I've been on a bit of an 80s kick recently, which is both characteristic and uncharacteristic, as stated before. One of the things I like about movies from that era is that before political correctness and the weird modern tendency to over-explain in movies set in, there was a more consistent number of fun pictures being cranked out. This is, ironically, partially due to the influence of the independent cinema of the 90s—people suddenly became a lot more concerned with movies being good, which did not make for more good movies, it just led to a lot more overthinking and bloat.
Not so in the 80s, even the late 80s. A good example of the kind of movie they just don't make anymore is The Hidden. It falls squarely into the mismatched-partner buddy cop movie thing, but with a twist: one of the cops is a cranky, hard-boiled rule-breaker . . . but the other one's from outer space. Heh heh heh . . . oh, cinema.
We open with some grainy security camera footage of a bank. But right at the end of the credits, this guy pulls out a shotgun and starts blastin' fools. He picks up a couple bags of cash and hauls ass. Once we cut back to good ol' 35, we see that the dude with the shotgun is Chris Mulkey. Chris Mulkey hops in a little red sports car, bumps some metal, and a pretty well-filmed car chase ensues. Chris Mulkey clearly does not give a fuck; he runs over pedestrians, sideswipes cars, and concludes by ruining some poor schmuck in a wheelchair.
Introduce cops Michael Nouri and Ed O'Ross. They set up a massive-ass roadblock with a whole bunch of other cops, and when Chris Mulkey comes screeching along in his little red sports car, everybody opens up with shotguns. Something's a little off, though: Chris Mulkey takes a fuckload of shotgun blasts but doesn't seem all that fazed. Badass though he is, that is food for thought. Eventually, Michael Nouri pumps enough bullets in him that he crashes his car, end of car chase.
In the hospital, Chris Mulkey is on death's door. A doctor gives Michael Nouri a bit of shit for being callous, but Ed O'Ross fills the doctor in on Chris Mulkey's recent activities:
“He killed twelve people, wounded twenty three more, stole six cars, most of them Ferraris. Robbed eight banks, six supermarkets, four jewelery stores and a candy shop. Six of the ones he killed he carved up with a butcher knife. Two of them were kids. He did all that in two weeks. If anyone deserves to go that way, it sure in the hell was him.”
However, prior to this, Chris Mulkey didn't even have a criminal record. Huh. So the cops leave, and when he's finally all alone, Chris Mulkey stands up, goes to the schlub he's sharing a hospital room with, and this space cockroach from Jupiter comes out his mouth and squeezes its way into the schlub's mouth. Ah ha. That old canard.
Enter “FBI Agent” Kyle MacLachlan. He's a little spacy, but then again, he's Kyle MacLachlan, we expect no less of him. He announces to Michael Nouri that they're now partners, and they begin hunting the schlub in earnest. Michael Nouri still can't quite figure out what the fuck Kyle MacLachlan's on about until the schlub kills a guy in a record store because the guy objected to the schlub shoplifting metal tapes. The schlub also ganks a boombox, because it's the 80s, and metal tapes don't play themselves.
Having acquired tunes, the schlub goes to get a bite to eat, and blasts metal in the middle of a diner, in a very funny scene. He sees a Ferrari drive by and starts thinking thoughts. He pulls a dine and dash, but the waitresses don't really give a fuck because he cracked some nasty farts (the space cockroach's new host body having a bit of gastrointestinal problems), and he follows the Ferrari to a local dealership, where the hilariously sleazy salesman is closing the sale with a hilariously sleazy mobster type. The schlub informs them that he wants the car, but they inform him that he can't have it, and the salesman asks a large black gentleman to dissuade the schlub's enthusiasm for the Ferrari so they can close the deal and do some coke in peace. Some enthusiasm, though, cannot be dissuaded. The schlub gutshoots the large black gentleman, and interrupts the cocaine and paperwork to shoot the salesman and the mobster and take the keys to the Ferrari.
Michael Nouri puts out an APB on the Ferrari, and tries to get some information out of Kyle MacLachlan as to why two random dudes with no criminal records both suddenly develop a fixation on heavy metal, Ferraris, and homicide.
Michael Nouri: You know what bothers me about these two guys DeVries and Miller?
Kyle MacLachlan: Neither has a criminal record. They both led normal lives until a few days ago, and now they're killing people.
Michael Nouri: Do you read minds or was that just a shot in the dark?
Kyle MacLachlan: No, I read minds.
Michael Nouri: Oh yeah? What was I just thinking?
Kyle MacLachlan: That I'm full of shit.
Michael Nouri: Impressive.
Kyle MacLachlan: Not really. Quite simple to read.
Kyle MacLachlan does admit that his own Porsche in which he tools around from crime scene to crime scene at 110 mph, is stolen, but then again, he could just be fucking around. But THEN AGAIN, the space cockroach from Jupiter likes driving fast . . . could there be a connection?
