“You said Victor knows something. If Victor wants a gun, I want a gun.”
George Cooper (John Heard) is a photographer that has been photographing homeless people that live in the bowels of the city. He lives with his girlfriend Lauren (Kim Greist). She is a model who met George during one of her shoots. A.J. “The Reverend” (Daniel Stern) runs a soup kitchen at a local homeless shelter. Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) is a police captain at the local precinct.
There has been a rash of homeless people that are missing. There have been several missing person reports at the police station. When a homeless woman tries to steal a cop’s gun for protection, Bosch’s wife goes missing and the Reverend reports many of his ‘regulars’ as missing Bosch knows he needs to do something.
The Reverend believes recent events taking place in the sewers may be to blame. He convinces Bosch that there is a cover up being perpetrated by the NRC. He found a radiation detector and a boot that was part of a contamination suit. Bosch brings the Reverend and his evidence to his superiors. They try to suppress Bosch. Wilson (George Martin), a slimy representative, from the NRC finally tells Bosch a little of what is going on.
It turns out that toxic waste housed in the sewers has turned the underground homeless people into radioactive cannibal mutants. Running out of fellow homeless people to eat, they have begun to come to the surface and attack anyone they come across. Wilson and the NRC need to try to eliminate these monsters called C.H.U.D. or ‘Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers’ before people find out about them, and the toxic waste. They plan on flooding the sewers with gas to kill them. Bosch on the other hand finds out that George and the Reverend are underground investigating. Their lives are in serious danger unless Bosch can save them.
C.H.U.D. was released in 1984 and is a science fiction/horror story that has been pretty much trashed by almost every film critic out there. I on the other hand loved it. The film has, since its release, garnered a cult following. So much so that it has inspired a website ‘Cinematic Happenings Under Development’. The movie has also been referenced in many TV shows and has spawned a sequel of sorts.
There are some good actors involved in the project and all play their parts seriously. There are also cameos by John Goodman and Jay Thomas. The first victim in the movie is Daniel Stern’s real life wife Laure Mattos. There’s lots of action and intensity. The monsters in the film were also panned. After seeing some of the worst monster outfits out there, I thought the monsters looked pretty decent for guys in rubber suits. And although the monsters are homeless people, the real villains in the movie are the government. They’re the ones that created these things and then tried to hide it.