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I saw this several years ago on HBO. I watched it every time it came on. A fun movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. Some good gore and a few good creeps and scares. I've added this one to my DVD collection.
What a stupid great movie. It's so rediculis that it works super well. Unlike the sequeal C.H.U.D kicks butt! Daniel Stern is wacky as fudge in this movie and I love the monster make up, so campy and super cheesey like .........BAD TASTE!! I love C.H.U.D and I always will!!!
This is a fantastic, uncompromising 80's monster flick. The story is really engaging and the creatures are incredible. Despite my usual opinion I think this movie is ready to be remade, as long as the story remains the same and the creture design is at least similar.
Bottom line: GREAT. See it before it's remade.
The city of New York is experiencing a rash of disappearances. These started within the homeless population, in particular, the homeless that dwell in the underground network of tunnels, subway lines and sewers that lie beneath the city. This is noticed by ex-con and soup kitchen worker, A.J. Shepherd (Daniel Stern), who notices that fewer and fewer of his regulars are coming up for air. A.J. reports this to deaf ears and cannot get anyone to take notice...but hell, these people are ignored when around, forgotten when they are not. But when reports start coming in of people being attacked and dragged into the sewers by monsters, the authorities can no longer ignore the problem.
Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) of the NYPD is investigating these disappearances and the trail of clues lead him to A.J. Shepherd. Once they compare notes, they team up and head underground to do some looking around. At the same time, photographer George Cooper (John Heard), has been convinced by free-lance reporter, Murphy (J.C. Quinn), that there is something strange going on in the sewers and he convinces George to go with him to investigate. What they all find is that underneath the city, things live there that are far more terrifying than rats, gators and the occasional nut-job. There are also mutated, gooey, neck-stretching monsters with glowing eyes and sharp teeth who survive by eating human flesh. They are C.H.U.D.'s and they are running out of food below ground, and have started shopping on the streets above.
First time director, Douglas Cheek, knew his horror movies and implemented some tried and true horror movie tactics, to varying degrees of success, that have been used since the monster movies of the 1950s. Choosing not to reveal the C.H.U.D.'s much in the beginning of the film may have been have been done to build up tension or possibly because they didn't have much to show. The score by English composer, David A. Hughes, is used in all the right places and does a decent job at letting you know what feelings you should be feeling, even if you are not. Some scenes do not work as intended, like a shower scene that is edited badly and seems out of place plus a pointless C.H.U.D. neck-stretch scene, but in all fairness, these were not choices by Cheek. Other scenes in C.H.U.D. do show some great originality. In one such scene a police crew, armed with flame throwers, are accompanying members of a EPA crew who are armed with Geiger counters. They are down in the sewer tunnels to make sure they wipe out any C.H.U.D.'s they encounter. Using a video feed, the NRC chairman and police captain Bosch are able to see their every move via a series of monitors. When the crews encounter a group of C.H.U.D.'s, you know they are coming, as do the two crews, as the Geiger counters are going crazy. You then see and hear a panicked crew become overwhelmed and slaughtered as each monitor goes to static. This entire scene was practically ripped off and used in a film to come out later, James Cameron's Aliens. Douglas Cheek also keeps the films subject matter, both overlying and underlying, dealing with issues such as environmental damage, government distrust and class prejudice. All issues that work no matter what generation you live in and are constant headline mainstays thus helping extend the shelf life of the film.
Overall, the acting is decent throughout the entire film. Daniel Stern does a great job as the frustrated cook as does John Heard, even though his character is not your normal leading man type as on more than one occasion, he flips out. Realism may have been the goal with those scenes, but in a horror movie such as this, they actually have a more humorous effect. The true villain of the film is not any of the C.H.U.D.'s, but rather Wilson (George Martin), the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Wilson is hell-bent on making sure that the story of C.H.U.D.''s never makes it to the public, and he has a plan in place that will ensure that any C.H.U.D.'S living in the sewer will be meeting their demise, along with anything else living in the sewer. Adding to this is a nice twist later in the film that expands more on his motivations that have him making desperate, and extremely dangerous decisions. Kim Greist plays George Cooper's pregnant girlfriend Lauren, and does a convincing job of playing the lone girl in peril, but rather than being a defenseless girl prevalent in horror films, Lauren is a strong female who not handles herself better than anyone else in the film when faced with a C.H.U.D. attack, but actually is one of the only characters who actually kills one.
Peter Stein, no stranger to horror films before and after C.H.U.D., handled the cinematography and gave the film an overall look that is associated with other city themed horror films of the '80s such as John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct
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