HORROR BUSINESS Episode 169: THE HIDDEN & SIGNIFICANT OTHER

Greetings, and welcome back to Horror Business. We’ve got one heck of an episode in store for you guys as we’re talking about 1987’s The Hidden and 2021’s Significant Other.

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We briefly talk what we’ve doing involving horror recently. Liam talks about reading The Snowman. Justin talks about a few of the films he watched for the Fantasia International Film Festival, as well as the film Saccharine and a screening of the 1988 version of The Blob at the Mahoning Drive In.

Up first is The Hidden. We talk about how the film is the essential late 80’s cop/action film but instead of merely flirting with horror elements it openly embracing them by having the antagonist being a body hopping alien addicted to the human experience. Liam brings up the phenomenon of loving a movie as a kid but being disappointed by it as an adult and how this movie avoids them.

Justin talks about how the film also openly embraces every late 80’s cultural trope in addition to cop movie tropes. We discuss how the film is the quintessential “one in the morning on HBO back in the day” film. The film’s flirtation with the “LA at night”/neon slime subgenre is discussed.

We talk about how the film is a rare example of a cop’s excessive actions is realistically depicted when a paramedic questions why a victim was shot fifteen times. Liam talks about the film using the tension of the good alien being found out as a source of anxiety.

We talk about the somewhat weak narrative that the one cops daughter knowing Kyle McLaughlin’s character is an alien actually brings the movie down a notch. We briefly talk about how the sequel likely sucks and the film being an example of something that kind of fell flat when it first came out but later found a wider audience. Justin talks about how his only real problem with the film is how the bad alien is revealed too early.

Up next is Significan