*Minors OK. Must be 19+ w/ID for bar service.
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*We recommend purchasing your tickets in advance at www.riotheatretickets.ca. If a screening or live event is not sold out, the remaining tickets will be available for in-person purchase at the Rio Theatre’s box office prior to showtime (subject to availability).
*Our box office is typically open 30 minutes before showtime. All seating is General Admission; please arrive 20-30 minutes prior to showtime to ensure great seats, and time for treats at concession.
*All Rio Theatre tickets are final sale. No refunds, exchanges or transfers.
Normal Tickets
11:30pm - Friday, Apr 10, 2026
They Live
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."
As relevant today as it was upon its release in 1988, director John Carpenter's highly subversive (not to mention under-rated) 80s classic THEY LIVE - starring one of that decade's most beloved WWF wrestling stars, the late "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (a proud Canadian!) - is one of our most frequently requested retro titles. This campy, dystopian work of sci-fi horror has Piper playing Nada, a wandering, homeless drifter without meaning in his life. Things take a turn when he discovers a pair of sunglasses capable of showing the world - the way it truly is. As he walks the streets of LA, Nada notices that both the media and the government are comprised of subliminal messages meant to keep the population subdued, and that most of the social elite are skull-faced aliens bent on world domination. With this shocking discovery, Nada fights to free humanity from the mind-controlling aliens.
"A bizarre, intriguing combination of political allegory and old-fashioned paranoid horror." (Empire Magazine)
"John Carpenter's THEY LIVE has cult favorite written all over it, and part of the reason is the way it regenerates the cheap, juicy, surprisingly potent sci-fi of the 1950s." (Boston Globe)
Friday, April 10
Doors 11:00 pm | Movie 11:30 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.
Late Night Date Night! Bring a friend and get two-for-one entry.
THEY LIVE (John Carpenter, 1998 / 93 mins / 14A) A homeless drifter discovers a reason for the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor: a conspiracy by non-human aliens who have infiltrated American society in the guise of wealthy yuppies. With the help of special sunglasses that reveal the aliens' true faces and their subliminal messages ("marry and reproduce," "submit to authority"), our hero tries to stop the invasion. This satire of Reaganomics and the "greed is good" era also has one of the funniest (and longest) fight scenes in American cinema.
