After my praising of They Live, I decided to give another underrated slice of 80s sci-fi a blast. This time I chose Jack Sholder's 1988 sci-fi thriller The Hidden as my movie of the night.
OK before I get stuck into the review, I want to take a look at the idea of aliens using humans as hosts.
Ok so with The Hidden, we have a film about an alien creature that uses human bodies to travel around and cause all sorts of mayhem, and while this is a pretty cool idea, it has been done before, many times in fact. The earliest I can think of is Invasion of The Bodysnatchers, a film about aliens using humans to put in place their invasion plan. A film similar to Bodysnatchers is The Puppet Masters which follows an alien parasite as it too uses human bodies to again put it's invasion plans into action. So we have two films about aliens using us for nefarious deeds, but then we have to look at John Carpenter's The Thing, a film in which the alien uses the humans to be able to survive, and like Bodysnatchers, The Thing uses the theme of Paranoia to elevate the tension. The Hidden is a slightly different affair...
The Alien in The Hidden is on the run, he's come to earth to hide and to survive he takes ordinary people to use as his vessel. It's not setting us up for an invasion which is a fresh take on the whole alien on earth theme, in a way it's a bit like Predator 2 only this time we don't have to put up with Gary Busey.
The film, as I stated, is about an alien using human bodies as hosts, and he uses these bodies to commit crime such as murder and robbery. After an astonishing opening credit's sequences, which uses CCTV footage of a bank and a robbery, we cut to the alien's getaway, which is 6 minutes of High speed car chases and heavy metal music. At the road block is detective Beck (Michael Nouri - Flash Dance), the lead robbery/homicide cop. After stopping the criminal, Beck is assigned to the case and is partnered with FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan) who says he's been hunting the criminal for 9 years. When the host's body is no longer habitable, he has to transfer into another body, the Alien does this and his new host, a hospital patient, goes on a rampage of murder, car theft and heavy metal. The bodies start to pile up and Beck wants to know why. When the alien has to transfer to another body he chooses that of stripper Barbara (Claudia Christian). After a violent bullet riddled roof top square off, Beck learns the truth about Lloyd. Lloyd is also an alien. The Alien criminal transfers from body to body until the final showdown in which Lloyd finally manages to destroy the alien criminal once and for all...
The cast in this is great. The right people were chose. Michael Nouri, who plays Beck is a pretty bad ass detective which he shows as aims the barrel of a shotgun at the speeding Ferrari driven by the first host of the film at a police barricade, it's almost Dirty Harry-esq. He's the veteran detective, hard core to the Max and very dedicated to his profession. I can only name two other Nouri films that I' ve seen, those being Flash Dance and Terminal Error, low budget sci-fi thriller that also stared the woman who sat down a lot on Star Trek next gen, Im surprised Nouri never became a more A-list star as he truly is very cool in this film, like an ethnic Eastwood.
Kyle MacLachlan, a man who as appeared in of the weirdest films and TV shows, is fucking on the money in this as the awkward, bizarre FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher. His character is just weird, from his introduction to his misunderstanding of how to take an Aspirin. At first he seems like autistic but then you realise that this guy isn't accustomed to human thinking. MacLachlan has always been kinda cool in my book, hell the guy was David Lynch' got to guy, had one of the nastiest fuck fests ever put on screen in Showgirls, was off the chain in Twin Peaks and starred in another underrated sci-fi film with Stephan 'bio-dome' Baldwin called Xchange about renegade clones. He's just really really entertaining in this and im kinda glad he never became the A-lister he could have because his unusual choices have entertained me anyway. I can't however forgive him for Sex And The City...
The supporting characters are pretty cool too, like Claudia Christian as the stripper, man that woman looked very nice, but Im not going get sleazy, there's a time and a place for sleaze, but she was like an Amazonian terminator. Then we have Ed O'Ross, mother-fucking Rosta from Red Heat, he's pretty cool and when he becomes the host, two words...bad ass. There's some well known genre faves in smaller earlier roles. Lin Shaye (2001 maniacs) turns up as the press secretary for a senator and even Machete himself, Danny Trejo, turns up as prisoner with really bad hair and gets his ass blow away buy the alien.
The film is pumped up by a sountrack of metal from bands such as Shok Paris and indie rock courtesy of Concrete Blonde. The metal really amps up the action, especially when a car chase in involved. For me I think the 80s was the best time for movie soundtracks, but it's time for me to end this review because it's taken me ages to get to this point, not that i've struggled to write it but because little things have come up so after about four hours (usually takes about 1 hour to fully write one of these) I am gonna give you my verdict...
The Hidden is probably one of the best sci-fi films of the latter part of the 80s, it's got action, aliens, car chases, comedy and some great performances. The film was followed by a very badly made and poorly received sequel in 1993 but the less said about that the better. If you want to see a an entertaining fast paced sci-fi action thriller, you should definitely track down a copy of The Hidden.
So in closing, check this film out as I highly recommend it....no I really do....
FILM: 10/10
Looks like a real gooden. Love that your checking out these great 80's films and introducing me to such hidden gems. I looked on dvdcompare.net and the best release is this french one which also comes with the sequel http://www.amazon.fr/Hidden-%C3%89dition-DVD-Kyle-Maclachlan/dp/B0009N12EG/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1302215384&sr=1-1
ReplyDeleteYou should really check out the "Sex and the City" episodes with Kyle MacLachlan, his character is every bit as bizarre as any of other he's ever done.
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