They Live

Synopsis: Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker, discovers a pair of special sunglasses. Wearing them, he is able to see the world as it really is: people being bombarded by media and government with messages like "Stay Asleep", "No Imagination", "Submit to Authority". Even scarier is that he is able to see that some usually normal-looking people are in fact ugly aliens in charge of the massive campaign to keep humans subdued.
Genre: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
Director(s): John Carpenter
Production: MCA/Universal Pictures
  3 nominations.
 
IMDB:
7.3
Metacritic:
52
Rotten Tomatoes:
83%
R
Year:
1988
94 min
3,042 Views


THEY LIVE:

JOB OPPORTUNITIES

- Last place of employment?

- Denver, Colorado.

I worked there for ten years...

but then things just dried up.

They lost 14 banks in one week.

There's nothing available for you,

right now.

They use their tongues to

deceive you. Venom is on their lips.

Their mouths are full

of bitterness and curses.

The fear of God

is not before their eyes.

They have taken

the hearts and minds of our leaders.

They have blinded us to the truth.

Our human spirit is corrupted.

Why do we worship greed?

Outside the limit of our sight

they're feeding off us.

Perched on top of us

from birth to death, are our owners.

They have us. They control us.

They are our masters.

Wake up.

They're all around you.

Sometimes when I watch TV

I stop being myself. I'm a star.

I have my own talk show. Or I'm

on the news getting out of a limo.

All I ever have to do is be famous.

People watch me.

And they love me.

I never grow old, and I never die.

Excuse me,

do you need anybody?

- Maybe.

- I've got my own tools.

This is a union job.

May I please speak

with the shop steward, sir?

There's no sleeping on this site.

Sleep somewhere else tonight.

Excuse me, when do I get paid?

Thursday.

Do you need a place to stay?

There's a place over on 4th street.

They've got hot food and showers.

I don't like being followed

unless I know why.

I don't turn up with anybody

until I see where he's going.

They'll be serving food up soon.

This is Gilbert. Anything you need,

he knows where to find it.

- What's in the pack, tools?

- Yes, sir.

If you can use them,

you can fix the shower over there.

Let's get something to eat.

- More?

- Yeah.

I've got a wife and two kids

back in Detroit.

I haven't seen them in six months.

The steel mills were laying people off.

They finally went under.

We gave the steel companies a break.

They gave themselves pay raises.

The golden rule:
He who has the gold

makes the rules.

If they close one more factory, we

should take a sledge to their foreign cars.

- You should have more patience.

- I'm all out.

The whole deal

is some kind of crazy game.

The name of the game is:

Make it through life.

Only everyone is out for themselves

and looking to do you in.

You do what you can, but I'm going

to do my best to blow your ass away.

- So how are you going to make it?

- My chance will come.

I believe in America.

I follow the rules.

Everybody has got

their own hard times, these days.

You thought press-on nails would

impede all the active things you do.

We've got beautiful, natural-looking,

easy-to-apply nails.

There's seven different colors...

Our impulses are being redirected.

We live in an artificially-induced

state of consciousness.

Goddamn hacker. That's the second

time tonight that a**hole has cut in.

The movement began eight months ago

by a group of scientists.

They accidentally discovered

these signals being sent...

That thing's giving me a headache.

It must have taken him months

to figure out how to do this.

The under-class is growing.

Human rights are non-existent.

In their repressive society, we

are their unwitting accomplices.

Their intention to rule rests with

the annihilation of consciousness.

We have been lulled into a trance.

They have made us indifferent.

We are focused

only on our own gain...

They are safe

as long as they are not discovered.

That is their method of survival.

Keep us asleep. Keep us selfish.

- Keep us sedated.

- Blow it out of your ass.

- Choir practice was late last night.

- The church lets us use their kitchen.

- Till four in the morning?

- We care for a lot of people here.

The sleeping middle-class

is suddenly becoming poor.

We are their cattle.

We are being bred for slavery.

- Not again.

- We cannot break their signal.

The signal must be shut off

at the source.

- I have a headache.

- Me too, honey.

- What was that all about?

- That idiot's licking his nuts again.

THEY LIVE WE SLEEP

There's nothing wrong with it.

Only a few seconds got on the air.

Forget about breaking their signal.

They justjam us out again.

- Put the shipment out on the street.

- It won't work. We've discussed this.

We have no other choice.

Robbing banks. Making our own lenses.

We just can't reach enough people.

We've got to find strong people

who'll work with us.

I'm just leaving. Your door was open.

I just thought I'd close it.

- Neighborhood watch.

- Let me touch your face.

Now your hands.

You're a working man.

The revolution...

- Let me show you.

- Maybe some other time.

This world may have blinded me,

but the Lord let me see.

You'll be back.

I've been hearing stuff on the street.

Weird stuff.

An epidemic of violence

is what they're saying.

I was talking

to one old boy from San Anselmo.

He says up there they're talking

end-of-the-world kind of stuff.

- What are they doing?

- Shooting people, robbing banks.

A whole lot of people going crazy

over some nutty dream they just had.

The truth is, this kind of sh*t

happens at the end of every century.

It's just people

afraid to face the future.

What's happening?

I was inside there. It's full of boxes

and some kind of lab setup.

- What do you mean?

- The singing is a tape recording.

Leave it alone, man.

It's none of our business.

Gilbert is in there helping them.

I've got ajob now.

I just keep walking the white line.

Rate this script:5.0 / 2 votes

John Carpenter

John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, musician, and composer. Although Carpenter has worked with various film genres, he is associated most commonly with horror, action and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s.Most films of Carpenter's career were initially commercial and critical failures, with the notable exceptions of Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), and Starman (1984). However, many of Carpenter's films from the 1970s and the 1980s have come to be considered as cult classics, and he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmaker. The cult classics that Carpenter has directed include Dark Star (1974), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), The Thing (1982), Christine (1983), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988), and In the Mouth of Madness (1995). He returned to the Halloween franchise as both composer and executive producer for the horror sequel Halloween (2018). Carpenter is also notable for having composed or co-composed most of his films' music; some of them are now well-known, with the main theme of Halloween being considered a part of popular culture. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film Vampires (1998). Carpenter has released three studio albums, titled Lost Themes (2015), Lost Themes II (2016), and Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998 (2017). more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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    "They Live" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/they_live_21739>.

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