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 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 the camera.

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 pain and death and fear.

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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