CHUD

There are some movies out there that have a cult status and that I'd never actually seen before. Another example of this particular genre would be the 1980s low-budget horror movie C.H.U.D. I noticed that it was on one or another of the streaming platforms, so recently I sat down to watch it.

The movie starts off with an establishing scene that gives the viewers a bit of information that the characters in the movie don't have. A woman is walking her dog in New York when suddenly, something comes out of one of the manhole covers and absconds with the woman into the blackness of the subway/sewers/whatever is beneath the streets. Of course, there is a lot going on down there, and one of the people who has been documenting it is photographer George Cooper (John Heard). He used to be a prominent fashion photographer, but he quit that game when he did what was supposed to be an exposé on the homeless population in the city, specifically those who have found nowhere else to make a home than below the streets.

ALso interested in what's going on beneath the surface is A.J. Shepherd (Daniel Stern). He's got the nickname "Reverend", which is because he's taken to running a soup kitchen that serves that underground homeless population, peppered with his own flavor of street preaching. And there's Capt. Bosch (Christopher Curry), an officer in the NYPD. It turns out that the person we saw getting disappeared in the opening scene is Mrs. Bosch.

Eventually, all three figure out that there's something bigger going on, and when a Geiger counter detects radiation, they know that something much bigger is going on. So the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is called in with Wilson (George Martin) leading the show. However, he's one of those stereotypical government flunkies who gives the distinct impression that he's hiding something. Of course he is, and that something is the titular C.H.U.D., which stands for "Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller". But as I said, Cooper and company know that there's more going on than Wilson tells them, and they continue to investigate. And can they get anybody to believe their seemingly outlandish story that there are cannibals in the passageways under the streets of New York?

Of course, the main conceit of C.H.U.D is nonsense that in theory ought to require way too much suspension of belief. But then C.H.U.D. is one of those ultra low-budget movies that isn't really expected to be that believable. Instead, it's the sort of story where you just sit back and let yourself be entertained. And in that regard, it certainly succeeds in entertaining.

In reading a bit more about the movie, I see that it was panned by critics. That's unsurprising, because this is the type of movie that "professional" critics wouldn't love. Is it great? Certainly not. But is it a fun watch? Absolutely.