The Hidden (Jack Sholder, 1987)

If you have not watched The Hidden, do so. It is so much more fun to go in completely ignorant.

They like money, they like loud music, they love Ferrari’s and they will kill anyone who gets in their way. It falls to veteran cop Thomas Beck (Michael Nouri) and FBI Agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MaLachlan) to take them down.

I first watched this movie a decade ago and fell hard for it.

I re-watched it about a couple of weeks before Men in Black: International, and I could not help comparing the two. In fact, if you are in the mood for a double bill, pair The Hidden with Men in Black. They are both buddy-cop movies that also act as savvy blends of science fiction, horror and very different but distinct lashings of comedy.

When you break down the components, this movie should not work: the premise is hokey; the director’s previous effort had been Nightmare on Elm Street 2; the score is inexplicably bad, and it mixes so many different genres and tones that it is a miracle it works so magnificently.

The execution is what makes this movie. Jack Sholder must thank his lucky stars for this movie, but he is one of the reasons why it is great.

His direction is clean, clear and filled with moments of invention. The opening scene - a bank robbery shot entirely from a single security camera, immediately discombobulates the viewer while also setting up the important action, concluding with the stone-faced robber turning and staring straight at the camera. He smiles and shoots.

Cue a terrific car chase, which utilises the visual vocabulary (particularly POV shots and mounted side angles shooting backwards over the rear wheels) of 70s chase thrillers like Bullitt and The French Connection, but filled with remarkable touches of black comedy (including maybe the best variation on the old ‘two guys carrying a pane of glass across a street’ gag).

This scene really sums up the movie's relationship to genre - it takes a familiar trope and then elevates it.

A lot of the movie's use of familiar tropes boils down to how people react to what is happening: There’s an amazing sense of scale and stakes to the movie - people react like people; people get hurt; people experience fear, pain and death.

The way Beck and his wife talk feels like a believable couple, even down to the way she reacts to Beck's annoyance at Gallagher.

Everybody plays the movie straight - the cops feel right out of a police procedural, but there is no real delineation between Beck and his fellow officers. He might be the best officer in the department, but he is not a loose cannon or a macho figure. The one time he is singled out as exceptional is clearly comic - his chief lists the number of ways his department (and the city) would be reduced to rubble if he is transferred. It feels like the filmmakers winking at the hyperbolic loners of most action films.

The relationship between Beck and Gallagher is the heart of the movie. Initially it feels like a cliche - government suit and regular Joe cop - but as their partnership and the case evolves, the archetypes are subverted.

While the cop-as-every-man is familiar in action movies, it is usually a superficial convention that the filmmakers ignore as the set pieces get more extravagant (check out the heroes of Lethal Weapon in the sequels). The script pays close attention to Beck's personality - he is not a vigilante loner ala Dirty Harry, and does not rush into situations with guns blazing. He is genuinely disturbed by the case, and grows increasingly terrified as every assumption he has about the suspect and his partner are proved wrong. And unlike most action heroes, his gun does run out of bullets...

Michael Nouri's performance is terrific - there is an intelligence and a world-weariness to his performance that makes Beck far more than a cookie-cutter hero. He comes across as a smart guy who has been on the beat a long time, and applies the same approach to this new case. By grounding Beck, the situation feels more dire. He seems genuinely affected by the Hidden's actions, and appears genuinely terrified during the climactic set pieces.

Kyle MacLachan s uncanny presence - so well-utilized in his collaborations with David Lynch - is perfect for the awkward and obtuse Gallagher. Initially coming across as a stuffy, out-of-touch bureaucrat (another 80s movie cliche), MacLachan gives Gallagher a weird sense of empathy that somehow still feels unsettling.

The script is also wonderfully oblique about Gallagher's origins. Pieced together through vague references and only spelled out in the third act, his true nature never comes across as cheesy or cliche.  Combined with MacLachan's deadpan performance, Gallagher ends up as the most human character in the movie.

Nouri and MacLachan's chemistry together is magnetic - it is a pity they have never been re-teamed again.

