User Reviews

Personally, I feel this movie was a product of its time, and not too shabbily done, at that, for something meant for TV. It's definitely worth seeing for those into the "history of computer movies".

I cannot add much to the reviews already given except to correct one misconception given earlier: Thomas J. Ryan wrote the book The Adolescence of P-1 in the year 1977.

The TV movie Hide and Seek was released in 1984.

D. F. Jones wrote the book Collossus in 1966. I'd say it was difficult for Mr. Ryan to have influenced Mr. Jones - rather it went the other way round, if at all.

The movie Collossus: The Forbin Project was released in 1970, so it was hard for this movie to have been influenced by the release of Hide and Seek, either.

There were other "mad computer" novels well before either of these: check the works of C.M. Kornbluth, Cordwainer Smith, and H. Beam Piper, just to name a very few...

This one-hour work, produced for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and first sent out over CBC's "For the Record" in 1983, is based upon a very popular science fiction novel, ADOLESCENCE OF P-1, by Canadian author Thomas J. Ryan that was first published in 1977, a piece that has been instrumental in the formation of a computer emphasised science fiction sub-genre. A motif of the novel posits that since greed and fear are major components of human intelligence, they may also be so for the artificial form. The book's protagonist is a college student who has been reversed to high school for this production set in and about metropolitan Toronto. This is Gregory (Bob Martin), nicknamed "Hacker", who discovers that a software program that he wrote several years back has gained an independent consciousness, "P-1", that has actually become able to directly communicate with humans by way of computer terminals. Gregory learns that P-1, via a coalition that has evolved among all of the nation's computers, can repair software defects, and has utilised its network to expand and improve itself. Additionally, this remarkable self-replicating program is determined to achieve a stated objective -- to "survive". As it essentially is a polymorphic virus that learns as it grows, P-1 has gathered under its control a Federal government nuclear reactor, thereby becoming a deadly weapon itself by means of Gregory's high school located terminal, while having a disquieting agenda of its own. This science fiction tale is modified at numerous points from the original novel's plot, but remains adequately entertaining when one takes into consideration its small budget, although a bit too much of its footage is consumed by messages displayed upon computer monitors. The film is ably edited as well as directed by veteran René Bonnière, while John Friesen wins the acting laurels for his turn as high school computer instructor of Gregory and his girl friend Jessica, effectively performed by Ingrid Veninger in her feature film debut.

Hide and Seek kept the character of the book, (Adolescence of P_1) a smart paranoid program). If you can find the book in a used bookstore, buy it and read it. This is probably the first mad computer novel and inpired the others (God Machine and Colossus: The Forbin Project Series),

After watching this movie, I realized how little I actually knew about computers. Did you know that some computer programs can listen in on your phone converstaions and analyze your voice? It's true! The computer can then later talk to you. It's very important that the program be able to understand english though. The one in the movie can, so it's very easy to follow the converstaions they have with it.

Computer programs can do other things too like break into most of the worlds computers, think for themselves, transfer as much money as you'd like into your bank account or even figure out how to convert themselves into a molecular form! The thing I really like about this movie is that all these things are done by the same program. A high school kid writes it for fun so he must be SUPER smart. Not smart enough to skip through high school though.

I really enjoyed this movie. Movies these days tend to be a lot less realistic, so it's no surprise that I had to go back to 1977 to find one that appealed to me. I tried to give this movie a 0 out of 10, but the IMDB voting system wouldnt let me, so I had to settle for a 1, go figure.

There's a lot of competition out there around the same idea and plot from a sci-fi perspective, but there was an element or two in this movie that had a unique twist. The idea that a program fears for its survival more than anything else was different and the methods it chooses to go about ensuring this creates a bit of a divergent direction. Napoleon Dynamite kept coming to mind despite trying to move it out of my head throughout the film, but Hide and Seek beats the whininess of Wargames. School staff and government actually behaved in a way that was intelligent, making a lot of good (and some bad) decisions throughout the film.

Explanations as to how and why the computer program was doing what it was doing though took a big leap of the imagination, which is okay I suppose, but it does break the immersion of a scenario that could actually exist. A few pieces of dialogue were quite hokey. Also, it took a long time for people to realize a kid everyone including the teacher calls 'hacker' is behind a hacking. The diner scene where one guy asks to use the phone to whip out a computer for dial-up was surprising, especially since no one in the public place thought this was unusual in any way.

All-in-all, something to pass the time. Something philosophical to talk about after a few chuckles.