They Live

Welcome to Satanists on Cinema. We are your hosts Satanist Cameron John and Reverend Campbell. Satanists on Cinema is a film review and commentary series that infiltrates your society, masquerading as one of you while they control your lives through covert commercialization messaging. Welcome to our review of They Live!

Discussion

Log Line: A drifter discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to wake up to the fact that aliens have taken over the Earth.
Director: John Carpenter
Writers: Ray Nelson (short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning”), John Carpenter (screenplay) (as Frank Armitage)
Budget: $3 million
Box office: $13 million
1988 American science-fiction action horror film
based on the 1963 short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson
the ruling class are aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to spend money, breed, and accept the status quo with subliminal messages in mass media
had a lasting impact on street art (particularly that of Shepard Fairey)
shot in eight weeks during March and April 1988, principally on location in downtown LA
One of the highlights of the film is a five-and-a-half minute alley fight between David and Piper over a pair of the special sunglasses. Carpenter recalls that the fight took three weeks to rehearse: “It was an incredibly brutal and funny fight, along the lines of the slugfest between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet Man.
Music for the film was composed by John Carpenter & Alan Howarth
The film opened on November 4, 1988, and debuted at #1 at the North American box office grossing $4.8 million during its opening weekend.
In fall 2010, there was development on a remake of the film, with Carpenter in a producer role. In 2011, Matt Reeves signed on to direct and write the screenplay. The project also shifted away from being a remake of They Live to a re-adaptation of 8 O’Clock in the Morning, ditching the satirical and political elements