They Live (1988)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster
Synopsis:
A construction worker down on his luck stumbles upon a pair of 'sunglasses' which enable him to see the true appearance of aliens who have moved in and are running the planet through a combination of bribery and mass hypnosis.
Review:
In spirit truer to Assault on Precinct 13 than any other Carpenter film since and in flavour too close to the contemporaneous Alien Nation for comfort, not to mention Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its kin, a parentage underlined by the fact that television is the tool of the aliens in subduing our consciousness. By way of gimmick this posits a conscience-salving excuse for why Man is messing up the planet's ecosystems: the aliens are engineering an environment more congenial to them. The film is not so naïve that there are not some bad humans as well, but the basic pared-down essence that all-out kick-ass violence is the solution to our problems is not exactly ideal science fiction. As such it looks forward to Independence Day, a dubious honour if any.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster
Synopsis:
A construction worker down on his luck stumbles upon a pair of 'sunglasses' which enable him to see the true appearance of aliens who have moved in and are running the planet through a combination of bribery and mass hypnosis.
Review:
In spirit truer to Assault on Precinct 13 than any other Carpenter film since and in flavour too close to the contemporaneous Alien Nation for comfort, not to mention Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its kin, a parentage underlined by the fact that television is the tool of the aliens in subduing our consciousness. By way of gimmick this posits a conscience-salving excuse for why Man is messing up the planet's ecosystems: the aliens are engineering an environment more congenial to them. The film is not so naïve that there are not some bad humans as well, but the basic pared-down essence that all-out kick-ass violence is the solution to our problems is not exactly ideal science fiction. As such it looks forward to Independence Day, a dubious honour if any.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster
Synopsis:
A construction worker down on his luck stumbles upon a pair of 'sunglasses' which enable him to see the true appearance of aliens who have moved in and are running the planet through a combination of bribery and mass hypnosis.
Review:
In spirit truer to Assault on Precinct 13 than any other Carpenter film since and in flavour too close to the contemporaneous Alien Nation for comfort, not to mention Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its kin, a parentage underlined by the fact that television is the tool of the aliens in subduing our consciousness. By way of gimmick this posits a conscience-salving excuse for why Man is messing up the planet's ecosystems: the aliens are engineering an environment more congenial to them. The film is not so naïve that there are not some bad humans as well, but the basic pared-down essence that all-out kick-ass violence is the solution to our problems is not exactly ideal science fiction. As such it looks forward to Independence Day, a dubious honour if any.