I was shocked when my girlfriend told me that one of her favorite movies of all time was Hiding Out. It just didn't seem right to me that she was talking about how much she loved a movie that I had never heard of. That's not how it' supposed to work. I'm the one that likes the weird stuff. And when she said it was "a bad 80s movie", I knew I had to watch it.
Take a bad 80s teen movie, then sandwich it in the middle of a bad 80s thriller, and the you get Hiding Out. John Cryer (which I suppose is a good sign that it's a classic) is a stock broker who is a key witness against a mobster. The mobster wants him dead, so he goes on the run. He ends up shaving his beard, dying his hair, and posing as a high school student named Maxwell Houser (when asked his name, he was inspired by a coffee can). Hilarity ensues as he tries to fit into the teenage lifestyle while protecting his true identity.
It is ridiculously bad. It brings up a lot of memories of Never Too Young to Die (which I think I should start a thread about some day) By the end of the movie, it's not hard to imagine a bad titular theme song like Never Too Young to Die... "When you're hiding out.../ These are things that may just come about..."
See, I never thought that Hiding Out was all that bad. It was a staple of HBOs afternoon line up back in the early 90s and I'm sure I watched it nearly 50 times over the years. It was actually filmed where I currently live back when De Laurentiis Entertainment Group still owned the film studio here.
As far as 80's High School flicks go, it's about on par. Still, the scene where Maxwell comes out to Andrew in the bathroom is classic.
I remember seeing this way back when it was originally released on VHS. If I remember correctly, it is the 2nd worst Jon Cryer movie after MORGAN STEWART'S COMING HOME (which was so bad it used the "Alan Smithee" director's credit).