Hi, Burl here with a review! Ha ha, I’m still playing
catch-up, so I’m going to review movies as though the chuds were on my tail!
Yes, it’s true, I watched C.H.U.D. again
recently, and was reminded of the times I watched it as an adolescent and
appreciated the mid-low-level New York horror rung on which it sat – lower
rungs of course being occupied by movies like Basket Case and Street Trash
and Troma films, and the higher by, oh, I guess The Sentinel and stuff like that! Rosemary’s Baby would be at the peak of this ramshackle pyramid I’m
attempting to describe!
What I’m talking about are not only budgetary
considerations, but a level of street grime that renders the horror sort of
realistic in a Big Apple sort of a way! C.H.U.D.,
which largely takes place among the street people and soup kitchens of the
city, as well as beneath it in the sewers, achieves a very tangible level of
grot, which is probably its most valuable asset!
It’s a story of monsters, ha ha! These entities, with their
lighbulb eyes and obvious halitosis, lurk in the sewers, tragic mutations
created thanks to the radioactive waste stored beneath the streets, which
renders ordinary subterranean hoboes chudlike! Above grade we find a
photographer played by John Heard from Too Scared to Scream and Heaven Help Us,
and an activist for social justice played by Daniel Stern from Get Crazy and It’s My Turn, and a cop called Bosch, played by Christopher Curry
from F/X! There’s also the terrific
Kim Greist, from Brazil and Manhunter, as the photographer’s
ladyfriend!
There’s an almost Jaws-like
quality to the relationships between the trio of males! Heard is our Roy
Scheider, gaping around at the strange new waters he’s navigating; Stern, the
hippie street preacher, takes the part of the sharp, likeable younger man,
bearded and iconoclastic; and Curry is the blustering captain! Dotting the film
also are such familiar faces as John Bedford “Trading Places” Lloyd, Frankie ”Maximum Overdrive” Faison and Jon “Miller’s
Crossing” Polito! Ha ha, even John “Matinee”
Goodman shows up at the very end, only to become chud-chow pretty quick!
But the real stars of the picture are the piranha-mouthed
chuds! They don’t actually spend much time on screen, these old boys, and it might
have been nice to spend a little more time with them! At the same moment, while
I’m strangely fond of the creatures, I don’t blame the director for trying to
cut around them!
A little more pep in the direction, and in general, would
have been nice, and the atmosphere is undeniably one of actors slumming; but
this is in many ways a superior iteration of the 80s rubber monster genre,
close kin to The Outing, Rawhead Rex, The Kindred and Pumpkinhead!
I’m going to give C.H.U.D. two half-bums!
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