Review of They Live

Introduction

Starring Rowdy Roddy Piper as John Nada, They Live is a seminal piece of 1980s John Carpenter. The story of a drifter moving around just working where he can and living hand to mouth, John comes across strange goings at a nearby church which while helping the needy tries to spread the word about the mind controlling alien invasion. John discovers what seems like a regular pair of dark sunglasses, but these aren`t any old Ray Bans. They act like x-ray specs, revealing the true nature of the environment and its people. He finds that there are hidden messages in everything he sees and that we`re all being unduly influenced with subliminal text everywhere. Who`s doing all this and why do they want to keep humans subdued? The answer is aliens in human form that can only be detected with the sunglasses, and boy they`re not a pretty sight. They`re invading.

Time to do something about this evil so our hero sets about joining the resistance force fighting out of the church in tow with Frank (Keith David). It`s time that the world woke up.

Video

Presented with a 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer, They Live looks good. It`s clean with very little dirt visible at all. The colours are well balanced and neutral with good contrast and black levels. Detail isn`t bad either and suffice to say that They Live is very watchable.

Audio

Nothing too fancy in the audio department. There`s English, German and Spanish DD2.0 soundtracks. It`s clean and clear with understandable dialogue nicely in the centre and well reproduced sound effects coming from nearly all around you. It would have more impact as a 5.1 track but needless to say that this stereo track is quite good. The gunfire is crisp and loud so there aren`t any technical problems with the sound that I could hear.

Features

It`s a bit odd to see fullframe menus for a widescreen film, but this is what we get here and you can have menu text in English, German or Spanish. The special features here are the eight minute `Making Of` and the audio commentary which you`ll find in the setup menu. The Making of is actually quite good, but at a mere eight minutes it`s awfully short. Plus the quality of it isn`t so good since it looks like old style NTSC VHS so it`s very soft looking. Then there`s the audio commentary with John Carpenter and Roddy Piper. This proved to be interesting to listen to and was recorded a couple of years ago. They seem to cover quite a bit of ground on the production and other things surrounding the film as well as talk highly of each other.

It`s odd that there aren`t any trailers here or other little making of gems either.

Conclusion

I was a big fan of They Live back in the 90s and used to have a worn VHS copy of the film. I thought the casting of Roddy Piper was good since you need just an ordinary and simple lead and he fit right in. The story itself is very simple too and seems rather poignant in todays consumer society so this aspect of the film hasn`t really aged at all. There are some things not quite right with the film though.

At just 90 minutes long, I think there is a problem with pacing. It starts off slowly which is fine for some character development, but then the film lingers too long on scenes without really advancing forward enough. One example is the fight that John has in the alley with Frank to persuade him to try on the sunglasses. I think the fight goes on for too long. While you`re watching, there`s the plodding score underpinning events and this sounds very repetitive. It`s not something I took a lot of notice of before, but it`s something I can feel banging on the inside of my head even as I write this!

It`s a classic John Carpenter film, and I think it`s one of his better ones, but it`s not the same as I remember it. You may want to check this out further before buying and rent it instead as it`s certainly worth a rental. If you know and like the film and want the DVD, here is a good looking and sounding disc with a good commentary track that I think will appeal to fans.