When I was in the sixth grade I went through a very serious Twin Peaks phase. As a part of my ravenous fandom I sought out other projects that the cast and crew of Twin Peaks worked on, inevitably leading me to The Hidden (1987). I remember going to my favorite video store and renting The Hidden with my father’s reassurance that The Hidden was “very good”. The copy I rented was a double tape VHS with the movie on one tape and a short behind the scenes documentary on the other.
I became an instant fan of The Hidden. It’s smart, tightly plotted, well acted, and darkly comic at times. For those reasons I have always associated it with the equally impressive B-movie Miracle Mile (1988). These films draw on timeless tropes and imbue them with a concrete sense of time and place. And each film features a phenomenal cast of character actors that suggest a very lived-in world of these films.
Kyle MacLachlan’s alien FBI man is very much cut from the same cloth as Dale Cooper. MacLachlan plays his hero with a childish wonder and mature steadfastness. It’s a paradoxical performance just like his performance of Cooper where wisdom is found in wonder and bravery in optimism. Immediately one roots for MacLachlan, relates to MacLachlan, and even looks up to him.
The Hidden combines set pieces from The Terminator (1984), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers (1978) into its decidedly pulpy mix to create a film of rapid fire intensity and show stopping set pieces. The Hidden is very violent but always with a comical edge, even if it’s just a well timed fart joke. This post-modern sci-fi thriller keeps the punches coming and the audience guessing.
I’ve seen The Hidden probably a dozen times by now (half the number of times I’ve seen Miracle Mile), and it hasn’t grown stale. It’s a classic cult movie from the eighties that I’d recommend to anyone who likes their movies pulpy and with a intense edge. It was a classic of the video store era after all.
