C.H.U.D. (dir. Douglas Cheek, 1984)
Homer: And that’s when the CHUDs came at me…
Marge: Oh, Homer, of course you’re going to have a negative view of New York if all you focus on are the pimps and the CHUDs.— “The City of New York versus Homer Simpson,” The Simpsons
C.H.U.D. has certainly had a rich cinematic legacy, hasn’t it? There’s the joke referenced above on that classic episode of The Simpsons. It received an in-name-only zombie comedy sequel starring Gerrit Graham. It was the basis of the name of a movie review site I’ve never actually read. Recently it’s become a choice term of derision for the racist American right. And just this year, a VHS copy of it served as foreshadowing in Jordan Peele’s Us.
C.H.U.D. The title is the reason why this creature feature from the mid-eighties has any currency at this date in the twenty-first century. Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller as the poster so helpfully explains. The letters stand for something entirely different in the film proper: Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been dumping toxic waste in the Manhattan sewers and subways under that program, which naturally means that it’s turning the homeless population into ravenous, flesh-eating mutants with glowing eyes.
Same thing happened to the Curies. It’s why they don’t let you stay around their notebooks for too long.
While it is certainly a B-movie, it’s a B-movie par excellence. New York City in the 1980s, less than a decade out from near total fiscal collapse and bankruptcy and only a few years removed from the partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island. Ronald Reagan is well underway stripping regulations and America for parts. Opulence and abject poverty exist side-by-side in Manhattan. The homeless there are prey for more than just a bunch of CHUDs.
John Heard is George Cooper, the least fashionable fashion photographer to ever grace SoHo. His girlfriend and model Lauren, played by Kim Greist in her first of several thankless roles as ‘love interest’ before either retiring or dropping off the face of the earth, is doing commercial work that’s diverting Cooper’s passion for street photography, particularly what we now call ‘mole people’: the homeless who take shelter underground. His life intersects with two men: A.J. Shepherd, also known as ‘The Reverend,’ an advocate for the homeless who runs a soup kitchen and whose wardrobe consists entirely of stained shirts, and NYPD officer Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry), whose wife disappeared while walking their dog [1]. Soon they are all confronted with a rash of sick or missing men and women and a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top. It’s like a James Ellroy novel, but way dumber and with fewer racial slurs.
C.H.U.D. brings the 1970s trend of paranoid thrillers and government mistrust to their inevitable conclusion: schlock monster movie horror. For some reason, things in America had a way of getting just a little stupid starting around 1980. But that’s not to say that there is nothing to C.H.U.D. You had every reason to be concerned about the effects of nuclear energy and its by-products, be that weaponry or toxic waste, in that decade, to say nothing about a government agency that in spite of its name and stated mission doesn’t actually have your best interest in mind. You have reasons to be concerned about all of that now. Don’t think Rick Perry doesn’t have a few CHUD outbreaks to his name.
You could do much worse than watching C.H.U.D. For instance, you could watch C.H.U.D. 2: Bud the Chud or the even more dire Home Alone movies featuring Heard and Stern not capturing the magic they had together in this film. It might even be fun to do a John Heard Manhattan Nightmare Double Feature of C.H.U.D. and the genuinely great Martin Scorsese picture After Hours.
Also, be on the lookout for a surprisingly svelte John Goodman appearing as an unnamed cop in the diner and fellow and much missed Coen Brothers regular Jon Polito as a newscaster.
[1] The creators of C.H.U.D. beat Michael Connelly to the name by almost ten years. Did they deliberately name Bosch after the Dutch painter because the CHUDs look like they could have appeared in one of his triptychs? I mean, maybe, but let’s not give them too much credit.
oliveresque 