The Hidden (1987)

A body-hopping alien parasite leads cops on a deadly chase around Los Angeles in this action/sci-fi/horror hybrid. The thin script gets a bit repetitive and peaks too early for my taste, but for the most part this is a fast paced and entertaining flick I would recommend to all fans of violent B-movies. I also would have preferred a little more style and excitement in the staging of the action scenes, but they almost make up for it with sheer bloodiness. This might be the most blood squibs I have ever seen used in a Hollywood film (nothing is beating the Hong Kong movies of this era).

This is the closest thing we will ever have to a movie adaptation of the Grand Theft Auto games. Even if they actually made a GTA movie, it would get bogged down in the standard crime movie plots, characters, etc. of its cinematic influences. No, this movie's villain just steals Ferraris and guns, causes chaos while blasting loud music, kills anyone who gets in their way, and has no fear of cops or bullets due to the equivalent of an extra health cheat and infinite lives. This is exactly how I played GTA back in the day.

The movie opens with a bank robbery and car chase perpetrated by formerly mild-mannered Jack DeVries (Chris Mulkey AKA the guy who tried to shave Rambo). Here Mulkey looks a lot like a young Bryan Cranston, which is odd because in his later years Mulkey looks like an older Chris Cooper. A police barricade lights DeVries up and leaves him comatose. When FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan, right after Blue Velvet) shows up at the station in pursuit of DeVries, cop Tom Beck (Michael Nouri) assures him the case is closed. Gallagher knows better.

I didn't worry about spoiling anything in my opening description, because the movie lays its cards on the table quickly. About 12 minutes in, we see a bullet-riddled DeVries wake up in his hospital bed, and walk over to his comatose roommate (even with an overtaxed hospital system, would you give the mass murderer a roommate? Goddamn insurance companies...). He opens his mouth, and out comes a nasty alien dick slug. This thing is a strong contender for Most Phallic Alien Creature (non-H.R. Giger category). It forces its way into the comatose patient's mouth, DeVries drops dead, and "Jonathan Miller" (as we will later learn is the new host's name) wakes up, confounding doctors. This is the only body-jump we see fully, and the only time we see the creature outside of the climax. I am assuming that is for budgetary reasons, but they do a great job of making this brief scene horrific and memorable enough that it sticks with you. I will gladly take one well-done and memorable effects sequence over a bunch of mediocre or crappy ones.

The "Miller" form is played by William Boyett. Miller was in a coma due to a gastrointestinal condition, and we get occasional loud bowel noises to remind us of this. Boyett walks around looking pale, bloated, and sweaty. He's not giving a full Vincent-D'Onofrio-in-an-Edgar-suit level twitchy performance, but he employs some stiff and awkward body language to capture the piloting-a-body aspect.

Gallagher says to put out an APB on Miller. Since he has no criminal record, Beck refuses... Until Miller murders a record store owner while stealing some cassettes. Gallagher makes vague comments that confuse Beck but indicate to the audience he is not what he seems. This is pretty much immediately confirmed when Beck invites Gallagher to dinner with his family, and Gallagher struggles with basic human interactions, eating, and alka-seltzer. There is a weird moment where he stares at Beck's young daughter, and her look indicates that she can tell something is off about him (this pays off in the even weirder ending).

Meanwhile, Miller steals another Ferrari from a dealership. The original car buyer (in a white suit) and the dealer are in the back office doing cocaine out of the trunk of a little toy Ferrari. I was born in 1985, so I can only assume this is an extremely accurate snapshot of the 1980s. Turns out that buyer was a weapons dealer, as Miller finds a big cache of assault weapons at the guy's business. Now he has a new car and toys, but the Miller body is rapidly degenerating. We see a nasty tentacle thing coming out of a hole in his arm. I wish we got a little more of that body horror throughout. He duck tapes the bloody hole shut and goes to a strip club.

