I had been meaning to see it this week, but didn’t notice it was on until 9:30 my time (Central).
Okay, so he’s got them perdy sunglasses. First he’s wowed by them (that part in the magazine store place, and the old woman). Now he’s started to kill everyone: “I’m here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum.” That’s a pretty fast transition.
Anyone else watching, or had seen this before?
“Brother, life’s a bitch. And she’s back in heat.”
Entertainingly awful movie, IMHO - lots of fun. I especially like the “let it never be said that Roddy Piper has forgotten his roots” fight scene in the alley. The one that - not unlike Duracell - keeps going and going and going…
More than a few charming one-liners too - perhaps Roddy Piper was gunning for Ahnold at the time. 
I remember watching this movie all the time when I was little. My father thought it would scare us, but we just laughed at the faces. All I remember is the giant billboards that say “Marry and Reproduce”
I just watched it, too. First saw it way back in the late 80’s, on video.
One punch in the face would have been enough to get me to put on the glasses! 
I liked the contrast between John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live and Don Siegel’s original 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. IOTBS is a classic “Commies from Mars” movie: There’s this nice 1950s suburban middle-class American world, and the evil aliens are trying to move in and take it over. But TL is a “Capitalists from Mars” movie, about a late-'80s America where things are already so fucked up, the only possible explanation is that the aliens (implicitly, Reagan, Bush & Co.) are already running the show!
My favorite line from TL: “This is their Third World!”
Hey, how can you dislike a movie from which lines were blatantly stolen for Duke Nukem 3D?
As far as “the whole world is being run by someone other than who we think it is and we don’t know it” kind of movies, I think this has aspects that are better than the Matrixes.
i like this movie. and i am all out of bubble gum.
One of my favorite campy movies of all times. (That and Wax Work.)
South Park did an homage to it…the cripple fight used the exact choreography and dialogue from the fight.
So good.
I always seem to tune into this one about half way through. I can’t remember: how did he get the glasses??
I have always thought it was a little strange that this movie is cheesy, given the classics “Escape from New York” and “The Thing”, which both were Carpenter movies made in the early 80’s. I think if the production values had been a little better this could be a true classic, rather than a campy classic.
Rowdy Roddy is great, but what would this movie have been with Kurt Russel in the lead role?
I totally love this movie. Hands-down the greatest Gratuitous Fight Scene in the history of film.
And I love the dollar bills that say “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”
Keith David woulda shoved those glasses up Russel’s skinny white ass in about three seconds flat.
Man I love this movie.
Say, how did he get the glasses in the first place anyways?
He got the glasses…
…from the clandestine scientists who were running the “mission” for the poor, who are of course the real humans and being exploited by the aliens. When the jack-booted thugs stormed the mission and busted the scientists, he managed to escape with a bunch of the glasses.
Not sure if the box was necessary, but why not.
Did King rip off this story in his short "The Ten O’Clock People’? It sure looks like it. The original story (by Ray Nelson, I think) was even titled “Eight O’Clock In The Morning”, and there are many similarities.
Well, Keith David and Kurt Russell were both also in The Thing, so seems to me that might have been a good casting call to have them together in this one. I guess Kurt wasn’t available, probably part of the reason they didn’t have more $$ to spend on production values.
Yup, he sure did. First time I saw “They Lived”, I thought the ripoff was the other way around. Then I found out about the Ray Nelson story. It’s quite transparent plagiarization (maybe forgivable if King had acknowledged his source, but he didn’t) and I’m surprised there’s no discussion (that I’ve seen) on the net about it.