The movie's savvy use of familiar tropes extends to the way the filmmakers reveal what The Hidden is. There have been body-jumping aliens in movies before and since, but even after we have a grasp of what it is, the filmmakers find multiple ways to play on the rules they establish (the standout example is when the creature transfers into a dog, which leads to one of the film's best set pieces).

William Boyett

The portrayal of the creature's various incarnations, from the actors to the special effects, are all great. What I particularly enjoyed was the ways in which all the actors feel of a piece with each other,  manifesting the alien's uniquely selfish love of fast cars, loud music and violence. The standout is William Boyett, formerly a heart transplant patient, who brings an adolescent glee to his rampage. Thanks to judicious editing, the dog is also fantastic as the evil alien.

The reflection of pure evil

The only real flaw with the movie is the inexplicable score, which feels like a child playing with an electronic keyboard. It is a testament to the movie that it never detracts from the movie's effect.

Produced on a shoestring budget of five million bucks, The Hidden never feels lacking for anything, and punches far above its weight.

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Men in Black: International

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IN THEATRES: Men in Black - International

Probationary agent M (Tessa Thompson) is given her first assignment and sent to the London branch, where she falls in with the dashing-but-oafish Agent H.

Together they have to protect a piece of powerful alien techno-and you've already stopped reading.

There are bad aliens. Thor and Valkyrie kill them. The end. No Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones cameos.

I've been trying to come up with something to introduce this review. So here is the music video for 'Men in Black'.

Best to keep it playing - it will be more fun than this review.

Anyway.......................

What a hollow movie.

What a bland, uninteresting, cookie-cutter release date-in-cinematic-form movie.

This franchise had one good story and while the initial sequels were successful they never captured the strange magic of the first movie: the chalk and cheese dynamic of smith and jones; the deadpan style of Barry Sonnenfeld; the great Vincent D’Nofrio as the villain. With this iteration, we get a sliver of a maybe-interesting idea for a main character, and that’s about it for unique ideas.

Admittedly, the first movie is a pretty slim proposition - the plot barely exists (and was basically re-written in post-production) - yet the ingredients already listed make up for it. This movie sadly proves that Men in Black should have stayed at just one movie.

From the jump something is off - we get another extended title sequence but this one does not end on a joke or really add to the story. And then we get two flashbacks, which do no help: we open on a scene set in 2016, and then transition to another scene in 1998, and then back to the present. It is bizarre, and while the scenes provide important info for our heroes, the scenes feel disconnected from each other, and do not really pay off in satisfying ways.

What makes it worse is that there are moments where it feels like this movie could be way more fun than it is. Once the movie shifts into the present, it feels like the filmmakers are setting up a really cool premise - what if a kid grew up wanting to be a MIB (or a WIB), and actively tried to break in? This is the way we are introduced to Tessa Thompson's Agent M aka Molly, a young woman who witnessed the Men in Black and an alien in action when she was a child, and became obsessed with joining the secretive organisation. 

These early scenes are kind of fun - we get a montage of Molly crashing out of interviews for various government agencies because she keeps asking about the guys in black suits, and then a sequence showing her figuring out how to sneak into MIB HQ. Once she breaks into the building the movie's problems become very obvious.

The big issue is that the movie feels in a hurry, and does not allow anything to grow organically. Thompson's discovery and infiltration of MIB headquarters is so fast, and so easy, and followed so quickly by her becoming an agent, the movie loses what little motivation her character has. She wanted to become an MIB agent - and she does. Sure, she is on probation, but at no point through the rest of the movie does it feel like she is growing and learning how to become an agent. No big obstacles and no real stakes make this movie weightless.

While Thompson is a winning presence, she cannot compensate for how underwritten this character is. Throughout the movie I found it difficult to follow her motivations and to really get a sense of her personality. What does she want? What does she need? We never really find out.

The same goes for her co-star: Chris Hemsworth is an agent who has lost his spark, and has grown careless. Sadly the movie chickens out on making him a real loser - he is still too cool and smart. He never screws up in a big way. Even this shoddy characterisation is for nought because the big obvious twist completely negates his (slim) need for redemption.

