'They Live' clips

Reb will be up this weekend and September is just around the corner - so this is an open invitation to join us in enjoying the last bits of summer before the madness of academia take over.

I wish I could come out this weekend, but I can not, I have to go to Restoule with Laurie today, as well as house-buying nonsense to deal with.

K.

In lieu of a visit could you track down a reference?

Last night we watched 'They Live' to celebrate the passing of Roddy Roddy Piper. They are two clips of old Sci-Fi movies shown on TV during the film:
1) A clip of a black mountain crashing onto a village shown when the hobos are watching TV in the shanty town (occurs after the rebel propaganda is shown)
2) A flaming ball crashes to Earth in a clip on a TV when the two protagonists check into a hotel
Did the book I lent you on They Live mention what these movies are? Or do you know any other sources to check?

Do you have time-codes? Your book is divided by time-codes. I will flip through it in the meantime and google some stuff. So far just turning up the trivia I don't care about such as the fight scene is re-enacted in south park's cripple fight episode shot for shot. I am 80% sure that at least one of the movies in the background is from the 1951 "The Thing". John carpenter sneaks that into many of his films.

More soon.

K.

The first one is at 13:17, the second at 59:45.

I tried taking screen-shots but their are illegible.

'The Thing from another Planet' is a good guess as Carpenter is a big Howard Hawks fan. (Romero also cites this film as a source for the Night of the Living Dead). But neither shot seems to match any part of the film.

Whenever an author cites a South Park reference it always drags my opinion of them down - and considering there are South Park references to Skinny Puppy and the Cure I often encounter them in places where I hoped the author would know better.

The quest continues...

The one at 13:17 aprox is: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050720/

Still questing for the second one.

Nicely done, thanks. Did the book start to redeem itself or did you have to do your own cinematic detective work?

I've never heard of the Monolith Monsters but that clip of the falling 'monoliths' was interesting enough to to make me want to try and track it down.

The second clip a UFO landing in a desert(?) landscape, as it does a second light crosses the screen from upper-right to lower-left (meteor?). A set of two additional lights can be seen in the background, one possibly blinking (or reflecting).

I can see that IMDB lists that Monolith Monsters in their They Live 'Connections' list but not the second clip. Perhaps the second clip is from the same movie?

I have tracked down Monolith Monsters and the second clip is not from it.

Watching the second clip multiple-times it almost looks like the "UFO" enters into the ground, like a door opened to allow it to go straight down.

I still haven't had luck with the second clip, but at least we know it isn't from the same movie.

The book was very good for the first clip. The book has no films referenced for the second clip. I am going to ask my friend Charles who is a film expert on how to find out what "films are in films".

Inspired by your willingness to recruit others into this mad quest, I asked the proprietor of the great 'Misfit Island Drive-In' to take a crack at it and he solved it in a weekend! The second movie is 'This Island Earth'

I did a brief google of 'they live' and 'this island earth' and I don't seem them linked anywhere, so I think we all get +1 geek point and a Roddy Piper merit badge.

Also I finally watched Piper's other film, Hell Comes to Frogtown, and it wasn't the misogynist mess I expected it to be from the premise ("Sam Hell is the last fertile man in the post-apocalyptic ruins"). It's perverse, even paternalistic, but not mean-spirited. The frogmen effects are also pretty good. I haven't seen the new Mad Max film but its' plot sounds alot like Frogtown...