Sentimental Cinephiles Rejoice As John Carpenter’s Eerily Accurate ‘They Live’ Returns To VHS
I have come here to chew bubblegum, and report the news…and I’m all out of bubblegum.
Vice Press gave nostalgia nuts a swift kick to their Memberberries last Friday when the U.K. based print house announced that the next film they will be reintroducing to VHS is John Carpenter’s beloved 1988 cult classic, They Live.
Even better, it will be available for purchase on February 6th.
This news follows their release of two other horror gems that were popular rentals in the wistful days of yore: Sam Raimi’s brilliant slapstick splatterfest Evil Dead II (1987), and Dario Argento’s seminal Giallo masterpiece Suspiria (1977). The announcement has primitive cinematic screwheads screeching with anticipation, or at least the ones who still own a VCR.
The news gets even better, if you can believe it. There will be two different editions of the film available. The first is the “They Live, We Sleep” edition. This will feature five different cassettes painted white (like Ghost, for those who remember), and slogans from the film “OBEY” “CONSUME” “SUBMIT” “STAY ASLEEP” and “WATCH TV” painted across the front. The other choice is the “Collector’s Edition” which boasts a reversible cover (with art by Vice Press Home Video co-founder/Artist, Matt Ferguson), and a reversible, alternate side that includes original key art.
They Live stars late wrestling icon and underappreciated actor “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as a drifter who strolls into Bum Town, Los Angeles, desperate for work, but instead finds an underground resistance. He then finds a pair of sunglasses in the hideout of the homeless rebels which have the power to reveal the startling truth about the society that has rejected him. The ruling class are hideous aliens from another planet who masquerade as human, and they control the collective consciousness of the oblivious population through subliminal advertising and a worldwide signal broadcast that can only be disputed by adorning said sunglasses.
The movie also includes a legendary fistfight sequence with Hot Rod and co-star Keith David (The Thing, Platoon, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn) that is arguably the greatest one-on-one street brawl in movie history. Behold it’s glory:
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Like most of John Carpenter’s films, it didn’t yield much success (or appreciation) until it hit video stores, and that’s when it became a big hit (and the Holy Grail for tinfoil knights who love being proved correct). It was an accurate commentary on the consumerism craze that swept through Ronald Regan’s 1980s, and it now serves as a neglected early warning in these days of Post-Capitalism.
Co-founded by Ferguson and James Henshaw in 2015, Vice Press was established with the purpose of creating officially licensed artwork (along with collectibles) for popular cult and mainstream movies, television shows, comics, books, and viddya games to sate the appetite of those who haven’t lost the crave for physical media.
This newfangled fetish for the more tactile forms of film consumption is partially due to celebrated foot-fetishist Quentin Tarantino’s highly-opinionated podcast Video Archives with co-conspirator, Roger Avery. Most hipsters (and their beards) would decry this, and claim that the trend was set into motion almost two decades ago with the resurgence of vinyl records, but it’s also fair to acknowledge those who are simply fleeing backwards from the clumsy, unpredictable, butchering hands of 4K restorations. If any proof is needed of this, go see what those maniacs did to Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
Regardless of whichever hill one chooses to stake their destiny, it’s all a response to the mercurial and highly-unreliable quality of streaming platforms that would prefer us not to remember what it feels like to touch an actual book, and to forget the smell of room full of VHS rentals. If we’re to OBEY, SUBMIT, and CONSUME, then we might as well have something to show for it.
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