The Hidden
NOT BY LYNCH continues tomorrow, May 8th at The Cinema Museum with Jack Sholder’s The Hidden (1987).
Below, experimental filmmaker, writer, and educator Mahda Purmehdi introduces the film’s uncanny use of Lynch muse Kyle MacLachlan.
Tickets are available here, and come with a print booklet which includes the essay.
The Owls Are Not What They Seem: A Cinema of Echoes, a House of Mirrors
1982: the cinema screen lights up the white snow in Antarctica where a sled dog runs away from bullets fired by a helicopter in pursuit. The dog is taken in by the people working in a research station. It starts to shapeshift, taking over the American bodies one by one. In the same year, a woman adopts a White Shepherd dog after it defends her from an attacker. It is revealed shortly after that the dog is trained to kill black people. Five years later, in Los Angeles, Lieutenant Masterson’s dog, hosting an alien, attacks Masterson. The alien switches its host and becomes the LAPD Lieutenant. Three dogs across three films. White Dog (Samuel Fuller) is not science-fiction and its eponymous dog is not host to an alien entity as in The Thing (John Carpenter) or The Hidden (Jack Sholder). It is, however, just like the owls in Twin Peaks (1990-1991): not what it seems.
