddy named Frank (Keith David) to a shantytown called Justiceville, where he gets his first real inkling that things may not be what they seem.

A street-corner preacher, affiliated with a church next to Justiceville, sounds the first alarm when he warns that ''they'' are exploiting a sleeping middle class. Later on, when Nada learns that the church is merely a front for a resistance movement, he discovers more. ''Our impulses are being redirected,'' someone warns. ''We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep.''

Once Nada stumbles upon a package of special sunglasses, the secret is out. When he wears these glasses, he sees subliminal messages everywhere. ''Marry and Reproduce,'' says a billboard on which a bikini-clad woman pitches vacations in the tropics. ''Consume,'' says a sign advertising a close-out sale. ''This Is Your God,'' says a dollar bill, and on the newsstands magazines put forth slogans like ''Honor Apathy'' and ''Obey.''

What's more, the glasses enable Nada to see just who ''they'' are: the rich and powerful who, through these lenses, become skeleton-faced ghouls with glittering metallic eyes. Even the politician on television who talks of ''morning in America'' and declares ''We don't need pessimism!'' is one of ''them.''

Unfortunately, once this particular cat is out of the bag, the film has nowhere to go. Mr. Piper spends the rest of his time chasing around to no particular purpose, though he does announce with some enthusiasm that the nation needs a wake-up call, which he plans to deliver himself. Mr. David, who is more animated as Nada's ally, teams up with him midway through the film for a noisy attenuated slugfest that seems to have been intended as some sort of comic highlight. It's not.

Since Mr. Carpenter seems to be trying to make a real point here, the flatness of ''They Live'' is doubly disappointing. So is its crazy inconsistency, since the film stops trying to abide even by its own game plan after a while. Nada and Frank sink beneath the pavement at one point, find themselves in an underground tunnel, follow it to a grand ballroom where aliens and wealthy Earthlings are toasting ''the global good life,'' and from here discover a nearby spaceport from which travelers can shuttle to the alien planet. Even for end-of-the-world fantasy, this is too much. Subliminal Persuasion THEY LIVE, directed by John Carpenter; screenplay by Frank Armitage (Mr. Carpenter), from the short story ''Eight O'Clock in the Morning'' by Ray Nelson; director of photography, Gary B. Kibbe; edited by Gib Jaffe and Frank E. Jimenez; music by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth; art directors, William J. Durrell Jr. and Daniel Lomino; produced by Larry Franco; released by Universal Pictures. At Movieland, Broadway at 47th Street, and other theaters. Running time: 115 minutes. This film is rated R. Nada ... Roddy Piper Frank ... Keith David Holly ... Meg Foster Drifter ... George (Buck) Flower Gilbert ... Peter Jason Street Preacher ... Raymond St. Jacques

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