Here’s the thing: THEY LIVE is a weird movie. It gets off to a slow start with Roddy Piper as a homeless unemployed drifter who rolls into Los Angeles, is welcomed into a shanty-town, wanders into a church that isn’t quite what it seems and eventually stumbles upon a pair of sun glasses that let him see “the real world” around him.
Turns out the “real world” is infested with alien beings who have the faces of ghastly skulls. With the glasses off, they just look like regular people. Also, with the glasses on, Piper is startled to see that advertising billboards and magazines actually carry messages like “Watch television” and “Obey.”
The two weirdest things about this movie are its offbeat main character played by Piper and its stubborn refusal to follow anything recognizable as a usual film narrative. Both of these things work in the movie’s favor, ultimately.
The movie gets off to a slow start, but once Piper finds the sun glasses and starts rebelling against the alien overlords, things pick up. The thing is, Piper plays a total asshole who, without thinking, immediately goes to war against the aliens. Even before he has any explanation as to what’s going on, he’s blasting the aliens with shotguns and car-jacking civilians to get away from the cops.
In a lot of ways Piper is his own worst enemy – any chance he has to progress in the plot, he totally ruins by being a dick. In some ways this is realistic – you have to imagine your average real life homeless drifter would probably not be the most apt person to investigate an alien invasion.
The film is interrupted halfway through by a prolonged fight scene between Piper and Keith David as one of the shanty town residents. All Piper wants David to do is try on the glasses and see what’s up, but David won’t have it. So, they two beat the shit out of each other for what feels like roughly 15 minutes of the movies 94 minute run time.
This fight drags on so long it starts to get hilarious. Even the actors look like they can hardly believe what’s happening. So here we’ve got this alien invasion movie and more attention is given to these two guys beating hell out of each other than anything else. You’d think the movie would spend more time on the thrilling climax, but no. Let’s lovingly shoot every second of this little alley fight and linger over every single punch.
Like I said – it’s weird. But, it’s charming. Like Piper himself, the movie is mostly likable for how aggressively unlikable it is. If that makes any sense.
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