C.H.U.D. (1984) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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The sci-fi infused horror film C.H.U.D. seems like a relatively benign story about monsters dwelling under the city and coming out at night to kill their prey. But pulling back the (manhole) covers reveals a much deeper and socially relevant film than marketing would have audiences believe.

First Impressions

The trailer for this sci-fi horror film is short and sweet. The narrator mentions the name of the film at least half a dozen times, while setting up the fact that something is living in the sewers under New York City. Something reaches out of a steaming manhole cover and grabs a woman and her dog. There’s a number of agents in rubberized suits and face masks with flamethrowers that go after these creatures. But just what is C.H.U.D. an acronym for? The narrator leaves that part for last: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

A woman walking her dog along a New York City street at night is grabbed and pulled into a manhole by a mutated looking hand. At the 9th Precinct, Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) tells Police Chief O’Brien (Eddie Jones) that he is no longer willing to keep a lid on something. At the precinct’s front desk a homeless woman, Mrs Monroe (Ruth Maleczech), is brought in for trying to steal an officer’s gun. Photographer George Cooper (John Heard) is shooting his girlfriend’s Lauren Daniels (Kim Greist) perfume ad when he gets a message that Mrs Monroe has left for him.

George bails Mrs Monroe out of jail and walks her back to the Chamber Street subway where she lives. She was attempting to get a gun for her brother Victor (Bill Raymond) who was attacked by something, giving him a huge wound on his thigh. Bosch visits a local soup kitchen run by AJ Shepherd (Daniel Stern), known to everyone as The Reverend. He tells Bosch that a number of his regular attendees, ones that live underground, haven’t shown up in two weeks. AJ shows him a number of devices he’s found while looking for homeless people that belong to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

George returns home to Lauren–who’s not even mad that he caused a scene and walked out of their photo shoot. She informs him she’s pregnant, which makes him happy. After a grandfather is attacked and killed by a creature, Bosch stations men on every corner in SoHo. He picks up AJ and the two go to City Hall to talk to the Chief, the Commissioner (John Ramsey), and an NRC representative, Wilson (George Martin). AJ believes the NRC is doing something nefarious under the city, but Wilson remains tight lipped, until they see a file of his labeled C.H.U.D. He confirms that it stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, but not to worry.

Bosch sends men into the sewers with flamethrowers while the NRC sends men with a camera to check on the report of a dead CHUD. They determine it was killed by a natural gas leak. The teams are attacked by other CHUD and killed. George gets word from a reporter named Murphy (J.C. Quinn) who believes that the police are covering something up and have stolen some photos. They go underground to investigate and Murphy is killed by a CHUD. Wilson orders the city to reroute gas lines into the sewer, against Bosch’s orders.

AJ’s gas stove goes out, and when he enters the basement to check it out, a mysterious government operative locks him in. Meanwhile, Lauren is getting some of her belongings in the basement and discovers a trap door. Inside, in a lower level, she finds the dead dog that was killed in the opening minutes. The dead woman from the opening washes up by a pier, and is revealed to be Bosch’s missing wife. Wilson orders all manholes blocked by vehicles and to start the gas leaks after a diner of people were killed by CHUD.

AJ and George find each other in the sewers and discover the origin of the CHUD. Giant oozing boxes of radioactive waste appear to have mutated homeless people living underground. They also discover other boxes of toxic sludge from the US Army going back many years, and all labeled C.H.U.D: Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal. They manage to get word to Bosch who moves a truck for them to escape through a manhole. Wilson, worried that word will get out, shoots Bosch, and attempts to drive over George and AJ, but AJ shoots him and he drives into the manhole causing his truck to explode.

“Either you tell me what C.H.U.D. stands for, or I’m going to the newspapers.” – Captain Bosch

History in the Making

Even if you’ve never seen this film, you have probably heard of C.H.U.D. (presented as CHUD for the remainder of this article) just due to its outrageousness. It’s making its debut on Sci-Fi Saturdays and 31 Days of Horror today for its 40th anniversary in a week of horror anniversaries. All week long I am looking at films that are celebrating their 100th to 10th anniversary, and CHUD made the cut. Usually, this is the place where I talk about the creators of the film and how they fared with other horror or sci-fi films. Unfortunately for the writers, Parnell Hall and Shepard Abbot, and director Douglas Cheek, this is the only film written or directed by them. None of them were involved in anything beyond this film, including the sequel CHUD II: Bud the Chud–which was a loosely-related sequel anyway.

