1984 horror movie
Rating: 8/20
Plot: A photographer, a policeman, and a hippie try to figure out why so many people are disappearing in New York City. They discover something terrible living in the sewers.
Other than the incomparable Daniel Stern, there was only one thing I liked about this movie: low shots of manhole covers being lifted by the titular cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers while unsuspecting citizens do whatever they're doing. There are a couple shots like that, and those are effective. Other than that, this doesn't really work as a good or bad movie. It's just sort of boring. I do like the underground abodes of the homeless characters, reminiscent of Dark Days, and the urban decay of wherever this was actually filmed adds to the atmosphere. I guess I would have liked to see more of the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers, just to add to the cheese. This focuses more on the characters trying to figure things out, and none of that is interesting enough to drive the film. It could have been better and it could have been worse which makes it not worth the time. This is the only full-length movie Douglas Cheek ever directed which seems weird to me.
About 25 years ago my family was staying with some relatives in Utah. We were there for a few days, and my uncle-in-law, a huge movie buff, learned that I really liked movies and insisted I should watch "C.H.U.D." because is was great. Before it even started, I knew it was going to suck, I mean any movie that has the name "C.H.U.D." I.S. G.O.I.N.G. T.O. S.U.C.K.
ReplyDeleteI then had the very uncomfortable experience of watching it with the guy. Him clearly proud of his movie taste, and me trying not to give any outward indication of how stupid I thought his tastes were. My memory fits your review. I remember a boring movie with dumb underground monsters. It was too dull to even rank among the worst movies I have seen, but it would rank as one of the worst movies ever recommended to me. A 5.
Cool story. This seems like a very weird movie to force on somebody, especially as a "great" movie. Everybody's got different ideas of what "great" means, of course, but I'd imagine anybody thinking C.H.U.D. was great would at least understand that he'd be in the minority.
ReplyDeleteYeah, too dull to be good-bad and therefore just kind of boring.
Cool story. This seems like a very weird movie to force on somebody, especially as a "great" movie. Everybody's got different ideas of what "great" means, of course, but I'd imagine anybody thinking C.H.U.D. was great would at least understand that he'd be in the minority.
ReplyDeleteYeah, too dull to be good-bad and therefore just kind of boring.