THEY STILL LIVE (a fan film by Chris .R. Notarile)

Thirty years ago, we woke up once, but only briefly. They put us back to sleep, and remained in control..... until now. A WORD FROM CHRIS They Still Live is a bit of a passion project. Anybody who knows me, knows I am a HUGE fan of John Carpenter. Everything from his style, to his stories, I just can't get enough of it. I always wanted to do a They Live fan film, but I could never quite settle on an idea, that is until very recently when I was watching a retrospective on a channel I subscribe to- The Renegade Cut. I highly recommend checking him out if you love film analyzations done right. Anyhoo, after watching the analyzation for They Live, and how many people have completely misinterpreted its meaning, and used it to further their own agendas when arguing on the internet, it hit me. If THEY were real, this is what THEY would want. People bickering and fighting, staying distracted, aka ASLEEP. So the idea was born, that THEY were never defeated and that THEY still remain our overlords. But I did not want to neglect the events of the original film, so in my "sequel", the events of the original film are real, but they are remembered to us as nothing more than a movie. I didn't want to completely retrace the steps of the original film, so I decided to hit the ground running with an assassination attempt, followed by a detective's story. Having a cop searching for answers, initially working for the "wrong side" shakes things up a lot better than just having another random dude stumble onto something bigger than himself. The film was shot in and around Long Beach over the course of several days. I unfortunately made a horror rookie mistake (which I will never forgive myself for) and botched my audio levels when recording all my scenes in the alley. Because of that, there is an excessive amount of dubbing in this film when there clearly shouldn't have been. The effects for the reveals were all done via photoshop and matte editing. It's the same process they did back in the day, but digitally. My only regret with this movie (apart from the audio) is the makeup on the aliens. I really wish I had the budget to get a legit mask, or to hire an FX artist to create something really cool. But that is the way of fan films. You gotta make due with what you have.