11 Hated Sci-Fi Movies That Became Cult Classics
7. They Live
There's a near ten-minute street fight scene in They Live between stars Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David, and yet for some reason it hasn't been recognized in the Congressional library of important and culturally relevant films.
Piper plays a drifter who finds a pair of sunglasses that show the world for what it is - the underlying message behind ads and newspapers is spelled out in black and white, "Buy", "Consume", "Spend me". That's unsettling, but not nearly as much as the skinless aliens that, without the glasses, walk around in plain sight, pulling the strings.
Even without the excellent and almost intentionally funny overlong fight scene, They Live was a sly commentary of the Reagan-era. It didn't have a lot of box office success, but critics clung to it. In more recent years, philosopher Slavoj Zizek has praised it as a forgotten masterpiece of the Hollywood Left.