jadavix "C.H.U.D." is a tedious horror movie with an undeserved cult following.It is like a more horror-oriented version of "Ghostbusters", which was released the same year. It has a similar "average guys vs. the government bureaucracy" plot, but without any laughs.Daniel Stern makes a surprisingly good off-beat hero, but after all these years since I first watched the movie, I had completely forgotten John Heard was in it. This is not a good thing, considering he is the protagonist.It's an odd movie which has a protagonist who is basically unnecessary to the plot, but that seems to be the situation here. They should have had greater faith in Stern and let him carry the film.The plot concerns a government cover-up of mutant homeless people living in the sewer. There is an obvious allegory here about our treatment of the homeless, sweeping this problem under the rug where it just might get worse... though maybe not this worse, but you get the idea.Anyway, there is surprisingly little violence in "C.H.U.D.". It's also not in the least scary. With a plot this silly, you'd expect some humour, but there is also very little of that. What you get is long stretches of tedium and then some sub-par violence, and a pretty goofy looking monster.

GL84 Following a series of strange disappearances, a photographers' investigation reveals the sewers of New York are crawling with cannibalistic mutants spawned from government-released toxic waste and must find a way of stopping them from overtaking the city.Overall this one was a quite fun creature feature. Among the better qualities here is the story build-up in the first half as the fact that it's built up as a mystery element gives this one a great start. From the rash of disappearances that have an unexplained air to them to the way that it uses the underground collection of objects that shouldn't be there, it makes for a nicely unfolding mystery angle that is simply great. It's nicely done in here since the inclusion of the cover-up along with all the other facets of the mystery found through his involvement in their situation as well as the investigation brought about through the police all make this one pretty nice. There's also enough action in here to make it feel rather interesting, with their different appearances throughout the underground tunnels and the surprise ambushes on their victims out in the city without being fully revealed, while the first assault underground is fantastic as the futuristic suits worn offering some fantastic atmosphere, the presence of the soldiers giving it a great feel, and the big attack through the flames on the closed-circuit system offers up some fine points of interest. Another battle in the apartment complex is great, as the continual escapes into hiding offer up some really tense cat-and- mouse stalking scenes that are easily some of the best atmosphere in the film and the final chase to get out of the sewers away from the creatures before they get loose as the race to get out with the gas coming after them is pretty great as well making it really enjoyable. There's also the design of the creatures being pretty cool, looking suitably alien and indefinable but retaining enough humanistic parts to have it remain a rather impressive and scary creature with the glowing eyes, fang-lined mouth and huge claws. Otherwise, this one here doesn't have a whole lot to it as this one here did have a couple of flaws to it that hold it down. One of the biggest ones is that there's hardly any action at all in the film. There's only a few scenes in here where there's anything approaching action, and that's taken up with a few confrontations and nothing much else. Too much time is taken up in the beginning to really get into this as much as it should've been, and here it really weakens the amount of action by introducing so much into the mystery. The low-action in here is also responsible for it's low body-count, and therefore low amount of gore in here since the creatures are rarely in action and it's really noticeable. The low gore count is also noticeable in the fact that their method of killing can lead this one to feeling way too dry. Despite all of it coming from after-effects, no bloodshed is seen during any of the attacks due to their preference towards dragging them away off into the distance, and for a creature loaded with such impressive weapons to have to resort to that kind of method is really weak. These constitute the film's flaws.Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence and Nudity.

videorama-759-859391 This is another of those movies, you think, it's just gonna be bad B grade, with just these little monsters, lurking under subterranean ground zero, and eating people, and it's gonna have some bloody bits and all, but what you get instead of a story, where the more you learn from the movie, and it's story, it progresses, the more feasible, it becomes too, a frightening aspect. This is a horror, that acts more serious, than the nonsensical predicament of it's story, using it as a facade, which as you know, can really make a movie look stupid. Here, it's no so the case, as we have a kind of, Hills Have Eyes, underground type film. This movie too has likable actors, like the very good Heard as a photographer, Kim Griest, his wife, and Stern who run a soup kitchen for the not so fortunate underground dwellers. A few of these low type folk have gone missing, as well as some more upstanding folk, up above, including a cop's wife. The cop, Bosch and Stern team up to get the truth, where there is some corruption, from forces high above, with a ending concerning the major party, predictable. The mutants, ex squatters, again, have become the way they have, thanks to a lot of bad disposal + garbage, while also enduring radiation thanks to a device. I haven't seen this movie for a few years, and I am quite impressed by it, how becomes so serious it becomes, but in the end, it becomes just another routine yarn, like many others. I was expecting an addictive B grade junk film, but got something more serious. I really liked the cop character Bosch, and also, first not recognizing him, J.C. Quinn, donning a long wavey hairdo, as a two bid, struggling writer, while Heard coolily carried his lead, though he kind of comes in and out of the movie. The monsters, sorry, disintegrating humans, look effectively good too, where the film does have a few suspenseful "Oh no" moments, plus a "familiar car wheel blocking a manhole "Alligator film" exit, it's driver being a cop for god's sake, where the whole street is full of cop cars, fire trucks. Again, by this scene, I raise the point of how serious this film takes itself. Not a bad view, and better than a lot of these monster type movies.

BA_Harrison I first heard about '80s creature feature C.H.U.D. in the pages of Fangoria, where I was particularly impressed by a selection of gruesome stills featuring mangled corpses, victims of the film's Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, homeless people who have mutated into hideous monsters after exposure to toxic waste dumped in the sewers. Unfortunately, when I finally caught up with the film on UK home video, I was extremely disappointed: not only was most of the juicy gore absent—which, at the time, I put down to the scissor-happy attitude of the British censors—but the film's pacing was weak and the narrative disjointed.I later learnt that the version I saw on video was actually a heavily butchered TV edit which screwed around with the order of the scenes. The Director's Cut, now available on DVD, not only includes the missing gore, but also puts events back in their correct order; however, even though things are now as they were originally intended by director Douglas Cheek, C.H.U.D. still feels like it could do with more work, the film devoting far too much screen-time to dull chit-chat when it should be delivering monster mayhem. When the creatures do appear, the film is a lot of fun, the creepy critters boasting rubbery claws, snaggle teeth and glowing eyes; there just isn't enough of the good stuff to offset all of the scenes where very little of interest occurs.4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for the decapitated heads, one of which belongs to a C.H.U.D. that meets the business end of a samurai sword.