In a franchise built on the rapport between two main characters, it is ironic that this movie completely fails in this respect. Neither character starts in a solid place, they don’t really learn anything, and they win at the end because of the actions of a minor character. If they committed to the idea of these characters - a gifted amateur who nobody believed in; a veteran who has lost his motivation - it could have worked. The idea of a character coasting because he already did something heroic, and having to humble himself, could be interesting.

Heck, it would have been funnier if it turned out Thompson is a natural at the job and Hemsworth is unmasked as a useless bro who has been getting by on charm and good luck.

Thompson and Hemsworth do their best, but the script does not give their characters or relationship enough definition to really click. What makes it worse is the ham-fisted way the movie tries to wedge in some romantic tension right at the end of the movie. It is already cliche as hell that subtext is never present in their relationship prior.

On top of its bland-erised characters, the movie is not really about anything thematically. Initially it feels like the movie will be taking a swing at current fights over immigration: Rafe Ifans, Agent C, speaks about aliens in very deragotory terms. It sets you up to expect that he will turn out to be some kind of Trumpian threat - the idea of a xenophobic MIB is interesting, but this turns out to be a character trait that just serves to make H look better when C points out signs of trouble. This aspect of the character is pretty much forgotten once the true villain is unmasked, and C turns out to be on the side of angels.

Once again, the movie takes a punt on turning its established formula on its head.

Past MIB movies are famous for their incidental pleasures (Frank the pug; the various denizens of New York), but this movie features few of the same fun details - Kumail Nanjiani plays a tiny alien soldier who becomes M's bodyguard; there's an alien masquerading as a beard.

F. Gary Gray's direction makes a fatal error of all franchise starters (or re-starters): he does not take the time to build and reveal the world - the movie is moving too fast, and introduces locations through wide shots which the characters then walk into. We are never aligned with Molly’s POV as she discovers this hidden world. There is never any sense of tension, or any really great punchlines to any of the jokes (the 'best' of which are in the trailers).

Despite the number of locations (or because of them) the movie never establishes a unique identity. One of the key things from the original is how specific it is to New York. Here, the movie flirts with James Bond-style location-hopping but never makes that interesting. Rebecca Ferguson shows up as a wealthy arms dealer with an island fortress, but the most noteworthy aspect of her character is that she has a third arm. That’s it.

And the lack of practical effects is really felt. None of the creatures or environments feel lived-in or tangible. Even exterior scenes feel canned and limited in scope. Men in Black 3 is a mess but I feel like this movie is going to age worse - its greatest weakness is not that it is bad, it is just incredibly generic in almost every respect.

The one minor highlight is the score (duties shared by Danny Elfman and Chris Bacon), which recalls Elfman's themes from the previous movies.

I would like to give the movie some kudos (half a kudo?) for resisting the urge to include a pop-in from Will Smith or  Tommy Lee Jones. Whether it was scheduling, money or a creative choice is irrelevant, but it is a testament to how little this movie sparked that I was kinda-hoping the movie would pull a Marvel and feature them in a mid-credit stinger.

If you are looking for an easy rental in a couple months, Men in Black: International will suit your needs. But it is not worth going out to the theatre.

Here's hoping Hemsworth and Thompson get to re-team on something else. They have good chemistry in Thor: Ragnarok and the same is true here. They need a Thin Man or something.

If you are looking for a good Tessa Thompson movie, wait till Little Woods comes out next week.

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Lisa and the Devil (Mario Bava, 1973)

While on holiday in a Spanish town, Lisa (Elke Sommer) separates from her friends and gets lost.

Unable to find her party, Lisa ends up hitching a ride with an unhappy couple Sophie (Sylva Koscina) and Francis (Eduardo Fajardo). When the car breaks down, Lisa and her companions wind up as guests at a nearby estate where they become uncomfortable guests of the owner (Alida Valli) and her son (Alessio Orano), who develops an unhealthy fixation on Lisa.

While Lisa and the other characters struggle to figure out what is going on, butler Leandro (Telly Savalas) sucks on a lollipop and sits back to enjoy the show...

Directed by the master of Italian horror, Mario Bava, Lisa and the Devil has been on my radar for over a decade. My local arthouse has been running a series of classic films as part of a season on 'identity horror', and Lisa was one of them.

