They Live - A working class fantasy

Had an Xmas film experience last Friday, more of that later hopefully, but on Thursday we went full-on anti-Xmas by watching the cult action thriller They Live.  Starring ex-wrestling star Roddy Piper, and set in the contemporary urban dust bowl that is 1980s Los Angeles.  Piper plays a drifter called George, down on his luck and heading into the city to look for work.  He settles in to sleep for a few nights at a local commune but is shocked to discover that there's some sort of subversive underground movement going on fomenting discontent and agitating to make people 'see' the truth.

When the police move in to break up the commune, George is landed with a pair of shades.  When looked through, the glasses reveal that the world around him is an elaborate fantasy, and the real world is in fact being ruled by a small cabal of aliens disguising themselves as humans.  Bill-boards and newspaper headlines are in fact subliminal messages urging people to conform and consume.  Aliens disguised as humans are using the real humans as slave labour, and buying the silence of those they can't brainwash into submission.  George immediately decides to deal with this in the American way, with a shotgun and an attitude.

They Live is a cult film for a very good reason.  It's an brilliantly silly fantasy that portrays the world's elites as literal aliens using the rest of humanity for their own profit.  Imagine if your boss was actually an alien trying to take over the world?  Then it'd be ok to shoot him in the face - the ultimate working class fantasy!  The film's politics might be ludicrously overt and the acting bad; but the film is full one-liners, inane action and has a really gritty feel to it.  The design of everything when George is looking through the sunglasses at the 'real' world is great, with lots of greyscale and monotone words on billboards saying 'CONFORM', 'SLEEP' or 'OBEY' (see picture).  It's so silly it's brilliant.  I.e. classic cult.

At 80 minutes long, They Live is no classic, but definitely worth watching.