Performing at the strip club is Brenda Lee Van Buren, played by Commander Ivanova herself, Claudia Christian! That's right, I grew up a huge nerd, so I loved Christian on Babylon 5 long before I found out about her earlier B-movie career. Between this and Maniac Cop 2 (which I watched a few months back), she had some bangers! Sadly (for me and the other perverts in the audience), she is the kind of stripper you get in some movies (and crappier states like where I live) that only strips down to her underwear. Thankfully (for us perverts again), after the alien takes over her body, she walks out of the club wearing a ridiculous mini-dress that shows off the top of her ass. We hear her fuck a guy to death, and she steals his car. She gets pulled over by the cops, distracts them by feeling on her newly acquired/discovered breasts, then unloads an automatic shotgun at them. She has barely any lines before the alien takes her over, and barely any afterwards. This is not exactly a Great Role for Women, but she looks damn good and badass doing it.

Our heroes chase Van Buren into a department store. At this point I started to get a little tired of the action staging. Their search failed to generate any tension, and then the shootouts become more prolonged without offering anything new or dynamic. I really do appreciate the insane amount of blood squibs, but since the bad guy is fearless/painless, it ends up being a lot of watching people just standing around shooting each other. It's also disappointing how quickly the Van Buren vessel is dispatched here. I will admit, the pics of Christian equipped with tiny dress and large gun are part of why I watched this, and she's third billed in the credits, so I expected her to stick around longer.

On the positive side, this does set up the movie to go pretty bonkers in its third act. Van Buren throws herself off a building to escape. The script has a few frustrating moments where Gallagher does something dumb that lets the baddie switch bodies, starting here when he runs down after her instead of standing and watching who the slug jumps to next. As a result, he does not see it jump into... the police chief's dog. This is a movie that mostly plays the characters and plot straight-faced, but knows how absurd the situations are. I had laughed a few times throughout and it always felt intentional, and when the movie cuts to the chief's house and we get a shot of the dog sitting in a chair and staring in the mirror ominously, I nearly lost my shit. Then a few seconds later the dog LAUNCHES ITSELF THROUGH A DOOR LIKE FUCKIN JACKIE CHAN to knock the chief out, and I absolutely lost my shit.

The other frustrating aspect of the script is how long Gallagher holds out on telling Beck the truth (obviously he is an alien body jumper also, but a good one). This leads to lots of repetitive conversations that go nowhere. After Van Buren is dead and he has no leads, Gallagher is just going to wander off without further explanation until Beck has him arrested. This does set up more bloodshed (the spraying headshot on the chief was insane!), though, as the slug-chief shoots his way through the police station to try and kill Gallagher. The slug moves onto Beck's partner, Willis (Ed O'Ross), who goes after the Senator we have seen mentioned throughout. After another bloody shootout the slug switches bodies into the Senator, resulting in Gallagher having to publicly assassinate a presidential candidate with a flamethrower (what a sentence!). It seems foolish for him to try and do this at a fully attended and secured public event, but it means Gallagher gets shot a few dozen times in the process, in keeping with the movie's motto of "All the squibs, please." I was a little disappointed by the ultimate fate of the slug to the alien weapon, that explosion should have been bigger and messier to match the rest of the movie.

At the very end, Gallagher and Beck are in the hospital, Beck dies, and the alien inside Gallagher moves to Beck (as sparkly light, not a dick slug). Beck's wife is happy to see him wake up, Beck's daughter and "Beck" exchange another long, weird look indicating she knows this isn't her dad. Man, we all thought it was odd at the end of Face/Off that the hero just keeps the child of the bad guy he killed, but here one of our heroes takes the body and family of our other hero!

Similarities with Maniac Cop 2:

-The skeleton of a cop movie, with a sci-fi or horror element that allows them to amp up the action and carnage.

-a violent Termitaor-style raid on a police station

-Claudia Christian

- a then unknown Danny Trejo in a bit part as a random prisoner

-Maniac Cop 2 was released in 1990, but both movies feel distinctly late 80s

As fun as The Hidden is, it just can't match the gonzo intensity of Maniac Cop 2. Maniac Cop 2 also has a couple extra layers of weirdness baked in courtesy of Larry Cohen's script that made it more memorable. This would be the best B movie I had seen in a while, if I had not seen a truly great B movie so recently. If you have not seen them, I recommend both, but watch The Hidden first!