The Hidden (1987)

Buddy cop movies are, in theory, great.  They really highlight the fun that can be had when people or dogs with very different cultural backgrounds or hygienic habits are forced to work together.  For example, you could take a by-the-book rookie cop who is very tidy and team him up with a necktie wearing, chain-smoking chimpanzee who cares only about exacting revenge against the drug lords who murdered his wife in a horrific speedboat explosion and is getting too old for this shit and is always getting his ass chewed out by the chief.  It would be called something like “Going Apeshit,” and would be, of course, hilarious.  It isn’t that difficult to make a mismatched pair funny. The shit kind of writes itself.  That is why every successful comedy duo ever has consisted of a dumb guy and a normal guy. It’s the perfect recipe for both hijinks AND shenanigans. Nobody wants to watch a lone slob get Arby’s Sauce all over his own already filthy upholstery; we could just put a camera in Kirstie Alley’s car if we wanted to see that.  But when that same Arby’s Sauce is used to stain an uptight partner’s new fine Corinthian leather, well then you have the potential for a truly classic film.

This is what really upset me about The Hidden. It’s not a bad movie, but I feel like it gave me some false expectations for wacky buddy cop bullshit and didn’t go anywhere after setting things up. Kyle MacLachlin, star of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, plays an alien inhabiting the body of a dead FBI agent. Awesome. His partner is allegedly a badass who makes the chief uneasy. With this premise in hand, I was ready for goddamn antics, and lots of them. What I was presented with was a film about two tepid dudes (Twin Weaks?) who are hunting the coolest sociopathic alien since ALF.

Believe it or not, this is it...

 

Sweet Siouxsie poster!

The most disgustingly rad thing this movie offers is when they show how the alien hijacks our stupid human bodies. Of course, they only show this once, because this movie is all about making you imagine an easily better film.

Oh, he pukes himself out into people's mouths! What a class act!

I bet this is what the joy of giving birth feels like.

...and the joy of giving birth in reverse!

I wanna put this on a Christmas card.

What is this amazing alien’s amoral agenda? I’m glad I asked. Here’s a quick breakdown:

1. Steal Ferraris

2. Steal heavy metal cassette tapes and a ghettoblaster

3. Listen to metal in public, fart loudly

4. Take over a stripper’s body and feel self up

5. Announce candidacy for president of the United States

Hey, it's Lin Shaye, the teacher from Nightmare on Elm Street!

That’s quite a giant leap in ambition. And I don’t think he would make such a bad president, either. He would probably enact all sorts of badass legislation, like making it illegal for women to wear shirts, or declaring the new national anthem any song by Ratt.

That movie where Agent Cooper fucks AC Slater’s girlfriend in a pool was pretty good. At least the strippers took their clothes off.  This movie has one of the only 80’s stripclub scenes ever to not show a single human breast.  It’s unclear why they would even want to include a gentlemen’s club if they weren’t going to show anything other than the woman from Babylon 5 dancing with a crotchful of dollars.

The whore of Babylon 5

  

 Also, Danny Trejo is in this movie for like 3 seconds.

And he just happened to get locked up with some dude wearing a Danny Trejo shirt. How embarrassing.

 

 

 

 Yet another movie that could easily be remade into something better. Here, Hollywood, I'll give you a working title: Ferrari Fart Fiend's Excellent Heavy Metal Adventure. You're fucking welcome.

Also, when the fuck is National Pizza Week? Fuck Christmas, I wanna make friends with a pepperoni.

 

Nightflyers (1987)

      Nightflyers is a film based on a story by George R. R. Martin, who reminds us all what it would look like if Ernest Hemmingway quit writing to be a competitive Hot Pockets eater.

Or if Santa just stopped giving a fuck.

Rest assured, this film lacks any fantasy elements, unless being bored is your fantasy.  It stars Catherine Mary Stewart, who you may remember from Weekend at Bernie’s and Night of the Comet, and James “Uncle Phil” Avery, who was also the voice of Shredder. They are members of a space expedition who are looking for some intelligent entity in space.  Or something. It’s never really clear and they don’t ever find it, probably because they aren’t really looking.  Their spaceship is controlled by a shitty version of Hal from 2001 because it's really easy to put a little red light into a wall and nobody worked very hard on this shit.  However, this Hal is actually the consciousness of its creator, whose artificially grown son lives in a tube and is projecting himself as a hologram. The hologram totally falls in love with Catherine after watching her do the least erotic gymnastics routine in history.  Yeah.  The rest of the plot is also pretty idiotic. Here’s a highlight reel:

Uncle Phil gets his fingers chopped off in a mysterious oven explosion.

All four of them. Ouch.

David Copperfield gets his mouth split open by the laser machine from Logan’s Run.

Love that Joker.

And the last boss turns out to be Gozer's grandma, who has a face-lightning battle with her dipshit hologram son and loses.


I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.

The director of this movie abandoned it before production finished and refused to let them put his name on it.  It would be interesting to see how many of the actors actually put this celluloid abortion on their resume instead of, say, just wiping their ass with a piece of paper that had their name on it.

If you are like me, then you might be suckered into watching this by that bitchin' poster which promises an unholy celestial space demon who eats spaceships. I can't stress enough that nothing even remotely that cool happens in the film. It's like putting a Taco Bell sign on a church just to get people to go in. And really, I'm not sure if I'm more mad at the guy who made the Taco Bell sign or the church. I'm just left feeling confused and betrayed and I want tacos.

Go make me tacos, Uncle Phil.