Tag Archives: THEY LIVE

...and other stuff, ART, LIVES, MOVING PICTURES, SOUNDS, UNIVERSES

THEY LIVE!

February 16, 2024 LRS

“I have come here to chew bubble gum and to kick ass. And, I’m all out of bubble gum!” — from the John Carpenter film, ‘THEY LIVE”

“THEY LIVE” — PLOT SUMMARY:

“An unemployed drifter named John Nada (Roddy Piper) finds construction work in Los Angeles, and befriends fellow construction worker Frank Armitage (Keith David), who leads him to a local shantytown soup kitchen. There, Nada notices strange activity around the church; a blind preacher (Raymond St. Jacques) loudly chastising others to wake up, a police helicopter scouts them overhead, and a drifter (George Buck Flower) complains that his TV signal is continually interrupted by a man warning everyone about those in power. Nada discovers the nearby church is a front: the choir is actually an audio recording and the building is filled with scientific equipment and cardboard boxes. Nada finds a box hidden in the wall, but escapes when the preacher catches him. At night, the police bulldoze the shantytown. Nada returns in the morning to find the church empty, but with the hidden box still there. In an alley, he opens the box and finds dozens of sunglasses. Taking one, he hides the box of remaining sunglasses in a garbage can.

Nada discovers the sunglasses are special. After putting on a pair, he sees the world in black and white and discovers it is not what it seems. Media and advertising hide constant subliminal totalitarian commands to obey and conform. Many in authority and wealthy are actually humanoid aliens with skull-like faces. In a grocery store, Nada confronts an alien woman, who then speaks into her wristwatch notifying others about him. Two alien police officers try to apprehend Nada but he kills them, taking their guns. He goes on a shooting spree, killing several aliens that he encounters in a nearby bank. He sees one vanish using its wristwatch. Nada escapes, destroying an alien flying camera and taking a Cable 54 assistant director Holly Thompson (Meg Foster), hostage. At her hill-top home, Nada tries to convince her of the truth. He also begins suffering migraine headaches from using the glasses. Holly does not believe him. Catching him unaware, Holly knocks him through a window and calls the police. Nada tumbles down a steep hillside and escapes, leaving his belongings behind.

Nada returns to the alley, where he finds the garbage can that he hid the other glasses empty. He sees and enters a nearby garbage truck, where he discovers and saves the box. Frank meets him to give him his paycheck and tells Nada (now considered a wanted man) to stay away. Nada fights with Frank in a long battle, trying to force him to put on a pair of sunglasses. Finally, Nada holds Frank down and puts them on him and he sees the truth. The two rent a hotel room to discuss their predicament. Gilbert (Peter Jason), a member of the shantytown, discovers them and notifies them about a secret meeting with other activists.

There, Nada and Frank are given special contact lenses to replace their sunglasses. They learn from the bearded man’s broadcast that the aliens control Earth as their third world, depleting its resources and causing global warming before moving on to other planets. The aliens use a subliminal signal broadcast into people’s brains to camouflage themselves. Destroying its source will allow everyone on Earth to see their true form. Frank is given an alien wristwatch, a complex radio and teleportation device. Holly appears, apparently joining the cause before apologizing to Nada. However, the police suddenly attack the meeting, killing anyone in sight while Nada and Frank are cornered fighting their way out. Frank accidentally opens a temporary portal by throwing the watch, through which the two jump into a network of underground passages.

The two find the aliens in a grand hall celebrating with their elite human collaborators. The homeless drifter from earlier, now a well-dressed collaborator, believes the two to be collaborators as well. He takes them on a tour of the passages, revealed to link the alien society, including a space travel port. A further passage leads to the basement of Cable 54 station, the source of the aliens’ signal. The two then launch an attack through the building to find the broadcaster on the roof, before meeting Holly and taking her along. As Nada climbs to the signal broadcaster disguised as a satellite dish, Holly kills Frank. Revealed to be a collaborator, she takes aim at Nada and persuades him to stop as an alien police helicopter hovers overhead. Nada complies by dropping his weapon, but then retrieves a hidden pistol from his sleeve and kills her. He then shoots and destroys the broadcaster before being killed by the aliens in their helicopter. Before he dies, Nada gives them the finger as his last gesture now that he scored the final victory over the aliens. With the signal destroyed, humans discover the aliens in their midst on TV, in the bar, and even some humans mating with them.” — Wikipedia.org

...and other stuff, ALIEN INTERVIEW BOOK, ART, MOVING PICTURES, READING MATTER, SOUNDS, UNIVERSES

THEY LIVE

October 29, 2023 LRS

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

They Live is a 1988 American science fiction-horror film directed by John Carpenter. The film follows a nameless drifter referred to as “Nada”, who discovers the ruling class within the moneyed elite are in fact aliens managing human social affairs through the use of a signal on top of the TV broadcast, concealing their appearance and subliminal messages in mass media. This is a clip from the famous “sunglasses” scene: “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And, I’m all out of bubble bum….”

