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About the Movie
A quiet, law-abiding citizen robs a bank, steals a Ferrari and leads Los Angeles police on a rampage — then, apparently dying, transfers something into the man in the next hospital bed, who gets up and starts over. LAPD detective Tom Beck keeps finding the same impossible crime spree wearing different faces, and his new FBI partner, the strange, affectless Lloyd Gallagher, knows far too much about the pattern and far too little about ordinary human behaviour. Gallagher is not FBI, not exactly human, and the thing he is hunting likes fast cars, loud music, money and other people’s bodies — and discards each one wrecked.
Director Jack Sholder keeps this New Line production moving like a chase film and thinking like a creature feature. Michael Nouri plays Beck as a solid cop watching his world come apart, while Kyle MacLachlan — a year after Blue Velvet, three before Twin Peaks — makes Gallagher’s alienness funny and quietly sad. The effects are practical, the stunts are real cars really being destroyed, and the film’s 97 minutes contain not a wasted scene.
Why This Movie Matters to Sci-Fi
The Hidden is one of the great cult science fiction films of the 1980s: a body-hopping alien premise executed as a buddy-cop action picture, years before that combination became a genre staple. Its parasite’s-eye view of human appetite — the alien simply takes everything people secretly want, at full volume — gives the car chases a satirical edge that lifts the film above its B-movie budget. Word of mouth has kept it alive for nearly forty years, and its reputation among directors and genre writers far exceeds its original box office.
Where to Watch
Watch on YouTube (rent or buy) via YouTube Movies & TV.
