“He killed twelve people, wounded twenty three more, stole six cars, most of them Ferraris. Robbed eight banks, six supermarkets, four jewelry stores and a candy shop. Six of the ones he killed he carved up with a butcher knife. Two of them were kids. He did all that in two weeks. If anyone deserves to go that way, it sure in the hell was him.”
Man, 1987 was a good year for genre movies. Robocop, Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Evil Dead 2, Predator, The Lost Boys, The Monster Squad, Hellraiser, Prince of Darkness, The Running Man – it’s no wonder The Hidden fell through the cracks. While it made some money at the box office (roughly twice its budget of 4.5 million), it wasn’t until its release on home video that it really found an audience.
It’s still an underappreciated film, though, and it rarely seems to come up in conversations about 1980’s horror/sci-fi. I think it should be right up there with films like They Live or Night of the Comet. It’s one of those low-budget efforts that manages to do a lot with a little, with sharp writing, good performances and some truly gross special effects. Thinking about The Hidden always brings a smile to my face.
That being said, It HAS been a hot minute since I last watched the film. Its availability on streaming has been spotty, and it took me quite a while to get around to buying a physical copy. Now that I have it, though, I can watch it anytime the mood strikes me – like this week.
The Medium
I have the 2017 Blu-ray release from Warner Archives. Picture and sound are decent, and there’s a commentary track, but not much else. You can get it for between $20-$30. The Hidden’s 40th anniversary is coming up next year and I’d love to see a deluxe 4k release from someone like Arrow, but I’m not holding my breath.
The Hidden is currently not available for free or for subs on any service. It can be rented or purchased via Prime, AppleTV or Fandango Stream. (Buying it is only a buck more than renting, so worth it to “own” the film, if you go that way.)
The Movie
The Hidden starts off much like a standard police procedural. We see a guy violently rob a bank, shooting guards – and our POV security camera – with a shotgun. He then takes off in a Ferrari, leading LA PD on a chase around the city, before finally crashing the car and going down in a hail of bullets/fire. This turns out to be Jack DeVries (played by “hey, I know that guy” Chris Mulkey), a quiet man with no prior criminal history. DeVries somehow survives and is taken to the hospital, but the prognosis is not good.
There’s something definitely wrong about DeVries. It’s not just his love of loud music, fast cars, and shooting the crap out of anyone who gets in his way. He seems stiff. Slightly off. And surprisingly good humored about getting the crap shot out of him.
The detective assigned to the case, Thomas Beck (Michael Nouri), should be happy that he’s finally caught DeVries, whose litany of crimes is in the quote at the start of this review, but he’s obviously still bothered by it. What makes a seemingly normal person turn into a bloodthirsty spree killer? Even his partner, Cliff (Ed O’Ross – another familiar character actor, this movie is full of them), can’t get him to celebrate the arrest.
I was briefly reminded of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, where seemingly ordinary people engage in violent acts for seemingly no reason. That’s really the only overlap, though, and while The Hidden has its joys, they’re not as subtle as those in Cure.
Beck isn’t too pleased when his supervisor presents him with FBI Agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan) and announces he’s supposed to work with him on the apprehension of Jack DeVries. Beck announces, with relish, that they’ve already caught him, and he’s currently dying at a local hospital. Gallagher rushes off, but he’s already too late.
Director Jack Sholder (Nightmare on Elm Street 2, the Grimm TV series) has had enough of keeping things, well, hidden at this point, and shows us exactly what’s going. (With DeVries, anyway.) At the hospital the severely wounded DeVries tears out his life support equipment and moves over to the man in the bed next to him (William Boyet – I told you, you’ll recognize every other face in this film). He then proceeds to vomit up a huge, slimy, slug-like thing into the other man’s mouth, before collapsing.
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but… no, actually, yes, I AM saying it’s aliens. Body jumping, slug-like aliens. And soon the new host, Miller, is out jacking Ferraris and shopping for some head thumping music and killing anyone who gets in his way.
Beck and Gallagher are forced to work together to hunt Miller down, even if Gallagher’s insistence that the two killers are somehow connected doesn’t quite ring true to the detective.
The buddy cop scenes between Beck and Gallagher are great, with Nouri as the world-weary, hard-bitten detective and MacLachlan affecting that slightly off, but upright, persona that he’d perfect as Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks three years later. The screenplay offers the two enough moments of interaction that we really believe in their dynamic, and contains moments of both comedy and pathos. Both actors give more to their performances than a low-budget genre film necessarily deserves, and the film benefits from it.
The Hidden is just packed with character actors you’ve seen in a dozen TV shows/movies, including Richard Brooks (who’ll I’ll always remember as Jubal Early in Firefly), Katherine Cannon, Lin Shaye and even a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance by Danny Trejo. Honestly, it’s a bit distracting now.
The film keeps the pace up with car chases, shootouts and action set pieces that are, sometimes, a little let down by the budget (the final confrontation could definitely use a little more oomph). There’s a memorable attack on a police station that reminded me somewhat of The Terminator and a tense chase through a hotel. The alien antagonist keeps one step ahead with constant body swaps (including a memorable one where it takes over the body of a stripper played by Babylon 5’s Claudia Christian), and the monster will get closer and more personal than Beck is prepared for.
And of course there’s the secret Agent Gallagher is hiding.
The Bottom Line
The Hidden is a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 48 Hours and The Terminator. A buddy cop comedy with a nearly unkillable, body-swapping alien bad guy. The budget means they set pieces aren’t always as epic as they could be, and the special effects are a little janky at times, but the writing is sharp, the acting well above what the material deserves, and the pacing keeps everything moving at a sharp clip. It’s a slice of b-movie heaven, to mix my metaphors, well worth a look if you like 80s films or are just in the mood for some genre fun.
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