This is one of my top 5 sci-fi movies of all time, i just love it, the sad thing is not many people i know have even heard of the movie.The movie seems really slow for the first 20-30 minutes but for me the moment the movie starts is when Roddy Piper puts the sunglasses on, that's the time i sat up and got into it.The fight scene in the alley was the best movie fight scene i had saw up to that point and it stayed the best fight scene in my opinion for some years after.If you are a sci-fi fan and not seen this movie yet then i ask you WTF? Get this movie watched now because you're not a true sci-fi fan until you have saw this.I could go on and on about this movie but i have a life i have to get back too so get out there and watch it.

I have absolutely no idea what film most of the reviewers were watching, when they lauded this movie, but believe me when I say it stinks! I (naively) believed the reviews about how it was arty, how it was more about a political statement, a clever satire on society's class system, and a true cult classic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Really people! It was sad (not in a good way)Wait, I get it, all those reviews were written by the aliens themselves! Trying to suck us in again.Trust me, the wooden acting, poor makeup FX and simply pathetic casting and dialogue are unmatched, even early Doctor Who episodes were more appealing... and the payoff (it had to get better in the end didn't it?) was a limp lettuce leaf.The only reason I gave this waste of time 6 out of ten, was because the cinematography was on the whole very good.Please do not torture your eyeballs... leave this movie in the discount bin at KMart. Maybe it'll just disappear...

After receiving his major bill with a 25 Million Dollar production of "Big Trouble in Little China" from Twentieth Century Fox in the season 1985/1986, Director John Carpenter turned to his sophisticated B-Movie roots, who look like A-Lister, with an high-conceptual script of aliens, or are it just dead-inside people, who conquered the world of financing and the government in "They Live" from the late 1980s, when the Grindhouse double bill at major city movie houses slowly faded away from the landscape of invading home video cassettes and cable TV.Director John Carpenter holds all strings on this 4 Million Dollar production, engaging surprisingly authentic playing wrestler Roddy Piper with his solid sidekick actor Keith David, who enter the headquarters of "Them" as an Army of Two by killing off everyone in their path under machine gun fire to the menacing public TV broadcasting stationary room, fine-tuned by additional extreme-close-ups of barrel fire, which builds a throughout straight-to-finish racing editorial with nothing to wish for then being indulged into low-budget movie-making. Nevertheless the director has the gift to translate seemingly trashy screenplay into well-crafted motion picture, which easily transformed the production values of downtown Los Angeles shot-on-location sights into a tripling revenue at the U.S. domestic box office in Winter 1988/1989, which comes at no surprise, because the leading character struggling, yet calm and reserved drifter called Nada, who is about to enter an adventure of a life-time in order to fulfill his destiny to die for, saving the world from total subconsciously obedience, had spoken the U.S. working society from the heart.In retrospective, "They Live" has nothing lost of his engaging cult status, where in 2017 social structure are seemingly unchanged to the point that everything you have been able to buy at a grocery store in 1988 as food, drink, as to speak booze, and tobacco, has been available to this very day without questioning the inconvenient truth that the quality of the common food has been decreased to a level of lab-gene artificiality and further prices forced by inevitable inflation of international currencies making the work-purchase-relationship from day-to-day basis harder to conceive. In a sense, the movie's underlining criticism on a global society divided by currency, power and inter-human connection has become victim to the exposure of a director, who tediously trained his craft of cinematic visualization to at times astounding precision, but lacks the spark of a mind-binding twisting spectacle premise shot.Even though John Carpenter has been given another 50 Million U.S. Dollar budget by Paramount Picture in season 1995/1996 to realize the undeniable sequel to his arguably best film directed at the age of 32 "Escape from New York", starring Kurt Russell in the role of, timelessly connected character to motion picture history, Snake Plissken, which leaves "They Live" as a director-driven picture that without a doubt comes full circle by the end of fast-dropped curtains.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

I don't usually write reviews but i must warn people about this movie. I am a fan of John Carpenter, The Fog and The Thing are both excellent movies, this is terrible. The title of the movie.. They Live maybe could have been "They live along side us but they arnt really doing anything". The film just doesn't go anywhere, i wish i had watched the x-files instead.Stay away!!!