Review - C.H.U.D.

by Mr. Blunderson

C.H.U.D. was a flick that shaped the living hell out of my childhood nightmares even though I never saw the movie until today.  The idea of Cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers was all I needed to keep me looking over my shoulder and checking behind doors for months.  I imagined a manhole cover under my bed with monstrous creatures lurking about.  Made a kid who lived in a dark basement bedroom wonder just how much protection a foundation could provide from a monster roaming the tunnels beneath the surface.

Is that why it took more than 25 years to finally watch C.H.U.D.?  I can't say for sure.  Honestly I can't remember the last time I even gave it a thought (outside of Clerks 2 perhaps) until it showed up as a Netflix suggestion this morning.

That was my first surprise of the day.  The second was the fact that I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.  I expected it to be some dated cheesy b-movie (which don't get me wrong I love) but was treated to a pretty solid horror movie.  Sure there are some holes in the plot and yes the effects are severely dated but even then it was a pretty good watch.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for nostalgia, even  if it's the kind that takes me back to the days of hoping the blanket defense (keeping as still as possible completely covered in a blanket) would hold up against mutants.

But what is the movie about?  People are going missing in the neighborhood.  The people that notice are a young Daniel Stern who runs a soup kitchen, a socially conscious photographer played by John Heard, and a cop who's own wife is among those disappeared.  Shit starts happening when the Stern and the cop look into the matter themselves.

What follows is a pretty damn good film.  Not the unspeakable  terrors I imagined but solidly entertaining.  I'll give it a why the hell not? on the Mr. Blunderson scale.