The idea for They Live came from two sources: a short story called “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the 1960s, involving an alien invasion in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a story called “Nada” from the Alien Encounters comic book. John Carpenter describes Nelson’s story as “…a D.O.A. type of story, in which a man is put in a trance by a stage hypnotist. When he awakens, he realizes that the entire human race has been hypnotized, and that alien creatures are controlling humanity. He has only until eight o’clock in the morning to solve the problem.

The more political elements of the film are derived from Carpenter’s growing distaste with the ever-increasing commercialization of 1980s popular culture and politics. He remarked, “I began watching TV again. I quickly realized that everything we see is designed to sell us something… It’s all about wanting us to buy something. The only thing they want to do is take our money.” To this end, Carpenter thought of sunglasses as being the tool to seeing the truth, which “is seen in black and white. It’s as if the aliens have colorized us. That means, of course, that Ted Turner is really a monster from outer space.” (Turner had received some bad press in the 1980s for colorizing classic black-and-white movies.) The director commented on the alien threat in an interview, “They want to own all our businesses. A Universal executive asked me, ‘Where’s the threat in that? We all sell out every day.’ I ended up using that line in the film.” The aliens were deliberately made to look like ghouls according to Carpenter, who said: “The creatures are corrupting us, so they, themselves, are corruptions of human beings.”

Because the screenplay was the product of so many sources: a short story, a comic book, and input from cast and crew, Carpenter decided to use the pseudonym “Frank Armitage,” an allusion to one of the filmmaker’s favorite writers, H. P. Lovecraft (Frank Armitage is a character in Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror). Carpenter has always felt a close kinship with Lovecraft’s worldview and according to the director, “Lovecraft wrote about the hidden world, the “world underneath.” His stories were about gods who are repressed, who were once on Earth and are now coming back. The world underneath has a great deal to do with They Live.” — (Wikipedia.org)

...and other stuff, ALIEN INTERVIEW BOOK, ART, FREE ADVICE, INSIDE THE BOOK, LIVES, MOVING PICTURES, READING MATTER, SOUNDS, UNIVERSES

THEY (STILL) LIVE

October 6, 2023 LRS

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

They Live is a 1988 American science fiction satirical film written and directed by John Carpenter. The film stars Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster. It follows a nameless drifter referred to as “Nada”, who discovers the ruling class are in fact aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to spend money, breed and accept the status quo with subliminal messages in mass media. Many of the ideas in this film are clarified and expanded upon in the book ALIEN INTERVIEW. (see below)

“I want you to get these documents published. I want IS-BEs on Earth to have a chance to find out what is really happening on Earth. Most people will not believe any of it, I’m sure. It seems too incredible. No “reasonable” person would ever believe a word of it. However, it only seems “incredible” to an IS-BE whose memory has been erased and replaced with false information inside the electronically controlled illusion of a prison planet. We must not allow the apparent incredibility of our situation prevent us from confronting the reality of it.

ALIEN INTERVIEW Frankly, “reasons” have nothing to do with reality. There are no reasons. Things are what they are. If we don’t face the facts of our situation, we’re going to stay under the thumb of the “Old Empire” forever! The biggest weapon the “Old Empire” has left now is our ignorance of what they are doing to all the IS-BEs on Earth. Disbelief and secrecy are the most effective weapons they have!

The government agencies that classified the enclosed transcripts as “TOP SECRET” are run by IS-BEs who are nothing more than mindless automatons covertly ordered about through hypnotic commands given by the “Old Empire” prison operators. They are the unknowing slaves of unseen slave masters — and all the more enslaved by their willingness to be slaves.

Most of the IS-BEs on Earth are good, honest, able beings: artists, managers, geniuses, free thinkers and revolutionaries who have harmed no one, really. They are no threat to anyone except the criminals who have imprisoned them.

They must find out about the “Old Empire” amnesia and hypnosis operation. They must remember their own past lives. The only way this will ever happen is to communicate, coordinate and fight back. We have to tell other people and they have to discuss it openly with each other. Communication is the only effective weapon against secrecy and oppression.

This is why I am asking you to tell this story. Please share these transcripts with as many people as you can. If the people of Earth are told what is really going on here, perhaps they will begin to remember who they are, and where they came from.”

— from a letter written by Nurse Matilda MacElroy, published in the book ALIEN INTERVIEW

VISIT THE WEBSITE and BLOG for the book at www.alieninterview.org and www.alieninterview.org/blog

DOWNLOAD THE AUDIOBOOK