A man walks into a bank and robs it. The man, Jack DeVries (Chris Mulkey), has been on a crime spree for the last two weeks. He killed twelve people and wounded twenty-three. He has robbed banks and businesses and stolen several cars. This last heist lands him in the hospital. After robbing a bank and stealing a car he was chased down by the cops. Now he is on life support.
Tom Beck (Michael Nouri) is a Los Angeles detective who has been chasing DeVries. Beck is approached by Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan). Gallagher tells him that he is an FBI agent from Seattle who has been on the trail of DeVries for a month. Beck tells him that DeVries is in the hospital and is not expected to live through the night.
In the hospital DeVries wakes up. In the bed next to him is Jonathan Miller (William Boyett). Miller is recuperating from a heart attack. DeVries gets out of bed and approaches Miller. An alien life form is expelled from DeVries’ mouth and enters Miller’s body. DeVries’ body dies. The parasite, which looks similar to a giant slug, takes over Miller’s body, leaves the hospital, and continues on a rampage of murder and mayhem.
Gallagher convinces Beck that Miller was partners with DeVries and now Miller is running rampant. Beck and Gallagher team up to try to take Miller down. At a strip club, the alien entity abandons Miller’s dying body and takes over the body of a stripper named Brenda (Claudia Christian). Whenever a body dies, the alien slug must find a new host to live in.
Eventually, Beck figures out that there is something strange going on with Gallagher and the people he has been chasing. Eventually, Beck understands that Gallagher is an alien law enforcer who is after another alien criminal who, on another planet, killed his former partner and his wife. Gallagher, whose real extraterrestrial name is Alhague, has been searching for his nemesis for nine years.
“The Hidden” was released in 1987 and was directed by Jack Sholder. It is an American science fiction film and a bit of a buddy cop movie. The film didn’t do all that well at the box office but has since become a cult favorite. A sequel “The Hidden 2” was released in 1993.
This ended up being a lot of fun to watch. From start to finish, there are enough car crashes and police chases to keep you entertained throughout. In addition, the alien slug creature is sufficiently slimy and gross. The other special effects are better than expected. The action is nonstop plus you get a good music score and lots of cool cars. Toss in a decent ending and you have a winner.
The movie is a strange combination of the Fast and Furious franchise with aliens. Kyle MacLachlan does an excellent job of looking like an alien pretending to be human. In turn, Nouri taps into the basic seasoned cop type character who doesn’t take any bullshit from anyone. It may be standard plot wise but there is an underpinning of humor that kicks it up a notch.