The film does contain a number of actors known better now than when the film was released. John Heard (not to be confused with John Hurt) was a working actor who had appeared in the 1982 remake of Cat People. He may be best known for his role as Kevin’s father in Home Alone. Daniel Stern had also been in a few films by this time, having had lead roles in both Barry Levinson’s Diner, and the sci-fi/action film Blue Thunder. He too is probably best known as one of the wet bandits in Home Alone, or for his voice-over work as the adult Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years. CHUD was Kim Greist’s first film and Christopher Curry’s second. She would go on to work in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Michael Mann’s Manhunter, while Curry would make a living doing various television roles. But the more interesting casting are the bit players, like comedian Sam McMurray (Raising Arizona, The Simpsons) as a snide cop, Patricia Richardson (Home Improvement) as an advertising executive, John Goodman (Roseanne) in a very early role as ‘cop in diner,’ and a skinny Jon Polito (Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink) as a newscaster.

To the casual observer, CHUD defies categorization. In a world where every successful horror or sci-fi film leads to other films trying to imitate it, this film stands alone. It wasn’t trying to copy anything or be like more successful films. The filmmakers wanted to make a film about monsters in the New York sewers, and that’s just what they did. But all that is only on the surface. Like the CHUD themselves, viewers need to look deeper at this film to really understand what it was trying to say. CHUD had a thing or two to say about the state of the country in the mid 1980s, as well as present characters that were ahead of their time. But like many lower budget films, it had a number of flaws about it as well. There were some plot threads that went nowhere, and some scenes that seemed unnecessary. But first, let’s see how it fits into the horror and science-fiction landscape of 1984.

Genre-fication

This question gets asked a lot on these reviews, but is CHUD really science-fiction? It does not look like a lot of sci-fi films from the era. Popular sci-fi films from 1983 and 1984 include the conclusion to the Star Wars trilogy, Return of The Jedi, The Last Starfighter, and The Terminator. CHUD doesn’t seem like any of them. Any sci-fi elements only come from the brief realization that the CHUD were created from man’s own laziness and inhumanity. Science and technology is responsible (however fleetingly in the film) for creating the creatures that threaten the citizens of New York. There’s no dystopian landscape, or totalitarian government in this film, so it is much more sci-fi adjacent.

On the flip side, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Cujo, and Gremlins were popular horror films of the day. It may be most like Gremlins, with a myriad of monsters that attack citizens with little provocation for unknown reasons. But actually CHUD is more like one of George Romero’s Living Dead films with a bit of the conspiracy element seen in the 1988 remake of The Blob. From that standpoint, this film is much more straightforward horror. It’s a mystery of why there are creatures killing people, scenes of various people getting killed, and then the heroes triumphing by killing the creatures. But while the heroes defeat the villain of the piece, Wilson, do they really vanquish the monsters? That element is left open-ended. The film seems much more concerned that the evil government man gets his comeuppance than ensuring that these cannibalistic humanoids are vanquished from the city sewers.

Societal Commentary

Poll a group of people about CHUD and some will tell you it’s a horror film. Others will say it’s a sci-fi film. But will anyone tell you it’s a political and sociological allegory? Let’s take a trip back to August 1984, when CHUD was released. Ronald Reagan was on his way to a second term as President. The AIDS epidemic was in full swing. Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, was in the middle of his killing spree. Cold War tensions ran hot as Russia boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Olympics and Reagan was caught on an open mike joking “the bombing begins in five minutes.” But the United States economy was thriving. The rich were getting richer, and the poor and lower class were being further marginalized in what is now seen as the beginning of the modern era of homelessness. Issues stemmed from the growing unemployment rate, the gentrification of urban centers, a lack of affordable housing and deep cuts to HUD and national social services, as well as deinstitutionalization of mentally ill patients. It was a turbulent time where many just fought to survive. Along with all of this, reports of mutant alligators in the New York sewer system continued to flourish.

I have no idea how CHUD actually came about, but let’s assume that Shepard Abbott, who is credited for the story, and Parnell Hall, screenplay, had a tale they wanted to tell. A warning to the public about evil doings in America. What better way to present it to the public than with a horror film? Didn’t George Romero tell his own tales about social and consumer evils in Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead? So they crafted a story about a government conspiracy to cover-up the dumping of toxic waste under the SoHo district of New York City, an area prominent at the time for artists illegally living in loft spaces zoned for commercial use. The film seems clear as a jab at Reagan-era politics that targeted the middle and lower class. The villain of the film is not the monstrous CHUD that trailers and posters seem to indicate. Instead it’s a director, or high level operative, of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which is an “independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy” established in 1975. Criticism in the early 80s, especially after the Three Mile Island meltdown of 1979, was that the NRC was less in the business of public safety, and more in the business of doing what was best for the nuclear energy industry. Hence their attempt to quietly hide their involvement in the disposal of toxic waste and sludge under SoHo. The NRC knew nuclear waste was dangerous, but they decided to dump it in an urban center regardless. The targets of this illegal dumping were the homeless and liberal population of SoHo.

