There's no way this should have this high of an age rating. At most it should be rated 15 (and whatever the equivalent is in the US with the MPAA).
Yeah it has some people getting shot and some bad language, but I've seen worse in loads of 15 rated films. It's not like the movie goes into extremely high detail with anything, you just see a bit of blood at most.
Comparing it to other films rated 18, this is mild.
I guess in the 1988 it's a lot stricter, nowadays it would've been rated 15. Remember movies like Full mEtal jacket were rated 18 by UK standard.
sharehttp://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/they-live-1988
Look under "feature". Its been reassessed a few times by the bbfc, the most recent being 2008.
Its always been an 18
This is after other movies were put down to a 15 from an 18, such as The Omen
Dunno then, it's pretty violent also there's a sex scene.
shareIts still pretty tame. The violence shown is no worse than an average action movie and the sex scene isnt graphic enough to warrent the 18.
At most it should be a 15. I guess it shows how skewed the ratings can be with them at times.
The ratings boards, knowing there is truth to the content in this film, don't have grounds to outright ban it, but they can however limit who sees it by giving the film a high rating.
It's all a big conspiracy!