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Official Site: Universal Studios

They Live is a 1988 science fiction film directed by John Carpenter, who also wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym Frank Armitage. The film is based on Ray Nelson's 1963 short story Eight O’Clock in the Morning.

Part science fiction thriller and part dark comedy, the film echoed contemporary fears of a declining economy, within a culture of greed and conspicuous consumption common among Americans in the 1980s. In They Live, 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 that is concealing their appearance and subliminal messages in mass media.

The story revolves around a nameless man referred to as "Nada" (Roddy Piper), a quiet drifter who finds work on a Los Angeles construction site. One of the workers, Frank Armitage (Keith David), takes him to a local shantytown. After eating at the soup kitchen and spending the night, he notices odd behavior at the small church across the street. Investigating, he discovers that the church's soup kitchen is a front: inside, the loud "choir practice" is a recording, scientific apparatus fills a back room, and cardboard boxes are stacked everywhere, including some in a secret compartment that he stumbles across.

That night, the police surround the church, forcing the inhabitants to flee. The police then turn on the shantytown, destroying it with bulldozers and beating the blind minister of the church to death. Nada returns to the site the next day and investigates the church again, which has been emptied. He takes one of the boxes from the secret compartment and opens it in an alleyway, finding it full of sunglasses. He keeps one pair and stashes the rest in a disused garbage can.

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