Several months back, Lumivision announced a string of popular films to be remastered with widescreen transfers and some with additional material. The first, and most expensive, has finally been released and, if the quality of 'The Hidden' is any indication, the upcoming discs will be high on my list.
'The Hidden' is a low budget "creature feature" from 1987 that, thanks to some genuinely talented filmmaking, rises so far above itself that it has attained international cult status. The film stars Michael Nouri as a Los Angeles homicide detective attempting to solve a bizarre series of crimes commited by seemingly law-abiding citizens. Kyle MacLachlan is a mysterious FBI agent that shows up just as this strange crime wave begins. Nouri soon discovers that the cause of these freak occurances is something he wasn't trained for at the Police Academy and only the enigmatic MacLachlan knows how to stop it.
Though undeniably a sci-fi action picture, the elements of 'The Hidden' that set it above most other dreck of the genre is the character developement between Nouri and MacLachlan's characters. Despite widely divergent origins, the two heros of 'The Hidden' are actually very much alike. It is, at first, this oneness of purpose that draw the two together followed by a kind of grudging respect and, finally, trust culminating with MacLachlan's selfless act in the film's final sequence. Of course 'The Hidden' contains a high level of action and the requisite special effects, but I think it's this underlying exploration of the nature of friendship that gives this film its lasting appeal.
For this new laser edition, Lumivision has come up with a remarkably good transfer. Personally supervised by the director, Jack Sholder, the transfer has been matted to a ratio of about 1.85:1. In some scenes I found the framing to be a bit confining while in others it looks considerably better than the previous full screen transfer. The color appears very natural and about perfectly saturated. I did not detect a trace of chroma noise. Contrast and brightness are very good and sharpness and detail are excellent. The low contract element used for this transfer was in suprisingly good condition making for a very clean image. I did note a small amount of over-enhancement here and there, but overall, a very nice looking disc.
The mono soundtrack is, perhaps, most indicative of the film's limited budget but is still not bad. The dynamic range seems a bit compressed as does the frequency response, lacking any truly low bass. One will occasionally pick up a little high frequency hiss but this is minimal and, overall, the mids and highs are somewhat smoother than one might expect.
'The Hidden' runs 98 minutes and is presented on two CLV sides. There is what at first appears to be an anomoly at the end of side one. Instead of a break following the cut, there is several seconds of black before the side ends. Only when one listens to the director's running commentary on analog track 1 do you discover that he is in the middle of a sentence and is allowed to finish before the side ends. In addition to the director's commentary on analog 1, the music and effects have been isolated on analog 2. This disc contains a total of 36 chapters with 25 for the feature and the rest given over to the supplemental material. The supplements begin following the film on side 2 with the theatrical trailer followed by four TV trailers and finally with a trailer for the subsequent sequel, 'The Hidden 2' . A second, single sided CAV disc contains the remainder of the supplemental material. The most interesting of this is excerpts from the original screenplay followed by excerpts from the director's own shooting script containing containing his hand written notes and other changes and deletions. This provides a rare glimpse of how the movie-making process evolves, often resulting in a finished film very different from the one originally written. Also of note are some written comments from the film's writer, Jim Kouf, preceding original screenplay excerpts. It turns out that this special edition laser disc is the first time the writer's real name has been included in the credits. At the time of the film's original release, Mr. Kouf was unhappy with the substantial changes made to his script so he asked to have his name removed from the credits and replaced with the pseudonym, Bob Hunt (though he claims he actually liked the film). Now, in retrospect, he has had a change of heart and his name has been restored to the credits. Other material included are some storyboards, some special effects production footage and a number of production and publicity photos. This two disc set is packaged in a gate-fold jacket with a rather lengthy production essay by the disc's producer, Richard Steiner, on the inner spread. The list price of this set is a fairly steep $69.95 but, compared to all those Fox releases of the same price with no supplements (and often poor transfers) and even higher prices for special editions on other labels, this isn't such a bad deal.
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