The Hidden (1987)

Director: Jack Sholder
Kyle Maclachlan – Lloyd Gallagher
Michael Nouri – Tom Beck

The Hidden is a sly tongue-in-cheek mix of sci-fi action with pinch of gory horror. It’s obviously a well worned formula phoned in by a bunch of people working for their paychecks, but at least the product shows off that they know how to do their jobs.

Detective Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle Maclachlan) is befuddled by a large string of robberies committed by regular people who all die horrible deaths. He’s especially peeved when he’s saddled with an out of town rookie detective Tom Beck (Michael Nouri). But as the they get deeper and deeper into the case, he realizes that maybe the villain he’s dealing with is…out of this world. (Ed. cue eerie music?)

A body hopping alien who can’t stay in his host for long due to a rapid case of body decay isn’t anything you haven’t seen before, but the fact that this particular alien loves rock ‘n roll and destruction spices things up. The acting is pure B-Movie woodiness, but the direction is stylish enough to capture all the carnage in interesting and creative ways. Said carnage is lovingly rendered in all the over the top ways it can go (See the escalating opening car-chase) and director Jack Sholder doesn’t shy away from showing off his slightly rubbery Alien FX every chance he can get. The whole thing was never meant as high art, coming, as it was, out of New Line Cinemas at the time they where a dedicated genre studio that only cared about the bottom line. However, it'll do for a Saturday night.

DVD: There's a slyly sardonic commentary by Director Jack Sholder that is composed 90% of chewing out the horrible actors. There’s also little SFX making of, but it's mostly a waste of time without any of the original team that helped create them present. The most common edition these days is package with The Hidden 2, a terrible sequel that should never steal any of your time.