Infamously re-cut and partially reshot by producer Alfredo Leone to cash in on the success of The Exorcist, Lisa... is one of the Italian master’s final works.

After his previous film, Baron Blood, became a big hit, Bava was given complete creative control and it shows - the movie’s atmosphere is strong, the photography is beautiful and the effects are effective rather than realistic. Bava started out in special effects and as a cinematographer - he became famous for his gifts for delivering strong material on the smell of an oily rag.

Aside from his debut Black Sunday, which is regarded as one of the finest hour movies ever made (it is one of my personal favourites), Bava is known as the originator of the 'Giallo', a subgenre of mystery thrillers renowned for their emphasis on hyper-violent murders. From Blood and Black Lace (1964) - regarded as one of the earliest gailli - Bava's subsequent additions to the genre push it in different directions - Hatchet for the Honeymoon plays the action out from the murderer's perspective; Twitch of the Death Nerve pushes the genre to its most nihilistic extreme, with multiple murderers fighting over an inheritance until no one is left alive.

A surreal descent into hell, Lisa and the Devil is only tangentially related to the genre, but in its focus on a small group of characters in an isolated location, it feels like a perverse inversion of the template - the story that Lisa stumbles into feels so familiar, and is treated so cursorily that it almost comes across as parody.

Even the components - a wealthy family on an isolated estate, riven by deceit and perverse urges - feel past their use-by date.

Once the players are stuck on the estate, any lingering semblance of cause and effect, time and place, fall apart.

One of the primary attractions of Mario Bava's work is his unsettling aesthetic - the movie features super bright technicolor, mise-en-scene crowded with creepy dummies, and judicious use of the old fish-eye lense.

In certain respects, it feels similar to The Shining - the isolated setting; the 'daytime nightmare' aspect of the photography (Bava's use of super bright technicolor is incredibly unsettling); the ultimate revelation that Lisa - like Jack Torrance - is and has always been a part of the family’s story

There are some dead spots, and most of the acting is wooden, but the big selling point - aside from Bava's aesthetic - is Telly Savalas as the satanic Leandro.

From the outset, Bava establishes Leandro's control over the movie, with a close-up of Savalas smiling straight at the camera.

Bava does not hide Leandro's true identity - Sommer literally walks around the corner from a massive fresco of the Devil, and immediately runs into the eerily similar Savalas, who is buying a life-size dummy of a man.

In the 'story', Leandro is the butler to this creepy family, both servant, overseer and an audience for the character's antics. For a majority of the runtime, his Satan is basically a background presence, observing and commenting on the other characters as they bumble around the estate.

He talks shit behind their backs, seems to delight in their panic and frustration, and he also seems a little bored by the exercise. Savalas plays the role with a droll charm, pushing his role's servility just ever-so-slightly over the top.

While Sommer is buffeted by events, it feels like the family are running through the same melodramatic storyline over and over again. Savalas’s Devil can barely be bothered to play his role. You get the impression he's played versions of this scenario out countless times already, constantly tinkering with the movements and identities of the characters to see how the scenario  plays out.

At times it feels like Leandro is pushing the story toward the ending because he wants to skip the boring parts - like exposition or character development. The most interesting murder is a spur-of-the-moment act - Sophie runs her husband over after he mocks the fact that her lover - their driver - has been killed.

Every time the movie feels like it is building toward the melodrama its story implies, Bava undercuts it, or focuses on Leandro doing something totally banal - like talking to a dummy, or attempting to bum a cigarette off a guest (and then, in the film's funniest moment, returning it as soon as his 'boss', the Countess, looms up behind him).

Savalas is so magnetic, he gives Lisa and the Devil a weird sense of gravity - the story may make no sense, the English dub may reduce the other characters to cardboard cliches, but Savalas is so good and in tune with Bava's direction that the film does not collapse.

Through Savalas, the film gains an offbeat, pitch-black vein of comedy that adds to the movie's off-kilter atmosphere.

It is not in danger being my favourite, but Lisa and the Devil is definitely worth checking out, and Savalas makes for one of the more fascinating versions of the Prince of Darkness I have seen.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

In the latest episode we discuss the portrayal of women in the Bond franchise. Subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts!