John Nada (Roddy Piper) is a jobless and homeless construction worker who wanders a large American city seeking his next job. He lands a job and a place to sleep, but soon discovers the world isn’t what he thought it was after discovering a pair of sunglasses outfitted with special lenses called “Hoffman lenses,” through which he can see the true face of people.

With the lenses he realizes that many “people” in the city are in fact aliens and they are the wealthiest, most prominent members of our society. As the story unfolds, Nada realizes that the aliens have been keeping humans in ignorance as they rule our world as they see fit. Nada must find others who know what’s happening – the makers of the sunglasses – and join them in the fight for humanity against the aliens.

The film co-stars Keith David, Meg Foster, George ‘Buck’ Flower, Peter Jason, Raymond St. Jacques and Jason Robards III.

They Live is based on the story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by famed science fiction author Ray Nelson, which was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in November 1963.