THEY LIVE (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: irony
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Society is again its own worst enemy in THEY LIVE, as Carpenter pits one of his more macho protagonists against a subtle alien conspiracy.  In contrast to the kineticism of 1986's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, Carpenter again builds his story slowly at the outset of LIVE, focusing on the economic travails of itinerant worker John Nada (note the name; which is Spanish for "nothing.")  Nada bums around looking for work until he happens upon a Hooverville-like community of disenfranchised workers.  Nada is bemused by some of the claims he hears about a government conspiracy, but that bemusement is nothing beside his exposure to the truth: that skull-faced aliens have infiltrated every facet of American culture, using "hidden persuaders" to encourage humans to stop thinking and conform.  Nada-- played by wrestler Roddy Piper as a not-too-bright ordinary guy-- reacts unthinkingly to this revelation by first insulting the aliens to their faces and then going after them with all guns blazing.

Whereas THE FOG is a straightforward horror-drama, LIVE is plainly an ironic satire dressed up with action-adventure spectacle.  Nada tries to open the eyes of his pacified fellow humans to their plight, but he's not exactly Mister Persuasive.  He takes a woman named Holly prisoner to get the use of her car, but she won't listen to his wild stories and ends up pushing him out of a high window.  He does get his fellow worker Frank to see the aliens, but only after Nada has a long bone-crunching hand-to-hand fight with Frank.  Eventually Frank and Nada do infiltrate the alien sanctum-- improbable, given that all the human quislings in the place dress to the nines while the two heroes look like the construction workers they are.  The film ends on a cautious positive note, in that Nada manages to expose the conspiracy.  Yet any satisfaction this ending might have is surely dulled by the audience's knowledge that their own culture may be enforcing no less conformity than the film's alien masters.

LIVE is good fun, but the brainwashing scenarios are so blatantly over-the-top that they come to seem like a cartoon adaptation of Karl Marx.  This situation isn't much helped by an in-joke in which an alien TV-pundit is seen decrying the works of "George Romero and John Carpenter."  Still, the scenes of economic depression still carry a formidable charge, particularly in today's post-meltdown economy.