The Hidden (1987) and The Hidden 2 (1993)

nThe Hidden was directed by a guy known asnJack Sholder, you might know him as the guy who directed A Nightmare on ElmStreet 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), a very entertaining Nightmare on Elm Street filmnfilled with its fare share of memorable moments, like the famous Krueger quote:n“you have the body and I have the brain”. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’snRevenge was a very successful horror film, so of course, Sholder was given ansecond chance to direct a theatrical release and thus, we got The Hidden (1987)nwhich by the way I have to say is an extremely entertaining action sci-fi hybrid, which the director himselfncategorizes as his best film.

nThis is the story of an alien race that thrives on sensoryninput, if it likes something, it takes it, it does it. In the case of thisnalien, he likes sports cars, girls and heavy metal and he will do anything tonget these things. The one problem is that he can’t be caught because he goesnaround jumping from body to body, so you never know who he will look like. LikenNight of the Creeps (1986) or Slither (2006), the creepy crawlies in The Hiddennare the kind of slimy critters that will crawl in through your mouth andncontrol your body from within. Thankfully, there’s a “good alien” who has comento stop this greedy sensation glutton, can it be stopped?

nAgain I am faced with yet another action film from the 80’snthat shows me what real action films were like. It has that high violencenquotient that you just don’t find in today’s action films; today’s actionnfilms? Yeah right, what a joke. There’s no such thing. Sure Furious 6 (2013) isnbucket loads of fun, but it all feels either too far fetched, or like a computernanimated film with little tangibility to it. You see the cars blow up and it’sngreat fun, but in the end you know it’s all a lot of computer generatednwizardry. Not so with films like The Hidden, where the action happens on cameranin all its explosive glory. Speaking of the violence factor in The Hidden, it’snpretty high. The film starts out with this cool as hell chase sequence thatninvolves a red Lamborghini going through town crashing everything in its waynand killing pedestrians along the way. I mean, this alien is so vicious that hendoesn’t think about it twice before blowing away ten cops to get through, he’llndo it, he doesn’t care. Which of course amusing because rarely do you see ancharacter that solves everything by simply blowing people out of the waynwithout the slightest hint of fore thoughtnor remorse; the alien just does it. I like how the film addresses the issue ofninstant gratification, how the ‘me’ generation of the 80’s only lived forngetting what they wanted as fast as they could get it. These issues are stillnrelevant today, I’d say today’s generation is like that, only amplified anthousand fold.

nThough this film is all about slimy aliens that invade ournbodies to control us, it doesn’t focus so much on special effects, in fact, wensee the alien briefly, only twice in the film. What’s really cool about thisnmovie is the action, which is practically none stop. Expect a lot of Uzi’s andnshotguns being fired. Uzi’s were super popular in 80’s action films, these mininmachine guns popped up a lot in films like Invasion U.S.A. (1985) and Cobra(1986), and we see a couple of them here. Trust me when I say that a lot ofnfire arms are fired on this movie! If the alien can get his hands on it, he’llnshoot it. Even bazookas are fired here! This movie is an onslaught of violence!nIn that sense it reminded me a lot of The Terminator (1984) a film that I feelninfluenced this one a whole lot. In fact, it has a very similar scene in whichnthe villain enters a police station and starts blowing away police men. Thenoverall structure of The Hidden isnalmost exactly that of The Terminator. It’s a film about a nearly unstoppablenvillain with no remorse, no emotion, it will kill without hesitation.

nThis film is very 80’s, it’s filled with a lot of cliché’snthat we used to see a lot in films of this era. For example, there’s a highnspeed chase sequence and wouldn’t you know it, these two guys are carrying anhuge piece of glass across the street? And of course the car has to drive throughnit and smash it into a million pieces! Since the alien loves heavy metal/rocknand roll, we get lots of 80’s rock and roll tunes throughout the entire film; therenare a lot of Concrete Blonde tunes on this film. Another thing that marks thenera of The Hidden is this cool scene where the alien walks into a music storenand starts stealing cassettes because cd’s where not invented yet? The postersnon the wall are all of bands from the era (I spotted one for R.E.M.) also, thenalien carry’s a boom box on his shoulders! Not to mention the clothes that somenof the characters wear…and the cars they drive. This movie oozes eighties! So anyhow’s The Hidden was a moderate success, it made aboutn10 million bucks on a half that budget, so of course a sequel was made, butnwith an entirely different creative team. It was directed by a guy called SethnPinsker, but don’t ask me who he is or what he’s done. He hasn’t directednanything after this, and with only a few short films and television work undernhis belt, he doesn’t have much of a career as a director. I guess this was asnfar as he went as a filmmaker.

nThis is the kind of sequel that starts off exactly where thenprevious one left off, so it does have a level of continuity to it. There’s andifference between the two films though, first off, while the first was a veryn80’s film, this sequel was made in 1993, so it no longer has that 80’s vibengoing for it, and you can actually feel the difference. There’s a scene wherenthe alien walks into a nightclub/rave type of deal, and everyone is dressednwith the 90’s fashions, which is alsoncool to revisit, it reminded me of a C and C Music Factory music video ornsomething. Another difference between the first film and the this one is thatnit focuses a whole lot more on showing us the aliens, only thing is that theyndon’t look a heck of a lot like the ones we saw in the original film, but we donsee a lot of them because this time around the alien doesn’t just want instantngratification, he also wants to procreate.

nSadly, what we get with this sequel is more of the same,nalmost exact same sequences throughout the whole film. The bad alien needs ancar, he steals it! He wants a boom box he takes it! The good alien doesn’t knownwhat it’s like to be human, so the girl shows him; oh man is it just me or isnthis sequel complete snores ville? It’s the same thing all over again. Thenthing that sets this sequel apart the most is that instead of playing out likena buddy cop movie like the first one did, it instead decides to go the way ofnJohn Carpenter’s Starman (1985) and suddenly turns into a love story between annalien and a human. While watching this movie I also got flashbacks from yetnanother John Carpenter film, namely, The Thing (1982), cause there’s thisnsequence that involves a dog, an alien and a bunch of slimy tentacles.

nSo anyways, what we get here is not a very original sequel,nit’s essentially the same movie, only instead of getting lots of guns andnviolence, we get a love story and less violence. But more aliens. I have to saynthat it does add a bit more to the story by explaining to us a little morenabout the aliens and their home world, I liked how they compared the goodnaliens to angels and the bad aliens to demons and their home world to heaven, butnif I had to give you an ultimatum about this movie, it would be that I onlynrecommend it if you’re absolutely freaking bored and have nothing better tonwatch, or if you want to see a bit more of the same. While the original is angood action sci-fi, the sequel is a straight to video cheap-o cash in, yetnstill, for a straight to video release, you could do a whole lot worse.

nThe Hidden (1985): 4 out of 5

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nThe Hidden 2 (1993): 3 out of 5