When Michael Nouri invites Kyle MacLachlan over to his house for dinner, a couple more hints are dropped. Michael Nouri's daughter and Kyle MacLachlan share this weird moment where it looks like all kinds of communication is going on even though neither of them says a word. Then, Mrs. Nouri asks Kyle MacLachlan where he's from, and Kyle MacLachlan just points up. Hmmm. Still, ya gotta give the movie credit. It just lays those pieces of evidence in front of you, and on top of it being fucking Kyle MacLachlan you as the viewer know he's an alien, even if Michael Nouri doesn't figure it out until almost the end of the movie.
The schlub stumbles upon a huge store of machine guns belonging to the mobster whose Ferrari he stole, and right when the cops find the Ferrari outside a strip club, the space cockroach transfers to the voluptuous body of stripper Claudia Christian, whereupon she fucks some sleazeball to death and steals his car so she can drive around killing people and listening to metal.
Our policeman heroes catch up to cockroach Claudia and shoot her a whole bunch of times with little to no visible effect. This, and the weird little silver space gun Kyle MacLachlan pulls out, starts making Michael Nouri think that this is Something They Didn't Cover in the Academy. Claudia jumps off the roof and croaks, but not before the space cockroach possesses Michael Nouri's lieutenant's dog. Because hey, you don't get to Earth that often, why not.
While the space cockroach decides that possessing people is more fun and jumps to the lieutenant, Michael Nouri has Kyle MacLachlan arrested to try and Get A Straight Answer Out Of Him. It transpires, shockingly, that Kyle MacLachlan is not an FBI agent from Seattle. He's an alien pursuing one mean-ass space cockroach from Jupiter.
In the morning, some lab tech retardedly fires Kyle MacLachlan's space gun, which blows up a wall and creates enough of a diversion for cockroach Lieutenant to hold Michael Nouri at gunpoint and shlep him down to Kyle MacLachlan's holding cell, where they talk some alien trash, and the cockroach racistly discourses about a couple different kinds of aliens, when Danny Trejo—
—yes, that's right, sports fans, the Danny Trejo, starts heckling the cockroach from his holding cell.
Danny Trejo: “Hey, hippie! What kind of dude are you?”
At least that's what I think he said. He might have been saying “Hey, hefty.” But I like the thought of him calling a space cockroach from Jupiter holding a rocket launcher while in the body of a police lieutenant “hippie.” (Keep in mind I'm the guy who swears to this day he heard an Ewok say “oye, puto!” in The Ewok Adventure . . .)
But anyway, Danny Trejo gets shot to death for his wit, and a gun battle ensues. Michael Nouri gets shot in the stomach, the space cockroach takes over Ed O'Ross' body—which, Ed O'Ross being Michael Nouri's partner, induces a degree of angst—and Kyle MacLachlan takes off in pursuit. Cockroach Ed O'Ross takes advantage of the real Ed O'Ross being assigned way back in the beginning of the movie to protect a senator to possess the senator. Cockroach senator announces at a press conference that he's running for president, whereupon Kyle MacLachlan bursts in . . . wait, this needs a new paragraph . . .
Kyle MacLachlan flambeés the senator with a motherfucking flamethrower!
He gets shot a whole bunch of times in so doing, but man, aliens sure can take a bullet. Then, when the space cockroach crawls out of the senator's flaming corpse, Kyle MacLachlan hits him right between the antennae with his space gun. Suddenly, everybody who was shooting Kyle MacLachlan is like “ohhhhhh, now we get it . . .” and they apologetically take him to the hospital.
At the hospital, Michael Nouri is in bad shape, and his wife is crying. Kyle MacLachlan, being a good sport, takes one for the team, and breathes alien light into Michael Nouri's mouth, which makes him okay again, and Mrs. Nouri sure is happy, but the daughter knows something's up. Daddy kind of did die, it's Kyle MacLachlan in his body. But the wife clearly doesn't give a fuck, so everybody wins. The end.
I first saw The Hidden in the theaters with my mom, I think, and I'm pretty sure I saw it a couple more times on video, because watching it again a whole lotta things I remembered as being from some 80s cop movie or other were actually from The Hidden (the scene where the car salesman whips out coke while they're signing the papers, the scene where the black cop shoots a very aesthetic paperball jumpshot into the wastebasket, etc)
The Hidden holds up. I guess its relatively low budget kept it from being distributed too widely, but it's way more entertaining than Alien Nation (which is not to say Alien Nation isn't cool, it just drags a bit, whereas The Hidden fuckin moves) and everyone I know who's seen it loves it.
Worth putting in your queue: Hell yeah.
No comments:
Post a Comment