CHUD (1984)

OVERLOOKED HORROR FILMS PART 6

I don't know why I like this film so much but I do. My wife thinks I'm absolutely fucked for thinking this so good. I know it's not a great film or a completely original idea or anything, it's just a fun film to watch, it's pretty short and I really like Daniel Stern's character "AJ Shepard", one of his best roles ever. Without such a strong cast, this film could've easily been a stinker.

C.H.U.D. is one of those toxic waste crazy monster movies but it's updated to the early 1980's concept of fearing nuclear waste. The film is not really gory or scary, it's actually more like a science fiction suspense film with a lot of memorable characters and a pretty decent plot.

The film is set in the scummy streets of New York City. George Cooper (John Heard), plays a big shot fashion photographer who wants to work on a new editorial shoot concerning the homeless, and he starts hearing things about missing people. He starts to get concerned because some of the vanishing are people he has taken pictures of and interviewed recently, so he decides to start investigating the disappearances. Then we have a city cop named Bosch (played brilliantly by Christopher Curry), whose own wife disappeared without a trace some a little while before, so he starts assembling reports on sudden disappearances. The people he works with could care less because most of the people involved are mostly street trash. He decides to pay a visit to A.J. Shepard (Daniel Stern), known on the street as "The Reverend," a man who runs a soup kitchen to feed the poor.

So eventually they form kind of a team to discover C.H.U.D. and what it means after threatening this guy named Wilson, who's head of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency that they will go to the papers with their story. Wilson reluctantly reveals that the C.H.U.D. are Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. Wilson claims a small amount of nuclear waste leaked into the sewers of New York and turned a few vagrants into these zombie flesh eating creatures. At first, they try to flush them with flamethrowers but fail miserably, so it's up to our three heroes to do the job themselves. The C.H.U.D. aren't about to take any attempts to eradicate them lying down, and eventually move aboveground to wreak mayhem on the innocent residents of the city. More painful truths come out when Shepard and Cooper discover that Wilson lied about the toxic waste leak, a truth that is much worse and one that paints the bureaucrat in an extremely unfavorable light.

The music is typical 80's crappy cheese synth and drum machine stuff. The effects are pretty decent there ARE some pretty good gore scenes, although they are used sparingly. This movie definitely one of my faves. Check it out!