Movie #18: C.H.U.D.

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100 Sci-Fi movies in 100 days!

"C.H.U.D." is a sci-fi/horror film from 1984 about killer mutants living in the sewers of New York that feast on the homeless and others in the city. (I kept waiting for Kolchak the Night Stalker to show up.) The acronym stands for "Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers."  I remember seeing the trailer and poster for this movie when it came out, but I never watched it. This was my first time to see it. The first thing I noticed about this movie was the star power. It has some great actors and they give great performances in the film. 

It stars John Heard, Daniel Stern, Christopher Curry, and Kim Greist. There was even a small bit from John Goodman. All of these are great actors (and it's funny that the three main actors all went on later to be in the Home Alone movie franchise. LOL!)

The story was pretty good. Daniel Stern's character is a very compassionate guy working at a homeless shelter. He keeps hearing stories about creatures in the sewer from some of the homeless people, so he decides to take a look for himself. 

Yep, there's creatures down there all right... and the city official in charge of waste disposal knows all about it... in fact, he caused the mutants by dumping toxic waste in the sewers and turning homeless people living underground into nuclear monsters. Now that Daniel Stern is onto this secret, the city official will do anything to stop him from going to the press... even kill off all witnesses.

    Click on the box above to watch the C.H.U.D. trailer.

The creature costumes were a little cheesy but I guess for the time period and the roughly 1.5 million dollar budget they had to work with that was the best they could do. 
Now that I have finally seen "C.H.U.D.," I think that it is a highly underrated flick. I think you should check it out right away. It's available on Netflix for immediate streaming and it's also on Youtube. 

- Patrick Shawn Bennett
Broadcasting from the nuclear-filled sewers of NYC.