The first characters introduced in the film, after Mrs Bosch and her dog, are George and Lauren–two artsy types subletting a loft. He’s a photographer who is concerned about the plight of the homeless and takes photos of them for articles, and she’s a model. The other heroic character is The Reverend, an ex hippie (who quotes Grateful Dead and Talking Heads lyrics) and manager of a local soup kitchen. He knows the names of the homeless people, including many that live underground. They are set into motion by Captain Bosch, a police officer that lives in the area. Even though he is part of the system (and part of the cover-up for a while), his character is able to open his eyes when the problems hit too close to home: with the death of his wife. Until that point, the missing homeless population was a nuisance, one that officers were pulled from in favor of more high-profile cases. All these characters can be seen as progressive liberals to one extent or another. AJ is living his values by choosing to serve the destitute. George is extremely progressive for a man of the 80s. When Lauren tells him she’s pregnant, his first response is not about himself. He asks her what she wants to do. Does she want to keep the baby? If so, he’s all in. Bosch ends up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. It’s only when his wife goes missing that he steps into the action, and not when AJ reports that 12 homeless people are missing. The homeless are not enough of a problem to deal with on their own, but once the crimes exceed the disposable population they require action.

Using his authority and agency, Bosch spurs the department into action, and takes the fight to his superiors–who have been telling him to “look the other way.” This is where he runs into the real villain of the piece. And if you are so far unconvinced that CHUD is a thinly veiled rebuke against real-world Republican policies to create strife and pain on lower class citizens, look no further than the name of the NRC representative: Wilson. As in Ronald Wilson Reagan. He seems like an unassuming bureaucrat but the fear he inspires in the Chief and Commissioner, and his ability to get on a phone and mobilize an Izod-clad agent in sunglasses to harass AJ and lock him into the sewers, proves that he’s a force to reckon with. He holds off Bosch’s advances as long as he can, believing he has the power of the Federal Government on his side. He chooses to double-down and risk a huge natural gas explosion under the city to destroy the creatures he helped create, just to cover his tracks. When things eventually go south and Bosch threatens him with exposure over his part in the fiasco, he shoots Bosch. But AJ shoots him back causing him to die in an explosion of his own making. Like the real-world, the problems do not appear to be resolved at the conclusion of the film. People are still dead and there’s no word if the CHUD have been stopped. Supposedly, AJ and George (and maybe Bosch if he survives) will go public and reveal the plan to the public. But who’s to say that it will be believed. It’s so far-fetched–mutants living under the sewers of Manhattan. That’s just some liberal fever dream to distract people from the real problems in the world.

The Science in The Fiction

Ethics and morality aside, can it really be less expensive to move radioactive contamination into sewers under the biggest city in America without people knowing about it? It appears that the NRC is taking part in the cover-up because it is the least expensive thing to do. That, and there’s a restraining order in the city due to the press leaking word that radioactive material was to be transported through the city. Yes, they were able to get it in somehow, but now are shackled by the law in needing to move it out. What a terrible predicament.

Movies like CHUD often show the ease at which radiation will create a monster. The 1950s was rife with these tales, from Godzilla to Them! to Tarantula. Movie audiences have been told that these substances are dangerous to the extreme. But in reality, they are only dangerous in the way that gives people inoperable cancer and then kills them. People exposed to the radiation would experience nausea and vomiting, fevers, hair loss, internal bleeding and depending on the strength and length of the exposure, death. There’s no super powers given or transformations into some kind of toxic avenger with this sort of exposure. It becomes a horrible way to live as the body succumbs to a slow and painful death.

The Final Frontier

CHUD ended up being a wildly fun movie to watch, and I cannot believe that it took me so long to finally see it. The biggest complaint is Kim Greist’s role in the film. Just like her character, Greist is a beautiful model that provides nothing to the final product except T&A and a woman in distress. Removal of her character would not affect the outcome of the film in any way, other than to showcase some creature effects on a character that audiences supposedly care about. She explores the basement, which audiences already know is dangerous. She announces her pregnancy, which makes her even more vulnerable when the CHUD busts into her apartment. And after having a scare in the basement (seeing the dead dog), she decides to take a shower (of course) which clogs up. Why? It’s unsure, but clearing it causes an explosion of blood to spray her. She also somehow knows where George is trapped underground and drives the police car to that exact location for help. There’s also an unexplored subplot with a young boy in the building standing by the door when a CHUD breaks through it. I hope he’s OK and not needing years of therapy to overcome his trauma.

CHUD is a much deeper film than it appears, featuring some good actors and some passible monster effects. What a great time to check it out as it celebrates its 40th anniversary. Stay tuned to 31 Days of Horror this week for more scary film anniversaries from 1994, 2004, and 2014.

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