They Live

It is a big, silly barrel of fun, with a delirious, tongue-in-cheek script...

The film was was responding to the start of the US rust belt and Reagan-era consumerism, but its themes of working-class subjugation and omnipresent media control have only become more pressing.

Carpenter's primary objective was to make a tough action flick, which he does; it fits snugly into his filmography's subset of urban mayhem movies (alongside 'Escape from New York,' 'Assault on Precinct 13,' and parts of 'Big Trouble in Little China').

Behold the message as articulated by John Carpenter's sublime sci-fi opus: "I'm giving you a choice: Either put on these glasses, or start eating that trashcan."

As a movie, They Live is lethargic. As election propaganda, it's terrific.

John Carpenter's They Live has cult favorite written all over it, and part of the reason is the way it regenerates the cheap, juicy, surprisingly potent sci-fi of the 1950s.

Piper handles the action scenes better than he deals with dialogue, but he is well supported by Keith David and Meg Foster.

[It] provides moments of catharsis, not to mention a measure of gloating-at-somebody-else’s-trainwreck satisfaction.

Both outlandish and prescient, Roddy Piper exudes charm and director Carpenter is fully confident in this crowd-pleasing, sci-fi dystopia.

The best John Carpenter film ever made...