They Live! is a bit of an enigma for me.

On the one hand, the film's humor and action sequences are really fun, and John Carpenter knows how to direct that stuff expertly.

On the other hand, the screenplay, while being a source for much of the humor, is also horrifically unsubtle in it's message, delivering it with all the grace and subtly of an atomic bomb in a dynamite factory. Let's break it down a bit, shall we?

First, let's deal with the positives, since there are quite a few:

Read More