C.H.U.D. (1984)

Often the best type of horror and science fiction reflects the fears of the people at the time it was made.  It's something one quickly realizes when watching the original The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Darkside.  In the former there are many stories about humans becoming obsolete, education and free thought being abolished and the hidden agendas of those who seem to be here to help us.  The show did come at a time when computers were becoming slowly integrated into society, but also at a time when the seemingly faceless minions of communism seemed to be poised to take over the world.  The latter had many episodes dealing with fears of modern technology and quite a number where people who were not well-regarded - like debt collectors or arrogant corporate executives - received their comeuppance.  This is not surprising from a decade where most of the first half suffered one of the worst recessions of all time, but which also experienced a technological boom.

C.H.U.D. was made in 1984 and it, too, represents concerns people had at the time.  New York was seen by the rest of the country as an example of everything that was wrong with America and the direction we were going.  There were areas of the city that looked as if it had been the victim of an air raid.  Crime was rampant, as was corruption, and even then it was one of the most expensive places in the United States to live.  As we have seen in recent years home and rent prices that end up being untenable for a large swath of financially unstable citizens results in a terrible homeless epidemic.  

Part of the premise of the movie, that large homeless populations were living in abandoned parts of the sewers and subways, was (and, I believe, still is) a real thing.  A few years after C.H.U.D. was released saw Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman starring in a television show called Beauty and the Beast which pretty much dealt with the outcasts from society building an underground civilization after escaping the grim reality of the surface.  Boasting some of the oldest sewer systems - rivers, in some cases, were paved over in parts of the city - and subways, it's no wonder that people would begin to wonder what is down there, just out of sight of their daily commute.  Be it a new society, or the homeless forced to live their lives in utter darkness transformed into monsters by corruption and neglect.

Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) begins to notice a number of missing persons cases coming across his desk, all centralized in the neighborhood in which he lives.  When his wife goes missing he starts pushing Chief O'Brien (Eddie Jones) to let him investigate - something the chief has ben pressuring Bosch not to do.  After a local homeless woman (Ruth Maleczech) tries to steal a gun from an officer, she calls photographer George Cooper (John Heard) to bail her out, and leads her to her brother - one of many people that dwell in the tunnels under the city - to reveal that he wanted a gun after being bitten by something.

After A.J. (Daniel Stern), a local soup kitchen operator, contacts Bosch about his concern that the people that come up from the sewers seem to be missing, the two begin to investigate further.  What they find is that somehow some of the people living underground have been transformed into monsters and, running out of food down below, have begun to start coming to the surface.  Wilson (George Martin), a shady character somehow associated with the Nuclear Regulatory Committee, seems intent to cover the incident up by flooding the sewers with gas and secretly posting trucks full of explosives over manholes.  While A.J. and George, finding each other after being trapped, try to find a way out, Cooper's wife Lauren (Kim Greist) comes under attack by one of the creatures.  

Douglas Cheek usually worked as a film editor, and C.H.U.D. is his one and only time as a director of a feature film.  That said, he does a good job with it, knowing that it is better to get the audience wrapped up in some of the human drama - as well as the claustrophobic, dark spaces of the sewers - rather than show too much of the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers.  The makeup and everything is good, even if sometimes the rubbery claws are a bit too obvious, but both Cheek and makeup creator John Caglione Jr. knew the tricks of making the monsters memorable in the right way.  

Though it does have some surface politics of the time - government corruption, pollution, what to do with toxic waste and a general fear of nuclear energy - the emphasis is on making a regular old monster movie, just with a bit more blood and urban decay.  Some of the conversation parts could have been cut down - there wasn't any reason to make Bosch and A.J.'s confrontation of Chief O'Brien and Wilson as long as it was, or cut between it and other action - but then it's expected for older horror films to not have a frenetic pace.  For a low-budget movie with a first-time director it could have been much worse, and we are thankfully spared long scenes of driving or walking to pad out running time.  If anything there's a bit too much plot packed in on top of just Morlock-style creatures coming up to eat people. 

Despite the minor flaws, however, I found myself having a great time watching this movie.  There are some uproariously bad lines in it, and others that obviously were meant for humor, and it definitely helps that Cheek had access to real actors rather than just having to rely on friends that might or might not be able to pull off the roles.  A lot of the credit goes to scriptwriter Parnell Hall, but also Stern and Curry contributed a bit to their characters as well.  

The enjoyment of C.H.U.D. may hinge somewhat on remembering the issues that mashed together to make this fun little horror flick, but, in mentioning Tales from the Darkside earlier, this seems like an expansion of an idea I would have seen on that show back at the time.  Also, a lot of modern films could take a hint from this one as well.  People crawling through soot and grime get dirty and sweaty.  They don't look like they've just stepped off a fashion runway.  Neither does C.H.U.D., in all its cheap, gritty charm, and I love it for that. 

C.H.U.D. (1984)

Time: 88 minutes

Starring: John Heard, Daniel Stern, Christopher Curry, Kim Greist

Director: Douglas Cheek